Thoughts on the Maoist Problem

Nepal’s Maoist insurgency is often seen simply as a reaction to poverty and exploitation. Such an analysis is at once profoundly true and also profoundly inadequate because the pressures generated by poverty manifest themselves in many ways, including temporary or permanent migration and `normal ’ (i.e., non-politicised) criminal activity. Other factors are needed to explain why an insurgency of the present type has appeared at this time in Nepal.1 The list of contributing causes is a very long one. Nepal has always possessed both ethnic cleavages and mountainous terrain, a combination which is itself quite a good predictor of insurgency (Ramirez 2004). To this has been added in recent years the spread of Communist ideology (of which the Maoists themselves are one among many vehicles) and the tactical and organisational skills of the leaders of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) which built upon the earlier work of Mohan Bikram Singh in the same region of 1 The argument that the insurgency should not be seen in purely economistic term