Meet the Rebels

A personal encounter with Nepal's Maoist rebels is a 'show' of force in more ways than one.

CHAINPUR, Nepal - They are just flashes of green as we drive past them: members of the Royal Nepalese Army in their jungle camouflage, out for their morning run.

"Those are the ones we are fighting," says one of the men in our spotless gold Land Cruiser. The others laugh.

It's 6:30 a.m. and my translator, Dinesh Wagle, and I are riding with an official in the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), his assistant and a couple of cadres.

Kevin Sites gets a 'show' of force » View

We have an appointment, a promise really, to see soldiers from the party's People's Liberation Army, a force estimated to be 20,000 strong, which has waged a 10-year war against the royal government of Nepal.

It's a war in which there have been numerous human rights abuses on both sides, a war that has taken the lives of as many as 13,000 people.

But now there is a cease-fire, in the aftermath of the pro-democracy "people's movement" in which nearly two dozen Nepalis were killed and hundreds wounded in clashes with the police while protesting the rule of King Gyanendra.

The Maoists have joined a seven-party alliance in the hopes, they say, of permanently curtailing the powers of the king and creating a multi-party democracy.

That has made this meeting a difficult one to arrange. The Maoists have been active partners in the alliance and want to flex their political muscle now, not their military might.

We negotiated with Sharad Singh-Bhandari, the party's Western Region Secretary, for two days before we finally received a call in the evening saying to be ready at 6 a.m. the next morning.

We drive for an hour and a half, then stop in a small village where Singh-Bhandari meets his military counterpart, the 7th Division Commander, a man in a long-sleeved white T-shirt who goes by the party name of "Prajjwal." Both Singh-Bhandari and Prajjwal are just 30 years old.

The faces of the fight» View

Dinesh and I sit in a tiny shack by the side of the road, eating spicy noodles and sipping tea while the two go off to make contact with their commanders in the field. The noodle shop plays an upbeat and catchy revolutionary song on a boom box. There are lots of other young men milling around carrying backpacks.

"They're Maoists," one shopkeeper tells us. "They've come in from the field and are heading home for a while."

After an hour, the two return and we get into the Land Cruiser again and drive another half-hour. We stop at another village where we're swarmed by school children wearing light blue shirts. The sight of a tall Westerner with cameras slung over his shoulders intrigues them. I snap their pictures and show them the digital display on the back. They giggle uncontrollably.

We're ushered into yet another roadside restaurant, where we sip more tea and wait. After another half-hour we get back into the vehicle, this time backtracking a bit until we meet a motorcycle rider. We follow him off the main road and onto a dirt path leading to the edge of the tree line at the base of the nearby foothills. We park in a large grassy opening on the grounds of a rural elementary school in the village of Chainpur.

Within minutes of our arrival, young men and women, many of them teenagers, begin pouring out of the woods from several different directions.

Rebels in formation

Some are in light green camouflage and strung with dark-blue magazine pouches. Others are in T-shirts and jeans with bandannas tied around their heads. They carry a mix of aging, British-designed Lee Enfield bolt-action rifles and World War II era, top-loading Bren light machine guns. But many don't have any weapons at all.

Their commander, who calls himself Sagat, is 33. He wears thick glasses and a cap emblazoned with the communist red star. He says the soldiers are members of the Lokesh Memorial Brigade, which is normally about 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers, but is currently only a fourth that size. Many of them have rotated home for a few weeks off during the current cease-fire.

"We haven't been engaged in any military activities," he says, "but we've been busy publicizing the policy of the party."

He says the women fighters are as good as the men, and that so many have joined the Maoists because they see an opportunity to fight for their rights as women.

Within the group I see a girl who looks to be only in her early teens. She is tiny and looks innocent, but carries a compact machine gun over her shoulder.

She calls herself Janaki and says that she is 16 years old. She has been with the rebels for one year. When I ask her why she joined she gives a robotic response repeated by many of the other rebels.

