The king said he would return the country to parliamentary rule “within the next three years.” The following day he formed a new cabinet, comprised largely of monarchists.

The inability of successive administrations in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, to put down a guerrilla war waged against the government is the immediate cause of the crisis. Since 1996, Maoist forces have been waging a guerrilla struggle in which thousands have been killed. The king’s action grew out of the political crisis the Nepalese rulers face as a result of their military stalemate with the armed groups resisting their rule and other government opponents.

Gyanendra also declared a state of emergency. According to an Associated Press account of a palace statement, the king also “suspended several provisions of the constitution, including freedom of the press, speech and expression, peaceful assembly, the right to privacy, and the right against preventive detention.”

Guerrilla leader Prachanda announced a three-day general strike to protest the king’s actions.

The king commands the 78,000-member Royal Nepalese Army, which has nearly doubled in size over the last two years as the result of U.S. military aid. The monarch said he would give greater powers to his military.

“Troops and armed police patrolled the streets and surrounded the palace and other key sites,” reported Agence France-Presse. Other media reports indicate soldiers have surrounded the residence of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and that a number of other top officials of political parties have been arrested.  
 
King claims to be impartial arbiter
Gyanendra announced over state-run television that he was removing Deuba and the cabinet because “innocent children were found massacred and the government could not achieve any important and effective results.” Presenting himself as an impartial arbiter ruling “in the larger interests of the people,” the king accused the parliamentary parties of “indulging in factional fighting” and failing to hold promised elections.

It is far from certain that the monarch will be as successful in putting down the guerrilla forces as he was in swiftly dismissing the four-party coalition government that includes the bourgeois Congress Party and the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist), known as the UML. “The government’s control in much of the country has been reduced to district capitals, with no government presence to speak of in the terrain beyond,” the New York Times reported February 1. As of last November, about 80 percent of Nepalese police stations had reportedly been abandoned across the country.

The previous ruler, King Birendra, had also been unable to defeat the guerrilla forces. Birendra was killed in a June 2001 palace massacre that took the lives of much of his royal family. He had ruled as an absolute monarch in Nepal until 1990 when a mass movement forced him to allow the creation of a parliament under a constitutional monarchy. Birendra ended a 30-year ban on political parties and a coalition government took office. The following year, the Congress Party won the first parliamentary elections held in 32 years.  
 
Brutal conditions facing toilers
The introduction of political reforms, however, did not alter the brutal conditions under which working people lived in Nepal. About 80 percent of the population eked out a living as subsistence farmers at the time of the 1991 election. To this day, feudal relations exist in much of the countryside. In 2003 unemployment reached 47 percent in the country, the highest rate of joblessness in Asia.

A Hindu-based caste system remains in force in Nepal, with millions consigned to the lowest “untouchable” status that serves to justify their poverty and denial of rights.

In Pokhari Chauri, 40 miles from the capital, “5,000 villagers endure a serf’s existence,” the New York Times recently reported. “The nearest paved road, electricity and hospital are a three-hour, bone-jarring ride down an old dirt track. Most land is owned by upper-caste Brahmins. Natural springs are the only source of water. The vast majority of women give birth in their homes, some sacrificing their lives in the effort. There are no cars, no televisions and no flush toilets for dozens of miles.”

Under these conditions, the UML—a party that followed Moscow’s lead in the Stalin era—gained 40 percent of the vote, the largest bloc, in the 1994 parliamentary elections with its promises of land reform and support for greater democratic rights.

When the UML took office at the head of a coalition government, however, it pledged to uphold the 1991 constitution, including leaving capitalist property relations unhindered and upholding the continued authority of the monarchy. The party also promised to foster a “market economy.” The following year, the UML—riven by factionalism—lost a parliamentary vote of no-confidence and the Congress Party returned to office.

The last parliamentary elections in Nepal took place in May 1999, with Congress receiving 37 percent of the vote and the UML 32 percent. The UML held the post of deputy prime minister at the time of King Gyanendra’s dismissal of the cabinet.  
 
Guerrillas follow legacy of Shining Path
In 1996 Maoist forces began their armed actions to bring down the government. Adopting a more “radical” stance than the UML toward the fight against the conditions working people face in the cities and countryside, the Maoists have reportedly grown to a force of about 10,000 to 15,000 guerrillas. The BBC estimates as many as 50,000 “militia” forces fight alongside them. The leaders of the Maoist forces share a common anti-working class political trajectory as the Shining Path sect in Peru. They reportedly conduct summary executions of opponents and often abduct children for “democratic people’s education” camps.

In the last six months the guerrilla forces have carried out two successful blockades of the capital. In December 2004 transportation into and out of Kathmandu was paralyzed, as Maoists warned of “dire consequences” if drivers of cars or trucks attempted to use the roads, the BBC reported.

The regime in Kathmandu has responded by cracking down on its critics and carrying out a bloody campaign of repression in the countryside that has resulted in more than 10,000 deaths over the last decade. Reporters Without Borders, a French-based group that follows the status of press freedoms, said that in 2003, long before the royal takeover, more journalists had been arrested in Nepal than in any other country.

The ruling coalition had been divided over how to proceed after the Maoist forces allowed a January 13 deadline for cease-fire talks to pass. The UML, in particular, opposed the government’s plan to call an election. “There is no way elections can be held,” said UML leader Pradeep Nepal, according to Agence France-Presse. “The government has no presence in the countryside.”  
 
Lukewarm criticism from Washington
Government officials in Washington, London, and New Delhi all released statements critical of the king’s actions as a “setback to the cause of democracy,” as the Indian foreign ministry put it. Although Gyanendra’s allies in New Delhi and in the imperialist centers have criticized the state of emergency, they have done little in response. The Indian government announced its withdrawal from a meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation scheduled for February 6-7 because of its “grave concern” about events in Nepal. The U.S. government has supplied the Nepalese rulers in Kathmandu with about $22 million in the last three years—much of it for military aid—and has given no sign that it will shut off funding.

In an effort to prevent the release of information about conditions under the state of emergency, the Nepalese monarch has cut off telephone and electronic communication from the capital.  
 
 
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