The slaughter of the royal family may spur a growing 'people's war' in the Himalayan kingdom

Nepal under the red hammer

By Melinda Liu and Patricia Roberts

With the country slipping toward chaos, Maoist leaders met secretly in Katmandu to plan their strategy. "They are gathering in the capital," reported a local businessman, one of many paying protection money to the insurgents. "They believe they could have a chance to take the country if they play their cards right." In fact, an immediate Maoist takeover of the world's only Hindu nation seemed to be a very long shot. Only about one-third of the country, mostly rural, is controlled by guerrilla sympathizers, who want a one-party communist state opposed to "imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism." The U.S. Embassy's security office says Katmandu and other prime attractions for Western tourists are relatively unaffected.

Still, the bloodbath at the palace was a boon to the Maoists and a severe threat to Nepal's fledgling democracy. Most Nepalese didn't believe the survivors' explanation of the tragedy, especially because, at first, the killing of nine people was officially described as an "accident." When demonstrators took to the streets demanding the truth, four of them died in clashes with police. "The truth doesn't count now," said a friend of one of the slain princesses. "It's what the public would like to believe."

The shooting brought an unpopular new king to the throne and may put in line behind him an even more unpopular heir apparent. King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah, 53, younger brother of the murdered King Birendra, is a hard-line nationalist who apparently hopes to roll back some of the democratic reforms that have made Nepal a constitutional monarchy. His son, Prince Paras Shah, 27, is known as a party animal who was involved in at least one fatal hit-and-run accident. In a letter faxed to Nepalese news media last week, one of the Maoist leaders, a shadowy figure known as "Comrade Prachanda," said the killings were not just a family feud. He charged that Prime Minister Girija Koirala and other power brokers could not tolerate the "late King Birendra's liberal thoughts." Prachanda added: "This pre-planned massacre will have long-term effects on the future of Nepal."

The ascension of the autocratic Gyanendra could widen the already large gap between rich and poor. Most political and economic power in Nepal is controlled by wealthy, high-caste Brahmins and Chettris— "parasitic classes," according to the Maoists. The rich live very well in Katmandu, with imported cars, Western schooling, vast houses and elegant restaurants at their disposal. But the country as a whole is painfully poor: per capita annual income is just $231. Some Nepalese are desperate enough to sell their daughters; about 12,000 girls are sold as sex slaves every year, mostly across the border to India, according to the International Labor Organization of the United Nations.

It is a situation ripe for revolution, which is what the rebels have been fomenting for five years now. The uprising began in remote western districts, led by Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, both of whom are said to come from the same high castes that rule the nation. Their method is to wage a "people's war" based on Maoist doctrine and the bloody example of Peru's Shining Path guerrillas. So far, the rebellion has claimed 1,700 lives, including 70 policemen killed in a single day.

The rebels are thought to have about 2,000 fighters under arms. Some of their weapons have been smuggled in from China, but the Chinese government, making its peace with capitalism, wants nothing to do with Nepalese Maoists. Instead, the insurgents get ideological support from Maoist rebels in India.

Although the rebel strongholds are concentrated in rural areas, the Maoists are beginning to make their presence felt in Katmandu and other towns, by planting bombs and extorting money. Armed rebels have appeared on the doorsteps of businesses near the royal palace, demanding political "donations" ranging from as little as $15 to as much as $1,500 and issuing receipts to those who pay up. "You don't give because you like them," says a pashmina exporter in the capital. "You pay to keep them from firebombing your business."

Only a few weeks before the royal killings, Prime Minister Koirala—who has no constitutional power to give orders to the Army—pleaded with King Birendra to mobilize troops against the Marxists. Unlike the country's ragtag police force, the 48,000-strong Royal Nepalese Army is well funded and politically powerful, and the king was reluctant to deploy it. In the end, he agreed to send some of the troops into rebel-controlled areas this month. But the Maoist challenge may be moving toward the capital. Refugees fleeing the war in the countryside have crowded into Katmandu, straining its fragile infrastructure. 

Two weeks ago a leftist political strike paralyzed the city for three days. Now a conflict looms between Maoists and monarchists, and whoever wins, democracy is likely to be the most prominent casualty. - Newsweek 

The loneliness of Princess Leila 

By James Buchan Guardian 

The death on Sunday in a London hotel of Leila Pahlavi, the youngest daughter of the last Shah of Iran, will no doubt come to stand for the misfortunes not only of her family but of the millions of Iranians now in exile. 

The princess, who left Iran at the age of nine when the Pahlavis' half-century of rule was ended by Islamic revolutionaries in 1979, was found dead on Sunday evening in her suite at the Leonard Hotel in London's west end. Police said they were investigating her death but had found no suspicious circumstances. 

Whatever the cause of death, Leila was known to have suffered for a long time from depression. In a brief statement from Washington, her brother, the former crown prince, Reza, said that Leila had suffered "a long illness". Her mother, the last empress of Iran, Farah, said from Paris: "For the past few years, Leila has been very depressed. Time had not healed her wounds. Exiled at the age of nine, she never surmounted the death of her father, His Majesty Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi." 

This depression was diagnosed by exile sources as the monarchical strain of a peculiar condition of Iranian exiles: a compound of loneliness, disorientation and home-sickness for Iran that affects many of the 3m or more Iranians scattered between the Arab Gulf states, Germany, Sweden, France, London and California. For Iranians, only Iran has any reality. 

In addition, Leila's family has been unable to exploit the weaknesses of the Islamic regime. The election last week in a landslide for a second term of President Mohammed Khatami cannot disguise the stagnant living standards and cultural isolation that has been the experience of the 60m Iranians in Iran for 20 years. 

Yet very few either in or outside the country expect to see the restoration of the Pahlavi family to the Peacock Throne. A majority of Iranians has been born since the revolution and has no loyalty nor animosity to the family. Leila's elder brother, Reza, has struck Iranian observers as well-meaning but diffident. 

Leila Pahlavi was born on March 27 1970 at the Military Hospital, Tehran, which was promptly renamed after her. In the same year, an alteration in the way oil was priced was to set off a chain reaction in Iran of rapid economic development, social disintegration and political oppression that was to culminate in her father's flight in January 1979 and Khomeini's triumphant return from exile. 

Refused a haven by all his former allies - including Lady Thatcher's Britain, which sent a former ambassador in disguise to the Bahamas that May to break the news to the Shah in person - Mohammed Reza died of leukaemia in Cairo on July 27 1980. Leila Pahlavi lived at first in Paris and then was educated at colleges in the US. Though she inherited her mother's good looks, she did not marry and that was considered extremely unusual. An interview with the French edition of Hola to coincide with her 30th birthday in April 2000, which may have been designed to put that right, unwittingly revealed a melancholy young woman closely attached to her mother and her father's memory. Iranian exiles say she had a real passion for Iranian works of art. 

She divided her time between the US, France and London, but, as she told Hola: "I remain as Iranian as if I'd never left home." - Guardian