A series of famines, floods, and epidemics over the past four years have affected over 150,000 people. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has noted that the need for humanitarian relief is so great that aid development is no longer even an issue. Seven years of civil war between the Nepalese government and the Maoist rebels have turned the already formidable poverty problem into a genuine disaster. Neither side has shown much discrimination between military and civilian targets, and almost no outside aid can even reach the roughly 30 districts under Maoist control.

Nepal cannot begin to develop again until the Maoists are defeated and the government restores order in the countryside. To do this, the government will first need military aid to defeat the ever more dangerous guerillas, and then need economic aid to restart the development process. The population’s suffering is a powerful reason for the United States and other concerned powers to take an active interest in the country’s future.

The Maoist rebels are a diverse confederation of groups drawing inspiration from China’s celebrated leader Mao Zedong and from the tactics of the Peruvian opposition group Shining Path. Calling attention to widespread rural poverty and denouncing the monarchy, they began using guerrilla tactics in 1996 in an attempt to weaken the government. The goal of the movement’s leader, known as Comrade Prachanda (roughly translated as “Awe-inspiring”), is to replace the current constitutional monarchy with a communist republic. Many are farmers who chose to join the Maoists rather than live deep in poverty. The estimated 5,000 to 7,000 Maoists were initially only a minor threat to the government, but their attacks multiplied late in 2001. The guerillas had previously battled poorly armed police forces in remote areas, but now began attacking the army in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital. Maoist attacks on November 25, 2001, left more than 100 dead. In response, the government declared a state of emergency and requested aid from the international community. Three months later, the rebels killed 153 policemen, soldiers, and civilians in a single day of violence, suggesting that they were capable of challenging Nepal’s 10-year-old constitutional monarchy.

In fact, the Maoists’ continued raids and the inability of the government to stifle them have already caused political instability. Former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who, at least in theory, had a majority in parliament and international support for his military campaign, was ousted by King Gyanendra in October 2002. In spite of protests by Nepalese politicians that the King had abused the clause in the country’s 1990 constitution requiring that prime ministers be chosen by general election, the public upheld his decision and accepted his plan to head the government until elections were organized. The public is dismayed and angry at the government’s incompetence. While many Nepalese are aware that the police force is small and ill-equipped, their trust in the army waned significantly when it failed to stifle the Maoists. Its 60,000 troops are unaccustomed to guerrilla warfare and has struggled to hold down the Nepalese countryside in spite of its superiority in equipment and numbers.

The greatest victims of the Maoist attacks, though, are Nepalese civilians. In a country where more than one-third of the population lives on the equivalent of less than one US dollar per day, the prolonged confrontation means that the government will spend more on military supplies than on economic development, the long-term solution to the Maoist problem. The worst and most conspicuous effect that the rebels have had on Nepal’s economy is a decrease in tourism. While Nepal remains one of the world’s poorest countries, it would be poorer if not for its Himalayan beauty. The Maoists’ attacks, however, have caused tourism to decrease significantly since the end of 2001. In addition, Maoist threats against US diplomats have prompted the US State Department to issue a warning against visits to Nepal.

The damage the Maoists have wrought on the country extends beyond state concerns to the community level. By persecuting school teachers who will not teach communist principles, the insurgents have stifled the education system in the countryside and in some areas near Kathmandu. Many teachers have fled for their lives, more than 50 rural government schools have shut down, and countless more are administered by the Maoists.

Meanwhile, Nepal’s neighbors have kept an alert eye on the rebellion. India, whose own extreme left-wing group in West Bengal and Bihar is linked to the Maoists, is expected to send military aid in the first half of 2003, although economic assistance is unlikely. China has not acted on Nepal’s crisis, though it has not hidden its belief that the rebels have tarnished the image of Mao Zedong. The United States, while not a neighbor to Nepal, is ready to help rather than see a democracy fall into the hands of communism. The White House asked the US Congress in June 2002 for US$20 million in military aid, of which Congress approved an allocation of US$12 million.

The Nepalese government has considerable shortcomings, but the Maoists have seriously victimized the Nepalese people, and living conditions in Nepal will continue to deteriorate as long as the conflict continues. Though the monarchy under King Gyanendra has often been ineffectual, its parliamentary democracy is still a better alternative than the one-party state that the Maoists aim for. The real reason to intervene, though, is not ideological but humanitarian. The United States or other powers may even be able to help the government to enact difficult reforms and manage the economy by attaching a program of conditionality to any military or economic assistance. There is a real opportunity to restore order in the country, and the help of the United States and other developed countries may be able to make progress toward solving many of the problems that caused the insurgency in the first place. The Nepalese people have suffered seven years of war and economic stagnation; the time has come to help them.