| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Sep-00 05:25 AM
What follows is a from a Nepali friend of mine, who just got back from Dolpa.
oohi
ashu
***********
Namaste all,
I just got back after spending more than a month hiking
in Dolpo, which was very 'relaxing' and a great trip.
Crossed 5 five thousand meter passes, met lots of people
and had some interesting hiking partners which
serendipity led us to meet!
The 12-year festival at Shey was amazing. It rained a
lot, but didn't damper festival goers' mood except for
some visitors who were waiting for their helicopter.
I'll send out pictures once I get it developed and
scanned.
Those of you who live outside of Nepal probably haven't
heard the news of what happened in Dolpa. Well, I got to
Dunai, the district headquarter on the eve of 24th
November. Everything seemed pretty normal except for the
special police force that had just arrived. I was
extremely tired after having crossed two passes to come
down to Dunai and went to bed straight away. I don't
remember what time it was when I went to the outhouse,
maybe around midnight I think, and the battle began in
Dunai! Maoist rebels against the police force.
At first when I head the explosions, gunfire and saw
flares flying all around Dunai, I thought the special
police force were 'training' themselves against the
Maoist rebels. But, it was not so as I found out pretty
soon. Bullets were flying all over the place, and could
hear the commander of the rebels giving orders through
hand held loud-speakers to his comrades, and in the mean
time asking the police to surrender. The battle lasted
about 6 hours. It's probably as close as I can get to a
war!
The police camp is right in the middle of closely packed
town. The rebels were using civilian's houses to attack
the police using home made bombs. They had bombed down
the bridges between the army post and Dunai, and the
army was of no help even if they had wanted to.
They first attacked the prison, destroyed it and set
free all 19 prisoners. Five of them were Maoists and
they left with the rebels taking the police that guarded
the prison as their prisoners! Rest of the 14 prisoners
decided to stay behind and not join them. I met them and
talked to them about what happened, and they too were
shaken up pretty bad.
The morning after was the worst. When walking into town
I found out that the bank had been robbed (a million
dollars or so!) and lots of people were expecting to
withdraw money for the coming Dassain festival (in a few
days! and a major festival like Christmas!). People who
lived right next to the police post looked sleepless and
traumatic. I can't imagine what they must have gone
through - their houses being shaken by explosion of
bombs, bullets crashing through their windows and rebels
breaking through their doors to attack the police from
their rooms! There was blood, empty shells and
unexploded bombs all over the place.
The official report of casualties is 14 police dead and
40 wounded. But, eyewitnesses believe the toll to be
much higher. It seems that the rebels carry out their
dead as none were found in town - just blood. This is
the rebel's one of the most successful attacks and the
first attack on a district headquarter. One begins to
wonder where my country is going...
Fortunately, I got to fly out on a police helicopter and
am still wondering if I should go back to Dolpa come
this fall!
********************
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Sep-00 06:16 AM
--- Sagun Karmacharya wrote:
> To: sarangi@egroups.com
> From: Sagun Karmacharya
> Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:36:41 -0700 (PDT)
> FROM Nepali Times
> Postmortem of the daring Maoist attack on the Dolpo
> district headquarter in Dunai on Monday has raked up a
> host of unanswered questions which point to the police
> and army working at cross-purposes. At the root of
> this crisis is growing friction between the
> govern-ment and the palace that is beginning to shape
> Nepal’s present polity. A deepening crisis will
> benefit anti-democratic forces of the left and the
> right who can take advantage of the ensuing chaos to
> take the country back to authoritarianism.
>
> To complicate matters further, there is an intense
> power struggle underway within the ruling party
> between a faction which wants talks with the Maoists
> right away, and another which wants to build up police
> strength before talking.
>
> This was a dramatic and massive attack. Around 1,000
> Maoist guerrillas stormed Dunai early Monday morn-ing.
> The six-hour firefight left 14 policemen dead, 41
> wounded, and 12 missing, presumed taken prisoner.