"Because I couldn't tolerate the oppression of my people any longer," she says.

"Are you ever afraid?" I ask her.

"No, I'm not afraid," she replies, in a soft voice.

But when I press her on the issue, she can no longer even find that soft voice. She just stares ahead, unsure, certainly uncomfortable with the attention we are focusing on her. She can find no other words.

Rajeev Thapa

Another rebel who says his name is Rajeev Thapa looks almost as young, but says he's 19 years old. He wears a sleeveless blue T-shirt and is slight, but has the bearing of someone sure of himself and his weapon. He says he's also been with the Maoists for a year, and that he joined to liberate the country.

"I heard too many stories about people being beaten, raped and killed by the army," he says. "So I had to do something."

At this point, it's beginning to dawn on me that this entire group of rebels is here for no other purpose than as a show for myself and Dinesh, who is a journalist for Kantipur, Nepal's largest newspaper.

I've encountered these situations before, covering both regular armies and insurgents, but each time it makes me uncomfortable.

I had asked for this meeting and there is a need, I know, to put a face on these rebels, to show them as something other than just a name to which acts, both bad and good, are attributed. And they are, after all, a key factor in the future outcome of Nepal's nascent democratic movement.

But I had thought, perhaps naively, that we might see them in their natural environment in the bush, rather than this grassy schoolyard. I want to see them doing whatever rebels do during a cease-fire: cleaning their weapons, reading "Das Kapital," playing football, flirting with the female comrades.

I am glad to see them with my own eyes, to know they are real. But to see them assembled solely for our cameras makes it somehow less authentic, despite the cold metal of their weapons, the very real smell of their campfires and the palpable intensity of their purpose.

They gather under a larger tree and begin a series of awkward drills, specifically so that I may see them in action. Commander Sagat looks at a cheat sheet written in pen on his hand, then barks orders to the rebels.

With each command, they hop to attention, then either stand, kneel or sit, pointing their weapons, or their hands, in the direction of an imaginary enemy.

As a precise drilling unit, they're the equivalent of the Grateful Dead — not exactly tight. Their movements are hesitant and awkward, but determined.

Regardless, the 7th Division Commander, Prajjwal, says his forces have consistently defeated the Royal Nepalese Army and the Armed Police Force. He says, however, that his biggest concern has been American-trained Nepalese Ranger battalions that are better-equipped and more motivated than the others.

He says fours years ago, during a battle in the Rolpa region, his forces captured three U.S. Army advisers during fighting there, but released them because, he says, the People's Liberation Army's fight isn't with America. His statement couldn't be independently verified, although the U.S. government has sent military aid and advisers to the Royal Nepalese Army.

Sapana

Many of the rebels we talked with say they've been in combat several times, including a 25-year-old woman who goes by the party name "Sapana," which means Dream.

"I was in the first line in an attack to capture an FM radio station in Tansen," she says. "It was guarded by an army barracks and one of the soldiers threw a grenade at me. I could see it coming and I moved back but pieces of shrapnel still hit my leg."

Sapana says four or five other rebels were also injured, but they made it back to their lines and were able to get treatment. She pulls up her fatigues and shows me the scar on her shin.

Another rebel, 29-year-old Bishan Dhami, says he's been with the Maoists four years and has seen combat nearly a dozen times.

I ask him if he's tired of the war. His answer is an immediate "no."

"Not until we defeat the monarchists, which we have labeled terrorists," he says.

That's a label associated with the Maoists as well. The U.S. State Department includes the Maoists on its "Country Reports on Terrorism" list, because, it says, of the rebels' policies of attacks on civilians, land confiscation and extortion.

At the end of the "drilling," the rebels make an exit as inconspicuous as their entrance, proceeding, weapons in hand, in single-file lines back into the woods.

They'll wait there, say their commanders, until they're needed — either as a show of force, or, if peace talks fail, to actually fight again.

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