Bush Ignores Plea To Cut Off Military Aid

by Jim Lobe

(IPS) WASHINGTON -- More than a week after King Gyanendra seized control of the government of Nepal, President Bush is still undecided precisely how to react, beyond urging the monarch to free all political detainees and restore constitutional freedoms.

The State Department "deplored" the crackdown against peaceful protesters in Kathmandu this week and called on those arrested by the security forces to be "released promptly." It also called on the government to release hundreds of others that have been detained over the past week and to lift restrictions on media activities.

At the same time, U.S. Ambassador James Moriarty warned Friday that U.S. aid, which has steadily increased over the last several years to help Kathmandu cope with an increasingly powerful Maoist insurgency, was "at risk."

He also said that Gyanendra had promised privately to restore democratic rights within 100 days and suggested that Washington was prepared to wait that long before taking tougher action.

Moriarty, who held talks with the chief of the army general staff and opposition leader Pashupati Rana after the latter's release from house arrest Friday, last met the king Monday, according to the State Department.

"The king has been saying that they need three months -- 100 days -- to straighten some of this stuff out," he told reporters. "And we would certainly expect him to be addressing these questions within that time-frame."

By "these questions," Moriarty referred to "the restoration of constitutional liberties, freeing of the detainees, and the beginning of the process of reaching out to the parties."

But a number of analysts here told IPS that Washington should take tougher action much sooner, lest it be seen by the non-violent opposition as implicitly backing the de facto restoration of an absolute monarchy.

"Thus far, the U.S. administration's approach has been rhetorically tough, but there's not a lot of evidence that it goes beyond words," John Norris, a special adviser on Nepal to the International Crisis Group (ICG), told IPS.

"The State Department has issued relatively strong language, the ambassador has sent word to the king, but we haven't seen any practical steps -- including the suspension of military or development aid -- that would suggest that the administration is serious about reversing this situation," he noted.

Washington would be required by law to suspend most of its economic and military assistance if it concluded that the king had come to power as a result of a military coup d'etat.

Officially, the State Department had not come to a decision as of late Friday, but one knowledgeable source told IPS that in fact, the administration's operating assumption was that it was a coup by the king, even though he is now effectively ruling through the army.

Indeed, Washington, which has been in close consultations with India as the most influential outside player during the crisis, seems uncertain about what to do, in part because it is unconvinced that any alternative short of a radical change in Nepal's governance can save what has been a steadily deteriorating situation, particularly since the king threw out the democratically elected government three years ago.

"There aren't really any good answers," said Teresita Schaffer, a former assistant secretary of state for South Asian Affairs who heads up the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here.

"I have difficulty seeing how you restore pluralistic government in a situation where pluralistic government hasn't been functioning," she told IPS in a telephone interview. "You almost have to be looking at a new beginning in which institutions function again."

"The status quo ante -- highly confrontational politics; politicians who won't speak to each other on a scale that's really bad even by South Asian standards -- is not what you want to return to," she said. "What is ultimately the remedy is the restoration of governance not just in the cities of Nepal, but in the boondocks, as well."

Washington, which considers the Maoists a terrorist group, currently provides about $45 million a year in mostly economic but some military aid. In the last two years, it has provided about $20 million in aid and training to the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA).

The military aid is designed to improve the RNA's counter-insurgency skills, but most experts agree that it has had little impact. Despite the RNA's overwhelming firepower compared to the Maoists, the insurgency now controls as much as 85 percent of the countryside, compared to only about 20 percent a decade ago.

"The U.S. military has a tendency to exaggerate its success in terms of military training; we've seen this in Afghanistan and Iraq," according to Robert Templer, head of ICG's Asia division. "I'm not convinced they've made much headway in making the army an effective counter-insurgency force."

"The critical issue is for the army to develop local trust and intelligence sources, protect the local population from intimidation, make it clear that it is there on the side of the people and not threatening the public, and none of this happening," Templer said. "The result is that the population finds itself caught in the middle between a very violent insurgency and very violent military."

Like Schaffer, however, Templer said redressing the situation would be a major undertaking. "There has to be a policy of reestablishing a functioning Nepali state and to reverse the retreat of the state from most of the country by reclaiming areas, re-opening schools, hospitals, and effectively co-opting the Maoist agenda."

While that should not necessarily require vastly increased aid, "much more of the aid Nepal gets must go to tackle issues of inequality and caste and ethnic tensions, while there must be a recognition by the country's elite that there can be no return to the status quo ante, that expectations have changed, and people are demanding that the government be more responsible to their needs."

Lawmakers in Congress, meanwhile, are circulating a letter calling on the administration to immediately suspend all military aid in order to "reinforce similar moves made in recent days by the governments of India and the United Kingdom."

The letter, written by Sen. Patrick Leahy, also said that the administration's request to double financing for military equipment to Nepal next year "comes at a particularly inopportune time, and could be misinterpreted in Kathmandu as a sign of approval for the palace's anti-democratic moves."

According to Templer's ICG colleague Norris, Washington's failure to cut off military aid is not only ignoring a key source of leverage on the king, but is also adding to the skepticism of Nepalis and South Asians generally about President Bush's commitment to freedom and democratic values which he has expounded so vigorously in recent weeks.

"Part of the reason it's difficult to take (Bush's rhetoric) at face value is the fact that the administration actually increased its support the first time the king sacked the democratically elected government in 2002," said Norris.

"But there's also a lot suspicion that the administration's rhetoric and reality don't always match up in the region. You look at South Asia where we've given (Pakistani) President (Pervez) Musharraf carte blanche, you look at Central Asia, where all the leaders rule in the same way they did during the Soviet era, and you can understand the skepticism."