NEW YORK, June 28 – Returning from a week-long tour of China last week, Nepal’s top military official announced that his Chinese interlocutors had promised military support to Kathmandu’s on-going campaign against the armed insurgency that has dogged the constitutional monarchy for much of the past eight years and claimed the lives of thousands, while dealing a mortal blow to the country’s biggest foreign-exchange-earning industry, tourism.
General Pyar Jung Thapa was, however, unable to elaborate on the nature of assistance that his country could expect from China.
More significantly, none of the official Chinese media organs has made any mention of the exchange between him and the People’s Liberation Army of China, who hosted his visit.
The media silence tells us more than it hides.
It could possibly mean that China wants its involvement to be a covert or low-key affair so as not to upset its growing but delicate relations with India, which is bound to be alarmed by the growth of the biggest Asian power’s influence on its doorstep.
More likely, it could mean that China has no intention of making good on the promises made to the Nepalese general.
To the policy makers in Beijing, the rise of a movement deriving ideologcal inspiration from the founder of the People’s Republic of China and operating from mountain bases close to the border of Tibet can only be a boon inasmuch as it increases Nepal’s dependence on Beijing’s cooperation, thus strengthening its position vis-a-vis India and Tibetan exiles.
Over the past four decades, Beijing has been pressuring Kathmandu, with a varying degree of success, to keep the 20,000-odd Tibetan refugees on a tight leash.
Beijing wants Kathmandu to repartriate new Tibetan refugees and curtail the freedom of those already settled in Nepal.
Interestingly, although China has denied any connection with the Maoist insurgents in Nepal, it has failed to condemn them as “terrorists”, a carefully measured policy that has not gone unnoticed in the Nepalese capital.
Unlike India, which has openly used the term “terrorist” to describe the insuurectionists, China uses the softer term “anti-government group”.
Beginning modestly as the “People’s War” in 1996, the leftist rebellion by the end of 2000 had spread to 165 out of the 205 parliamentary electoral constituencies.
The rebel’s goal is to replace the constitutional monarchy of Nepal with the “People’s Democracy”.
