War Without Ends H. Thayer Walker III Kathmandu, Nepal March 4, 2004 Nepalese soldiers patrol Kathmandu after a bomb-packed rickshaw exploded on the second day of a general strike called by pro-Maoist students, Feb. 26, 2004. A second blast ripped apart a bus on March 3 (Photo: Devendra M. Singh/AFP-Getty Images). The village of Solta sits serene on the banks of the Karnali River, nestled amid the jagged mountains of the Kailali district of western Nepal. The river flows peacefully past the village on its way to India, its force exhausted by its long descent from China and the Tibetan Himalayas. The region has a continuous supply of water and a mild, even warm, winter climate?more like the hot plains of India than the Himalayas?that is conducive to year-round farming. You won?t see it on the evening news, but a devestating war is being fought against this serene backdrop. An estimated 8,000 people have died since Maoist rebels launched a ?people?s war? to oust the country?s royal dynasty in 1996. According to the Informal Sector Service Center, a Nepali human-rights group, an average of 17 more die each day. Rebels conscript children. Incidents of gang rape and torture have been reported by combattants from both sides. Repeated attempts to reach a peaceful solution have failed. An hour from Solta, a dusty band of migrant workers rests in the shade of a banyan tree, eating, smoking, and comforting their screaming children. They say they are walking to India; in reality they are running from Nepal. These 42 weather-beaten Nepalis, like millions of other men, old women, and small children who find themselves in the same situation, are the real victims of this long civil war. They had walked for six days from a small village in the northwest called Narakot. They hoped to catch a bus the next day and continue to the town of Mahendranagar on the Indian border. From there, they would start walking again, looking for work as unskilled laborers in India. The youngest member of the group was four months old, the oldest 75. Some planned to work in India for three months, some six months, some longer. But many would likely stay. Poor Nepalis have been traveling to India to work for centuries. But these 42 mountain villagers, like the other 80 percent of the country?s population living in rural areas, have found themselves caught in a crossfire. An immigration officer at the Mahendranagar border crossing, just one of many, estimates that he sees 500 Nepalese leave for work in India every day. He says he recently saw more than 3,000 Nepalis cross in a single day. A few years ago, he says, a busy day might have seen perhaps 100 Nepalis leaving for India. Official numbers are unavailable because the two countries maintain an open border policy. Why are Nepalis leaving in such large numbers? Villagers across the country describe similar scenarios: Maoist rebels, either on the run from the army or bent on expanding their territory, enter a village. Sometimes they come in small groups of five or six. Other times, hundreds of heavily armed rebels will arrive at a village. On their way through, they ask villagers for food, shelter, money, a son, or a daughter. The villagers, subsistence farmers and craftsmen, are in no position to refuse. When the Maoists leave, the security forces arrive on their trail. When they don?t find armed revolutionaries, the army often singles out villagers who gave the Maoists support, accusing them of being Maoists themselves. Sometimes they are harassed, other times jailed. If the villagers are very unlucky, the security forces will arrive while the Maoists are encamped and the village will turn into a battleground. A large red and white ?martyrs? gate,? one of many similar monuments across the country, stands at the border of Solta. Here, the gate commemorates a husband and wife from the village who had taken up arms for the Maoist cause two years ago and were killed in a nearby battle. A hammer and sickle crown the structure, ringed by the words, ?The spilling of blood will only make us stronger!? In the early years of the ?people?s war,? the western districts of Rolpa and Rukum served as the Maoists? main base. The movement has since spread, and today Maoists guerrillas operate, in some degree, in all of Nepal?s 75 districts. The west, however, remains their stronghold. Here there are few job opportunities, and many villages remain without electricity. The province of Rukum has no roads. These are the places the Maoists call home. The Maoist A group of several dozen Maoists had been in Solta a week before I arrived. When I asked how I could find them, one villager suggested hiking up into the hills. ?You don?t find them, they find you,? he explained. In the event, one found me having breakfast the next morning in the village. He introduced himself proudly as Comrade Rawal, the second in command at a nearby training camp. Though he could have been no more than 5 feet, 6 inches tall, he had a taut frame and an intense demeanor. Unarmed, dressed in clean pants and a plaid shirt, he looked as though he could be a teacher or a farmer. The Maoists? anonymity complicates the security forces? jobs. As one teacher, explaining the security forces? difficulties, put it, ?Who is a Maoist? Is it you? Is it me? Is it that farmer tilling his fields, or the shopkeeper down the road? Who is a Maoist? If they are not pointing a gun in your face, how can you tell?? Rawal and I spoke for more than an hour. He was polite and articulate. With his 10th-grade education, he may well have been one of the most educated men in the district. Now 22, he joined the movement at 18. The second of five brothers and sisters, he says he joined because he was tired of seeing his parents toil for nothing. When the Maoists came through his town, speaking of ?getting respect for the poor,? ?dividing land evenly,? and ?creating a society with no rich or poor,? Rawal joined them. His family was proud of him, he explained, because he was an important man in a movement fighting for the rights of the poor. I hesitated to mention that the poor were suffering most from this war. Rawal was in town, among other reasons, to buy shoes. He said he would return to the training camp, a two-day walk from Solta, after our conversation. The camp, he explained, houses some 600 armed and indoctrinated guerrillas??hardcore? fighters, as the military describes them. These fighters, Rawal said, eat 2,200 pounds of food a day. They must get their food somewhere, and the pressure inevitably falls on local villages. The camp buys some food with money from looted banks or local and tourist ?donations,? but Rawal is frank about expropriating the rest from villagers. Rawal was hard-pressed to cite a country whose political model the Maoists admired, and could not explain what kind of policies the group would implement were they to come to power. But as he left, he insisted that I write down his parting words. ?To the rich of the world, the corrupt,? he said, ?we poor are gathering, we are fighting, and we are powerful.? If Rawal is more comfortable with slogans and threats than with proper political platforms, it may be because the rebels lack a coherent ideology. The rebels call themselves Maoists, wave Soviet flags, speak of a ?new democracy? ... and say they would implement