China and India Face Off in Nepal

06-04-2002, 02:44 PM

Stanley A. Weiss
Articles

International Herald Tribune
Thursday, July 21, 2001

China and India Face Off in Nepal

JAKARTA -- Only a present day William Shakespeare could imagine the
real life tragedy in Nepal when the Crown Prince eliminated an
entire line of a royal dynasty that had ruled that land for more
than 200 years.

In killing his father, the King, his mother, the Queen, his brother
and sisters, an uncle - and then himself - the Crown Prince did more
than recreate the most dramatic themes of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet
and Macbeth. He also plunged Nepal into its most serious crisis
ever - one that can affect the rest of this volatile region.

Before last month, Nepal was known in the West primarily for its
small size and remoteness. But in geostrategic terms it is neither
small nor remote. The Himalayan kingdom is sandwiched between the
world's two most populous countries - China and India. Nepal's 25
million people are divided among more than a dozen ethnic groups
that speak 48 languages and dialects. And although the King
relinquished most of his powers in 1990 in favor of becoming a
constitutional monarch with a parliamentary democracy, the monarchy
has been the glue that held the country together. Indeed, in the 11
years of constant political party infighting, there have been eleven
governments and six prime ministers.

All of this turmoil has been an open invitation for China - and its
surrogate, Pakistan, to try and extend their influence both in Nepal
and into India's turbulent northeastern states.

The hijacking of an Indian passenger plane taking off from Katmandu
by Islamabad-backed Kashmiri rebels two years ago, the arrest of a
Pakistan diplomat allegedly planning to sell explosives to Nepalese
insurgents, and the emergence of Nepal as the passage to India for
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence furnishes more than enough of
a security reason for New Delhi not to take its ties with the
kingdom for granted.

India is by far Nepal's most important economic, military and
political ally. But Delhi expects complete loyalty in this unequal
partnership, especially vis-à-vis China. When Nepal talked of
procuring Chinese anti-aircraft guns in 1988, for instance, India
responded by closing its markets to Nepal, increasing the landlocked
kingdom's economic isolation.

Compounding its recent problems, and virtually unnoticed by the
outside world, Nepal has been subjected for the past five years to a
Maoist guerrilla insurgency spreading to most rural districts. The
insurgency's intellectual godfather boasts that like Mao Zedong's
guerrillas, once they control the countryside, the capital,
Katmandu, will fall and, "We will hoist the hammer-and-sickle red
flag atop Mount Everest." Sadly, with the death of most of the royal
family, and the accession of a new king who may use the army to
restore law and order, the nation may find itself in a full-scale
civil war.

The oxygen feeding Nepal's instability is its abject poverty. Fully
half of the population is unemployed and living below the poverty
line. That is Nepal's real tragedy. The country could be rich. It
has a crucial natural resource, water. Hundreds of rivers gushing
south between the Himalayas have massive hydroelectricity potential
to serve all of its domestic needs and the growing demand from India
and Bangladesh.

So why hasn't Nepal exploited this limitless, renewable source of
energy? A fear of increasing dependence on India, its principal
consumer, has been the prime concern.

But with Nepal and nearby Bhutan endowed with enormous water
resources, India with its coal and Bangladesh with its natural gas,
these four neighboring countries could develop a mixed energy system
for all to benefit. And massive investment capital from the West,
the World Bank and the IMF to build the dams and the hydroelectric
plants would surely be forthcoming.

Whether concerned about economics or security, there is too much at
stake not to bring peace and prosperity to the kingdom and transform
a Shakespearean tragedy into a happy ending.

Stanley A. Weiss is founder and chairman of Business Executives for
National Security and former chairman of American Premier, a mining
and chemicals company. He contributed this comment to the
International Herald Tribune.