Nepali village children proudly talk of the bravery of Gurkha veterans who fought for the UK in the second world war, the Falklands and other conflicts – but few among the thousands of former Maoist rebels still in camps awaiting demobilisation expect a hero’s return.
Bhim Bahadur Rithameli is apprehensive about the welcome he will get when he returns home to Bhajang district. Mr Rithameli, 22, joined the Maoist rebel army six years ago as a teenager, rose to become a section commander and was wounded in clashes with Nepali security forces.
“I will have to think seriously about my future,” he said while preparing to leave a Maoist camp as part of a UN effort to weed out 4,008 fighters who joined the rebels as children or after 2006 when a peace agreement ended the insurgency.
Mr Rithameli and many of the others drummed out had hoped to stay, because the remaining 19,602 Maoist fighters are to be given positions in the national security forces under the 2006 truce, though their integration has been repeatedly delayed amid resistance by army leaders to taking former foes into the ranks.
“We were not ineligible while fighting the war for so many years for the party, so how come we have been labelled disqualified now?” asked Kalpana Upadhyay, who was preparing to leave camp with a toddler but without her husband, who was staying behind with the rest of the fighters.
The discharged fighters’ anxiety has been fuelled by their lack of job skills, poor domestic employment prospects and discrimination worries. To help their start, the discharged fighters were promised NRs20,000 ($270) each and vocational training or other schooling.
Ms Upadhyay married a fellow Maoist fighter four years ago. “Last night, we stayed together discussing our future,” she said struggling to control her tears.
The fighters have been living in seven camps around Nepal since the war’s end. Though the UN had identified soldiers for discharge two years ago, the Maoists held back, and young troops have pushed for more enticing support packages from the UN and Kathmandu.
This month UN and Nepali officials sweetened the package by extending an offer to send former fighters who had reached adulthood abroad as labourers. The country sends about 200,000 workers overseas each year to work primarily in the Gulf, India and Malaysia.
Lalit Bhandari, 20, said he could not understand why he was judged ineligible to join the security forces given that he fought for the Maoists for 10 years. He was worried that society would not welcome him back.
Nepal’s political parties have been deadlocked in discussions over the future of the government and the army for more than a year. The peace agreement set a deadline for the establishment of a constitution by May 27, but little headway has been made.
“The new constitution won’t be promulgated until the combatants are integrated. If not, the Maoists would steal the power and elections,” said Shankar Pokharel, minister for information and communications.
From Financial Times
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