Word: maoist
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...That encounter, to Sandhya's relief, never came to pass. In 1996, as a 14-year-old student from a town north of the capital Kathmandu, she joined Nepal's Maoist cadres at the moment when their armed insurgency had just begun to take hold of this rugged Himalayan nation, long a magnet for foreign backpackers and adventurers. Her father's military income meant Sandhya did not grow up among the country's many poor, but she chafed under the rigid caste laws and gender norms that blunted her parents' ambitions and stripped her of the same opportunities...
...Today, Sandhya sits batting away mosquitoes in a sparse wood cabin, part of a sprawling Maoist cantonment in the southern district of Chitwan. She believes victory is at hand. A peace process triggered by mass protests in April 2006 against the autocratic rule of Nepal's King Gyanendra brought the Maoists into the political mainstream, paving the way for the extraordinary transformation of a country ruled for two and a half centuries by Hindu kings into a secular republic. Both the Royal Nepalese Army and the Maoist guerrillas - the civil war's bitter foes - returned to their barracks and camps...
...middle of nowhere, but this Maoist guerrilla camp marks a fork in the road for the Himalayan nation. After a decade-long civil war that has claimed 13,000 lives and prompted mass protests in 2006 against the autocratic rule of King Gyanendra, the Maoists have been brought into the political mainstream, via a peace agreement that would turn the oft-romanticized Hindu kingdom into a secular republic representing the true social and ethnic diversity of Nepal's 27 million people. The self-styled People's Liberation Army agreed to retire to rural camps such as this one, to begin...
...most recent poll date was scrapped when the Maoist leadership, now cozily ensconced in Kathmandu, grandstanded on a set of divisive demands - including the outright abolition of Nepal's 240-year-old monarchy - that they had previously agreed would be resolved only after elections. Many in Kathmandu see that move as reason to doubt the Maoists' commitment to democracy, although the other parties have now sought to accommodate that demand by agreeing that the monarchy will be abolished once a Constituent Assembly is elected. For their part, the Maoists, who proclaim themselves the true champions of democracy in Nepal, plead...
...Chitwan's ex-guerrillas certainly appear eager to make the switch to civilian life. Neat gravel paths cross through manicured lawns; Bollywood songs blare from a thatch-roofed cabin. Yet conditions in this and the six other main Maoist cantonments are squalid - food and potable water are always in short supply, and the camp doctors grumble about a lack of medicines from the interim government. Trenches once dug for protection from helicopter gunships now serve as makeshift dormitories for many fighters and their families...