PETER POPHAM on the rebels shattering an ancient tranquillity.
KATHMANDU - The views of Annapurna were sublime. The Pokhara Mountain Lodge with its chalets scattered over the slopes of a hill balanced rigour and luxury.
The next day we were to begin our trek - but for now we were relaxing, enjoying some traditional dances by the lodge staff to celebrate Nepal's New Year.
It was at that point - the rest of the family having fortunately gone to bed - that my 20-year-old son, Mario, noticed the man with the red bandanna over his face and a revolver in his hand.
Within minutes, the lodge's main hall was full of armed Maoists - young women fingering kukris, the lethal Gurkha scalping knives, two or three men with primitive shotguns, a dozen or so all told, keeping the 25 or so Western guests under close surveillance.
None of them laid a finger on us, or stole so much as a rupee from us. But they kept us hostage for an hour and a half while they robbed the lodge of the New Year bonuses, the bar takings, any other cash they could find, and the telescope from the verandah.
The experience left us unharmed but shaken, and with a keen sense of the fragility of the tourist industry.
Draped across the Himalayas like some amazing rug, Nepal is one of the world's most spectacular and fascinating countries. A hermit kingdom down the centuries, guarded impenetrably by the peaks, it began opening a chink only 40 years ago.
Those who come today, and they come in the tens of thousands, find it has guarded its marvels well: its ancient cities still replete with fabulous old temples covered in intricately carved wood.
And there are well-trodden tracks into the mountains now, with guides and porters and rest-houses, and all the charming paraphernalia of the Third World as it strives to make an honest penny out of the visitors.
But there is trouble in this paradise. It's not only the beauty of Nepal that is eternal: the poverty, too, is deep-rooted, and desperate. And now, Nepal's bitter poverty is biting back.
A Maoist insurgency has been simmering for five years. This week it exploded, killing at least 53 people in two separate massacres and injuring more than 100. In the remote village of Rukumkot in the thinly populated west of the country, at least 32 policemen died when their post was blown apart by rebel gunfire.
Twenty-eight injured policemen were flown to the capital, Kathmandu, for treatment. On the other side of the country, at Dolakha, 10 more policemen and 11 rebels died in a two-hour gunfight.
The attacks were the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) telling the world it has been in action for five years. While the dithering Nepali Government, with most of the press in its pocket, has steadfastly tried to defeat the uprising by pretending it is not happening, from now it is going to be more difficult.
The spectacular assaults were a trailer for the nationwide general strike the Maoists have called for today, to protest at what they call "Government excesses."
Nepal's insurgency began in early 1996, after the Communist Party had been banned from contesting a general election because of its opposition to Nepal's constitutional monarchy.
The group went underground, adopting the sort of violent methods preferred both by the Sendero Luminosa (Shining Path) in Peru, with which it is sometimes compared, and the ultra-left Naxalites across the border in Bihar, India.
The idea was to sink roots in the villages in the impoverished countryside, building support and intimidating opponents, until the relatively wealthy cities, essentially Kathmandu and Pokhara, found themselves surrounded. The attacks show that the strategy is succeeding, aided in large measure by the feebleness and corruption of the Government.
The idea of Maoism may seem quaint to most in the West, but the poverty and backwardness of most of Nepal is so acute, unemployment so rampant and the contrast with the life of the Kathmandu elite so stark, that these simple notions of justice and revolution find fertile soil.
More than 80 per cent of Nepal's population of 23 million are subsistence farmers living hand to mouth on their crops of rice, wheat, maize and potatoes.
While the world changes around them, and in front of their eyes in the form of the Western trekkers who still pour through the place, the Nepali peasants remained mired in the Middle Ages, stuck at the bottom of the rigid caste system, living lives of great squalor and with a Government that shows no interest in anything but enriching itself.
That is why, say diplomats and development workers, the insurgency has had striking success, bringing violence to 50 of the country's 75 districts. Not least among those stirred by the call to arms are young women, whose expectations are even more hopeless and circumscribed than those of the men.
For the first time someone from the outside world has expressed an interest in helping these people transform their lives, and offered them a programme for doing it. And if there is an element of revenge, revolutionary justice, of simple bloody murder in the Maoists' appeal - well, the peasants of Nepal have plenty to feel vengeful about.
Because the Maoists have been nice to foreigners so far, their capacity for violence should not be underestimated, and it is directed at civilians as well as the police.
On February 14, Maoists pulled two men out of a political procession and beheaded them in front of hundreds of onlookers - probably because they were carrying Nepali Congress flags.
Ten days later, in Sindhupalchowk near the border with Tibet, insurgents seized a local official, tied him to a tree and hacked him to death. The death toll in the five years of violence now exceeds 1500.
Nepal's trekking industry was pioneered by a retired British Gurkha officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jimmy Roberts, who in 1964 decided to turn his passion for mountain hikes into a job. In the process he invented the word "trekking" and set up the company, Mountain Travel Nepal, that inspired a thousand imitators.
Today Nepal's trekking industry is varied and intensely well-organised, offering four-day strolls, three-week marathons and much in between. After the latest killings, the future of this beautiful Himalayan kingdom as an international holiday destination must be open to serious doubt.
- INDEPENDENT
Red Book revolutionaries dig into fertile Nepalese soil
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