Word: nepal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Forward Little has gone according to script since the people-power protests 22 months ago. In November 2006, the Maoists committed to a peace accord with other prominent pro-democracy parties in Nepal and joined the new interim government that would rule until elections for a Constituent Assembly could take place. But the acrimonious squabbling that followed has dispelled many of the hopes raised by the success of the mass demonstrations. "We just felt so proud being Nepali then," says Sanjog Rai, a college student in Kathmandu. "The protests showed us how united we were and that feeling of brotherhood...
...There is a broad consensus among Nepal's strife-worn people that parliamentary democracy must come sooner rather than later. "A functioning government can't be in a permanent state of transition," says Bojraj Pokhrel, chief of Nepal's Electoral Commission. Now, Pokhrel will have to manage a staff of over 230,000 election workers spread across the mountainous country, some in polling stations miles away from local roads. Highways and bridges were routinely bombed during the civil war, making transportation in a nation with woeful infrastructure difficult at the best of the times. Still, Pokhrel is confident Nepal...
...they don't, the international community must do more to safeguard elections and move the peace process forward. Nepal's giant neighbors, India and China, both backed the monarchy during the civil war, supplying it with weapons and aid. India, which has close ties with virtually every faction in Nepal, eventually shepherded the peace process along, forcing the main political parties to come to terms with the Maoists. China has remained a bit more circumspect, letting India flex its geopolitical muscle while building bridges with the Nepali Maoists it shunned until not long ago and beefing up its hydropower investments...
...Beyond the turmoil and political intrigue looms the very real chance that Nepal might join the region's sorry list of failing states - populated already by Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Besides forging alliances and staging elections, the country and its politicians need to steel themselves for the thorny task of drafting a constitution that reconciles its feuding factions and enfranchises all its kaleidoscope of ethnic groups. "This is a crisis hundreds of years in the making," says S.D. Muni, a Nepal scholar formerly at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "Whole groups have never been in the political structure...
...need for a competitive, multiparty democracy. A slight man with a scarred, weathered face, Biwidh looks much older than his 34 years, and describes his time spent warring in the jungle with primitive rifles and stones in hushed, quick breaths, as if he would rather forget about it. As Nepal lurches from one crisis to another, Biwidh says the soldiers in his camp are in a permanent state of readiness. "If the revolution must be fought again," he sighs, turning his head to the setting sun, "it will...