> Maoist leader Prachanda issued a statement several
> hours after the attack, blaming the government for not
> agreeing to peace talks even though his group was
> ready.
>
> The attack itself was not a total surprise. Army
> personnel had notified headquarters of unusual
> activity in the mountains above Dunai of people with
> binoculars and guns. The Chief District Officer of
> Dolpo, Parsuram Aryal, had sent word to Kathmandu last
> week that a Maoist attack was imminent, and requested
> reinforce-ments. The government started mobilising
> backup support, and says it requested the Army, which
> has a company-level detachment 40 minutes away, for
> assistance. Army sources claimed they were "not
> formally asked" for help by the Home Ministry.
>
> On Sunday afternoon, a 48-strong police contingent was
> helicoptered into Dunai from the south. Within nine
> hours they were in action, trying to repel the attack
> that they were expecting. The fighting began with a
> bang soon after midnight with the guerrillas pounding
> the police station with pipe bombs, peppering sentry
> posts with gunfire, and demol-ishing the nearby jail
> to free prisoners.
>
> Then they went to the house of the manager of Nepal
> Bank Limited and forced him to open the vaults and
> made off with more than Rs 50 million in cash and
> jewellery. The bank had received Rs 35 million in cash
> from Nepal Rastra Bank on Sunday afternoon on a flight
> from Nepalgunj to Jufal airfield, four hours’ walk
> away. The Maoists had prior knowledge of this money
> transfer, and had apparently delayed their attack by
> three days because the Royal Nepal Airlines flight
> remained cancelled until Sunday due to bad weather. No
> one knows why such a big amount was sent to an
> insurgency area without major develop-ment projects.
> Another mystery is why the regional and zonal police
> chiefs were both out of station at the time of the
> attack and without notice. Both have since been
> suspended. Wounded police personnel who were airlifted
> to Kath-mandu on Monday afternoon told reporters that
> they fought till they ran out of ammunition, and were
> waiting for the nearby soldiers to come to their
> rescue. One of the wounded told the Kantipur daily:
> "We fought till dawn and they came only in the morning
> to pick up the corpses." The Army has so far not
> allowed its helicop-ters to be used by the police, but
> did send one Mi-17 to pick up the dead and wounded on
> Monday.
>
> The Dunai attack came as the government and the army
> have been locked in a behind-the-scenes tussle over
> deployment, training and re-equipping the police’s
> anti-Maoist campaign. Fresh into office earlier this
> year, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, stirred a
> hornet’s nest by threatening to use the Army in
> anti-insurgency operations. But he later backed out,
> realising that the generals wouldn’t listen to him.
>
> As a compromise, it was agreed that the Army would
> train a paramilitary police force and provide it with
> automatic weapons. So far, a contin-gent of 100 has
> been trained but they have not been deployed anywhere.
> Government sources say that although the Army has been
> paid for 9,000 self-loading rifles (SLRs) these have
> not been given to the police. The Army argues it will
> make the guns available only after the paramilitary
> force is raised.
>
> Nepal’s constitution is ambivalent about who actually
> controls the Army, the elected government or the
> palace. It is this ambiguity that is the source of
> uncertainty. Army Chief Prajwal Sumsher Rana said two
> weeks ago that the military should be placed under the
> National Security Council, which consists of the prime
> minister, the defence minister and the army chief. An
> emergency Cabinet meeting on Monday decided that the
> government would use "all security" means to enforce
> law and order. Sources said the cabinet essentially
> stopped short of calling for Army deployment to
> contain the situation, deferring a decision on it
> until the prime minister meets the king on Wednesday.
>
> The Maoists have so far been very careful not to
> escalate the conflict to the point of dragging the
> Army in. And the attack on Dunai appears to have been
> just that: to ensure maximum damage and propaganda
> points, but stop short of actually capturing the
> district headquarters. Meanwhile, the Royal Palace has
> been sitting on a government ordinance that would
> provide the legal basis for the Armed Police Force now
> being trained. "It is lingering, neither moving
> forward or back," says a government source. "All they
> do is ask polite questions.
>
>
>
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