Mr. Paramendra Bhagat wrote: Gaur: Prachanda's Reichstag Fire? http://demrepubnepal.blogspot.com/2007/03/gaur-prachandas-reichstag-fire.html ------------------------------------ The "Reichstag fire" analogy does not work in the Gaur case. The key difference is that during the Reichstag fire Hitler was already the Chancellor (head of the govt) and he could control the debate i.e. politicize the event and take advantage of it. And he did. Hindenburg, the ailing President, the WWI hero and the leader of the Prussian military establishment was the only person with power and moral authority to stop Hitler. But Hitler knew that Hindenburg was staunch anti-communist. He adroitly used the Reichstag fire to convince Hindenburg to grant him more authority by saying it was the precursor to Communist counter-revolution. The rest as they say is history. If Prachanda had been the PM, then Hitler analogy would have been very convincing. Prachanda could have politicized the Gaur incident to rouse nationalistic sentiments (which is very powerful in Nepal esp vis-à-vis India) and drummed up political support to gain absolute power (much like GW Bush did post 9/11). But he is not - he is not even in the government. The best Prachanda and his henchmen could do was to meekly ask Girija to do their bidding i.e. ban the MPRF (big deal). Rather than the Reichstag fire, the best analogy is probably the post-1917 Russian civil war. After Lenin's takeover of the Russian State, the Czarist melted into Russian taiga and waged four-year long counter-revolution against the Red Army with the support of the imperialist powers of the day. The same seems to be happening in Nepal. MPRF is the "White Army" of Nepal (see the story below from today's Nepalnews, http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2007/mar/mar25/news04.php); the tarai is the taiga; and the Hindutva elements in India (BJP, RSS, WHP) are the new foreign imperialist power. I am not surprised that Mandale elements are starting to resurge with vengeance (the Mar 9 bombing of Pandey and Pahadi, http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2007/mar/mar09/news04.php, being the case in point) but I am surprised that it took them that long. The Baathists in Iraq didn’t take a year to re-group. May be the Mandale’s are working in the “Nepali time” :) The Mandales’ have the reason to fight. After all they have lost everything post April-2006 revolution. The only way they can hope to gain power is through instability i.e. look the country was so much better when we were at the helm. Of course the Maoists had the role in the Gaur incident (the Maoists-MPRF scuffle has been going on for a while) but I don’t think they expected to be massacred. Like the Mandales, the Maoists also have tons to gain from political instability. Frankly, speaking if there is fair election, the Maoists will not even win 9 seats they won, in their previous incarnation, during 1991 election – there is much anger against the Maoists amongst the “silent majority” of rural Nepal. The Maoists are probably in the best position to take over the state should there be a need. They still have the militia which are fed and cloth by the state; the munitions they have turned over to the cantonments is a joke; the Maoists have descended from hills and infiltrated cities & towns to better position themselves; the political parties esp Girija & Nepal don’t have the balls to confront Maoists excesses (looting, extortion, kidnapping and killing); and Nepali Army is totally demoralized – it still need radical reforms to remove all the JBRs, Thapas and Pandeys that were promoted for their ethnic affiliation rather than for merit. The point is that political instability will remain unabated unless MPRF stop being the tool of the Mandales and go back to their original purpose – which to channel the grievances of the tarai people – and Maoists abide by the letter and the spirit of 12-point Agreement. Unfortunately, the power centers of Nepal don’t have too much leverage over either parties. India does but we don’t know what India’s goal is vis-à-vis Nepal. My fear is that political violence will take a u-turn for the worse if the CA election is delayed (most likely) from April-May timeframe. If my fear comes to fruition, in the finance parlance, I’d say, IT’S TIME TO SHORT NEPAL.