The Gurkhas

Trouble in the rear

Apr 17th 2008 | KATHMANDU
From The Economist print edition

Nepal's newly-elected Maoists want to stop their compatriots serving abroad

TO SENTIMENTAL Britons, the protest waged outside an asylum and immigration tribunal building in London on April 15th was affecting. A dozen retired Gurkhas—natives of Nepal with an historic dispensation to serve in Britain's army—silently saluted a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.

Inside the building, an appeal was being heard on behalf of a former comrade who wanted permission to reside in Britain. It is one of many recent test cases for those who seek the same rights for former Gurkhas that other old soldiers enjoy. Meanwhile, back in Nepal, the Gurkhas face trouble from the rear.

If Nepal's rulers-elect, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), saw the old Gurkhas' stand, they must have shivered in their revolutionary socks. A former guerrilla army, which surprisingly won an election on April 10th, the Maoists want to ban Nepalis from soldiering for foreign powers. “Having the citizenship of Nepal and serving in a foreign army is totally unacceptable,” says the party's deputy leader, Baburam Bhattarai. “They are mercenaries.”

They are not. The Gurkhas, of whom 3,500 currently serve Britain, have a special legal status in an army in which they have fought for 200 years. A legacy of an imperial past, another 50,000 serve in India's army and 2,000 in Singapore's police. Tens of thousands of former Gurkhas work for private security firms. Imbued with the motto “Better to die than be a coward”, British Gurkhas especially are considered superb infantrymen.

None of this would trouble the Maoists, who are already abolishing Nepal's monarchy. But opposition from central Nepalis probably will deter them. In a poor region of South Asia's poorest country, Gurkha service is hugely popular. Last year the British army recruited just 230 Gurkhas from 17,500 applicants. The squaddies begin their service on £14,000 ($28,000) a year, on the same pay scale and with the same pension as any British soldier. After they retire, the longer-serving will also receive a British old-age pension—payable in Britain, where they may settle, or in Nepal. The chief of Nepal's army, by contrast, earns 275,000 rupees (£2,200) a year.

Over the past decade, Britain's Gurkhas have been transformed. Formerly a light-infantry force based in Hong Kong, the regiment was disjointed from the rest of the army. Now based in Britain, it is an integral part of a more mobile force—indeed, as the only infantry regiment that is always fully manned, the Gurkhas often make up the numbers for others, in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The standard rights and pay that British Gurkhas now enjoy—as a result of a creeping upgrade, culminating in final equalisation in 2006—partly reflects this change. It is also a reward for the zealous campaigning of many retired Gurkhas, like those in London this week. That may encourage them in their efforts to win British visas for about 2,000 former comrades deemed to have retired too long ago to warrant them. But they should consider ditching the queen's picture—lest it make Maoists mad.

Source: http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11057127