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Maoists recruiting ‘comrades’ from neighbors

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury - 5/2/2008

Much before victory of Maoists in Nepal, several hundred members of banned underground communist parties in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka has been recruited by Maoists for orientation and training on staging similar movements in the respective countries. A source confirms Dhaka’s largest and most influential newspaper, Weekly Blitz that since December 2007, secret recruitment of ‘comrades’ by the Nepalese Maoists began in Bangladesh under the guidance some leftist leaders. Such recruits are sent to various parts in Nepal for six-month orientation and training, with the ulterior motive of beginning armed movement in Bangladesh demanding establishment of communism. According to reports, finance for such activities is coming from a number of communist countries via Myanmar. It is also alleged that, since March 2008, small and medium consignments of sophisticated weapons as well as explosives are also entering Bangladesh territory via Ukhia and other Myanmar adjacent areas. Such arms are secretly distributed amongst the members of small communist groups as well as some of the Islamist groups in Bangladesh. On the other hand, Nepalese Maoists are also conspiring to re-begin notorious activities of Naxalites in Indian West Bengal. Although Bangladeshi intelligence is keeping close eyes on the activities of any possible conspiracy of Communists or Islamists in staging sudden armed movement in the country, it is even learnt that, smuggling of arms from Myanmar to Bangladesh is continuing by cheating intelligence eyes.



Although Nepal is one of the smallest countries in South Asia with endless beauties of nature, the recent developments in Katmandu, which resulted in massive victory of Maoist in the election, thus establishment of another Communist rule in world’s lone Hindu nation is seen as an alarming signal for the South Asians nations as well as Asian countries. Many smell involvement of regional intelligence agencies behind such landslide victory or rather a complete upset in media predictions, while others see Al Qaeda’s hand in bringing the Maoists in power with the ultimate objective of turning Nepal into a safe haven of Islamist and Communist terrorism.



The Maoists have won a majority of the seats under the first-past-the-post system and are on course to win the largest share of the seats in the proportional representation system as well. This overwhelming victory has come as a surprise to the mainstream political parties of Nepal, to the global media, to India and all the outside powers that have made a habit of interfering in the sovereign affairs of Nepal. All of them loiter in Katmandu and chatter to each other about the destiny of Nepal. But the outcome is not a surprise to those who have kept their ears close to the ground.



What the myth-makers of Katmandu failed to understand was that the Nepali polity was comprehensively anachronistic, based on a narrow system of accommodation of the urban and rural elites, and unable to deliver even the most rudimentary form of welfare to the vast majority of impoverished rural Nepalese. Left to fend for themselves after a series of betrayals that saw people being deprived of the agrarian livelihood thanks to World Bank-International Monetary Fund reforms, deprived of the water and natural resources thanks to Asian Development Bank-led developmental destruction, denied even basic services such as electricity and a decent education, ordinary Nepalese voted in large numbers for a political force that had articulated a new radicalism in Nepali history and underwent severe hardships to give a voice to peoples' aspirations in the course of the 10-year old civil war.



The civil war, though brutal and bloody, gave rural Nepalese an insight into the extent to which the Katmandu-based state and the social and economic interest groups it protected would go to preserve the privileges of the few against the aspirations of the many. This is something that most observers of Nepali politics do not comprehend. There is a liberal delusion that people being ground to extinction by extreme poverty have the same distaste for class war that the exploiters of the nation entertain and hence in an election an underground force will be defeated. Yet, it was the mainstream political forces that were reluctant to hold the elections in the first instance because, being closer to the ground than commentators who live exclusively off Katmandu, they knew the reality of just how meaningless the Nepali state had become to the Nepali people. If anything, the conduct of the Nepali Army in fighting the civil war alienated the mass of the people from the institutions of the state, including the political parties.



The mainstream political parties were themselves unable to overcome their ideological paralysis and formulate a clear vision of their politics that would at least have neutralized the loss of credibility that resulted from their craven conduct during the years that they managed the polity between 1991 and 2004. They were unable even to take a definite and categorical position on the question of monarchy and the army, both of which had caused immense damage to rural Nepal through their depredations.



Several analysts are seeing hidden cooperation between Al Qaeda and Nepalese Maoists, which helped Maoists in attaining such landslide victory in Nepal. There is reportedly a hidden agreement between the two in allowing Al Qaeda outfits in the South Asian region [in Nepal] to operate without any legal obstacles. Now, after the victory of Maoists, it is anticipated that activities of Al Qaeda and other Islamists terror groups will greatly increase.


Victory of Maoists in Nepal will not possibly spread fire of terrorism in the entire South Asian nation either through Communists or Islamists or both. It is also learnt from several sources that, Al Qaeda is patronizing Maoist operatives in Nepal as well as spread of extremist Islamism in the South Asian region under the garb of Communism. International community need to look into this extremely important issue forthwith and fix appropriate strategies in combating rise and spread of Maoism, Communism or Islamism, for the sake of regional and global security.