Utter Foolishness

Well, pat yourselves on the back, UN. Another job well botched.

I'm sure you feel just peachy about your accomplishments in Nepal. Through your influence and diplomatic skill you've managed to:

1. Give the Maoists exactly what they want.

2. Insure that any constituent assembly election will be neither fair nor reflect the will of the people of Nepal.

The little 5 point agreement submitted by SPAM to the UN is full of the usual boilerplate politician-speak--fully designed to be neither taken seriously nor acted upon by anyone. That is, until we come to point #3 which deals with the decommissioning of Maoist arms:

On the basis of the agreement to seek UN assistance in the “management of arms and armed personnel of both the sides”, qualified civilian personnel will be deployed to monitor and verify the confinement of CPN-M combatants and their weapons within the designated cantonment areas. Later, the modalities for all arrangements, including of arms and munitions, will be worked out among the parties and the UN.

And the UN bought it. If history tells us anything, when Nepali politicians or Maoists use the word "later" in a proclamation, it means "never." The only thing significant about this statement is that Steffan de Mistura and his UN delegation to Nepal were the ones who suggested this language and thus, gave world legitimacy to the Maoist's armed struggle.

Prachanda must be very pleased indeed. His army is now legitimized by the world community!

How pathetically naive and tragically sad. Unless the UN is prepared to maintain a permanent monitoring presence in every Nepali village, this is a recipe for disaster.

Having Maoists wait somewhere on the sidelines with guns still in hand ruins any chance of a fair constituent assembly election. Villagers have lived with Maoist threats and intimidation long enough to know that if they don't elect a Maoist representative to the constituent assembly, somewhere down the line, there will be Maoist retalliation. Maoist have already said they are not necessarily bound by any election results so any anti-Maoist election statement by any district is an invitation for Maoist violence.

This UN conceived, endorsed and implemented monitoring idea is going to get a lot of people killed.

Maoists must be fully disarmed before any election can be counted as fair. Their intimidation factor is too high. Witness the municipal elections of last year: candidates were threatened, abused and even killed by Maoists and their SPA minions.

Try telling any of that to the UN. They love to give away the house to appease any group, call it a compromise and claim a mediation victory.

This move will come back to haunt them.

-=blogdai