Nepal's Maoists Morph for 21st Century

Nepal's decade-old armed conflict recently ended when Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and Maoist leader Prachanda signed a 10-point Comprehensive Peace Treaty, ending a conflict that had claimed over 14,000 lives. What's surprising is that Nepal's guerrillas, in agreeing to the pact, have deliberately veered from the Maoist doctrine of protracted people's war they had followed.

People's war is still espoused by Maoists such as Peru's the Sendero Luminoso (from which the Nepalese guerrillas say they drew their inspiration), India's Naxalites and the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Maoists in these countries won't be caught dead even hinting of giving up their surround-the-cities-from-countryside guerrilla strategy. Peru's Senderos became livid when the government insinuated that their captured leader, President Gonzalo, had agreed to peace talks.

In India, a Naxalite leader told Reuters, "Prachanda made a big mistake by deciding to share power" when "they should have killed King Gyanendra and taken power." The Naxalites were the Nepalese Maoists' closest allies.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of the Philippines had split up in the 1990s after a faction began pushing for city-based uprisings, which the leadership deemed heretical. Critics of the Philippine Maoists believe the guerrillas don't take talks with the government seriously. The CPP, they charge, do talks only to gain propaganda points and certain practical advantages but not as a fundamental readjustment of strategy.

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