Paddle Play

A female Maoist ex-comabatant, her son and a Maoist nurse at the health post of Shaktikhor cantonment.

Credit: Tom Van Cakenberghe

We pulled up to the gate around noon, a dank hour on a day promising to be 35°C in the shade. The men keeping sentry at the bamboo and concertina wire post carried semiautomatic rifles, but kept a glazed look of humidity-induced tedium as we passed through in our small bus with the ‘Tourist Only’ tag adorning our rear window.

Arriving into the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) cantonment of Shaktikhor in Nepal’s southern Terai region was something of an unanticipated surprise in this suspended conflict country. Shaktikhor, like the other 6 cantonments and 21 satellite camps across the country, was established two-and-a-half years ago when the Maoists joined the seven-party coalition and entered into the peace process. The fragility of the peace and the future of almost 20,000 disarmed Maoist combatants rest overwhelmingly on the integration of Maoists into the Nepali Army, and the PLA camps remain sensitively situated and not easily penetrated by outsiders.

Disembarking, we were met with the whirr of power tools and the nearby hammering of timber and tin buildings under construction or repair. Shaktikhor is a busy place. Young men and children walked and cycled through the dirt paths, curious but not lingering on the foreigners who were not everyday visitors. Barely stopping to watch the tok-tok-tok of an intense ping pong match, we were led to a small meeting hall where we were met by the benevolent gazes of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung on those comrades to be seated below them. Shelves filled with Marxist material and book-ended by battle instruction manuals ringed the room. Over the door where we’d entered, another banner espoused choice quotations from the Little Red Book.

We were introduced to Comrade Deepak, the deputy commander and secretary of the camp. Like many who joined the Maoists, he grew up poor in an impoverished village. Through translation, Comrade Deepak explained that limited educational opportunities coupled with deep-seated discrimination meant that when the Maoists engaged their insurgency (begun in 1996), they garnered his support and that of the marginalized, rural population in whose ostensible honour they were fighting. Many people thus became Maoists in hopes of liberating themselves from generations of oppression. Their revolution, Comrade Deepak espoused, was about ending injustice and instating equality; an aspiration for many in one of the world’s most deprived countries.

There are 4,000 soldiers and their wives stationed at Shaktikhor, and the average age is 25 years. The make-up of the ex-combatants, despite the ideological trumpet of equivalence, is diverse and includes members from Nepal’s various indigenous groups, low and high caste, and men and women. Wake-up call is at 5:30 AM with a head count followed by exercises. Breakfast is taken around mid-morning. Sometimes there is special military training, but most of the day, it seems, is spent killing time either watching television or playing sports (though despite the popularity of the ping pong tables, a volleyball net, swimming pool and a large soccer field were empty). The ex-combatants, like regular soldiers in barracks, are not allowed to leave the camp without permission. They cannot open businesses, and are sustained by a small stipend and supplies paid for by the government in cooperation with the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN).

In January 2008, the cantonment at Shaktikhor was the site of a controversial video of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (‘Prachanda’) giving a morale boost to the soldiers interned there. The video, released this past May after Prachanda resigned following a confrontation with the president over a controversial decision to fire the army chief, revealed the Maoist leader admitting that they had inflated the number of combatants. Though the PLA numbered only between 7-8,000 soldiers, its strength was given as 35,000 during a UN verification. He also said the decision to sign the peace pact and take part in the election was part of the “revolutionary counter-attack strategy” to capture state power, including winning votes by breaking limbs, diverting state funds to buy arms, and ideologically infiltrating the military.

I had imagined that those we would be speaking with were anxious to reveal a more intimate revelation of life inside the camps and what Maoists really thought behind the Communist principles they championed. Instead, we were given piecemeal answers to our questions on army integration and the role ideological indoctrination, and steered around potentially troublesome topics. When asked about the video and its consequences, Comrade Deepak answered quickly that it was misappropriated and used out of context. Queried about the best and worst case scenarios for the future of the ex-combatants, he simply remarked that with the Maoists rejoining the government, the peace process would be moving ahead and would successfully integrate the PLA into the Nepali Army. Again, when pressed about the possibility of continued discord between the two armies, there was an uncomfortable smile of ‘no comment.’

Excusing himself then, Comrade Deepak went to find a woman to speak with us about the gender dimension. During the People’s War (as the decade-long insurgency is popularly referred to), the Maoists boasted that their army consisted of equal numbers of men and women who shared both the duties and the fighting equally. Women are almost a fifth of the population at Shaktikhor today, and are housed in separate quarters. Some, like 21-year old Comrade Kavita, are married and live with their husbands in the camp. A second generation Maoist who joined the party when she was 15, Comrade Kavita visibly displayed her youth and shyness in her hands, as she folded and clasped them in front of her while she related the common misperception that women, when given a gun, don’t know how to use it. In fact, she laughed, there were some notable battles fought with Maoist men ready to surrender, yet persevered through the determination of their female counterparts.

Our limit on time meant we were not allowed to look around the camp nor speak with anyone who wasn’t cleared. So after talking with Comrades Deepak and Kavita, we were escorted from the meeting hall to the UNMIN area of the camp where the decommissioned weapons are stored and where, once a week, the Maoists are allowed to clean the guns. Established in August 2006 by the UN Security Council, the UNMIN is a special political mission designed to support of the peace process. Initially mandated for one year, UNMIN has already been given three extensions of six months each. Its current term expires July 23, but the Nepali government has said that UNMIN would remain in Nepal until the task of integrating and rehabilitating the Maoist combatants and managing their arms are completed. How soon that will be is anyone’s guess, and though the Maoists have recommitted themselves to the peace process, the question of army integration remains contentious due to a decade of fierce fighting and deep mistrust.

Nepal’s political stability remains a worry, but nevertheless the Maoist ex-combatants at Shaktikhor remain optimistic and faithful that their contribution has changed the face of modern Nepal. In the meantime they pass the time playing ping pong, and given the torpor induced by a warm monsoon season, the wait patiently for their and their country’s future to be determined.

(For more images of life in Nepal's Maoist cantonments, please see Tom Van Cakenberghe's photo essay "Army Without Arms": http://www.lightstalkers.org/galleries/slideshow/19451.)