Costs of Ideologically Driven Conflicts A Case of Nepal

An armed conflict raged for a decade in Nepal between 1996 and 2006. It ended with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the parties to conflict: The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) (CPN-M) and the government of Nepal. Signed in November 2006, the CPA was in operation until 2015, when a constitution was adopted. The CPN-M wanted to overthrow the Nepali State through a guerrilla warfare – which they called ‘people’s war’ – and establish a people’s republic. The government of the day designated the CPN-M as a terrorist organization and sought to defeat them militarily. The result was the decade-long armed conflict that saw the loss of over 17,000 lives, destruction of private and public property worth billions of dollars and an untold amount of psychosocial suffering. Nepal’s was an ideological conflict. The CPN-M borrowed from the political and strategic dictums of Mao Tsetung, the founder of communist China, to operate their violent project. The governments found refuge in the ‘war on terrorism’ adopted and advanced by the West, particularly the US. The CPN-M exploited ‘nationalism’ to mobilize people’s support at home. Their nationalism included two elements of liberation: a cultural/ethnic liberation from the ruling high-caste; and, a national liberation from regional expansionism (India). The former attracted almost all ethnic communities that have a historical grievance of being internally subjugated. The later aroused everyone opposed to Indian domination, real or perceived, in Nepal. The paper will, on this background, discuss how an abstract idea – an ‘-ism,’ to relate to the conference’ catchword – can be imposed to perpetuate violence taking Nepal’s conflict as a case in point. The paper will build on the data collected - for author\u27s PhD on Nepal\u27s postconflict peacebuilding - through in-depth semi-structured interviews with political activists, observers and experts engaged in different ways in Nepal’s post-CPA process