We were perhaps five kilometers from the verdant foothills of the Himalaya when we came to a settlement on the south bank of a gravelly river. Thanks to the layout of the roads it was necessary to pass though the entire length of the village in order to reach the cement-lined ford at the far end, and thanks to our shiny modern vehicles we attracted a certain amount of attention. Rice villages and dusty government centers in Nepal’s flat, productive plains – the Terai – are not exactly overflowing with flashy new cars.
The ford was only thirty or forty meters distant when three men stepped out in front of our van and told us to stop. Sensing trouble, I slouched down in my seat and tried to blend into the cushions. Foreigners weren’t the issue, though; it quickly became clear that the young men talking to the driver were demanding a “rural development tax.” The men struck exaggerated tough-guy poses until the driver finally handed their leader a wad of Nepali rupees, at which point they vanished and we crossed the river.
Who were they? I never got a clear answer. It is possible they were simply local hoodlums; most likely they were among the thousands of poorly controlled Maoist cadres that were still present in many parts of the country during August of 2008, a time of enormous change in the newly formed government. I was mostly limited to conjecture, as the Nepali scientists I was with didn’t really want to talk about the incident. In any event, the details are in some ways immaterial. The key point is this: the local people felt that it was necessary to take matters into their own hands. That this is still a reality around the world after more than sixty years of attempts at development and empowerment deserves more consideration than it has received of late.
The bloody Maoist rebellion in Nepal, which ended with the formation of a new Maoist-dominated government, should serve as something of a wakeup call to America, a nation whose foreign policy can seem almost exclusively interested in profitable trade and fighting terrorism. Even if we wish to focus only on these two subjects – and I would argue that we should not – we must broaden our view if we are to achieve long-term success. The overly-direct American approach has been to fight terror with armed force while ramming through trade agreements that can lead to huge profits for large companies at the expense of the common citizens of foreign nations. These direct approaches are both short-sighted and wholly inappropriate given the often complex and indirect cultures in which we are trying to carry them out.
So much has been written about the foolishness of trying to fight terrorism and insurgency from a military standpoint that I will not waste our time with further elaboration. Suffice to say that the only large-scale successes come when one changes the playing field rather than fighting harder – be it by providing peace incentives in Northern Ireland or negotiating with hostile militias in Baghdad. We must develop a soft approach that can be brought to bear, and we must focus more resources on preventative action. We must take the initiative, rather than waiting for problems to flower fully and then reacting violently. Immediately resorting to the use of force often does nothing but intensify the problem.
Unwise trade policies have been in vogue during recent years. These are characterized by “Neo-Liberal” free-trade agreements, the expansion of multinational companies, and the manipulation of developing nations, and are in many ways the epitome of short-term-profit-oriented lunacy. They can, it is true, lead to apparent rises in the GDP of a developing nation, and may lead to substantial outside investment. However, they tend to help only a small proportion of the population, and in the process they can tip the balance of power in a given region even further away from its inhabitants. Their proponents tout them as a way to use the power of the free market to develop otherwise intractable regions. This may be true in some cases, but the more typical effect is to increase inequality. It is this increase in inequality that is most problematic, even from the perspective of American business interests.
Increasing inequality should be seen as one of the most important indications that violence may be ahead. Even if things are getting slightly better for everyone, the shiny lives of a visible elite can create conditions in which the less fortunate will desire to set things right. One of the first things the Maoists did on achieving power was to get rid of the King of Nepal and kick him out of his palace in Kathmandu. In addition, the inequality created by exploitative business practices, the siting of potentially harmful industrial facilities, and the pillaging of natural resources without transferring wealth to the locals can easily boil over into violence, as has occurred time and time again around the world. Inequality created by profit-driven trade policies can eventually lead to events that destroy the profitability of the very enterprises that caused it. A glance at what is going on right now in the oil-rich Nigerian delta bears this out.
The idea of “civil society” has been rising to prominence as a way for common people to resist the excesses of such policies. Huge strides have been made in community organizing, creative development, and generally developing means of peaceful change that are appropriate and effective in a modern context. Unfortunately, there are some situations in which this type of progressive, positive thinking simply cannot work. Some people, when driven to desperation, will take up the sword rather than the pen. In some situations, most notably where the government is so ineffective or absolutist that working within the system is fruitless, violence may be the only option. The results can range from rebellion to banditry to terrorism.
It should be our objective to minimize the number of situations in which there is no solution to the needs of a people other than recourse to violence. We are like a person with a leaky roof who tries to mop the floor as fast as possible rather than mend the leak. I believe we must don our raincoats and put a little real thought into fixing the leak. Afterward, we can have a nice cup of coffee by the fire – or at least move on to washing the dishes and paying our bills. As the privileged citizens of a powerful nation we would do well to pay attention to the complex if distasteful realities of our time. Our votes, our money, and our action have an impact truly disproportionate to our numbers. As a result, we each bear some measure of responsibility for how we choose to engage with the world. The men that took our money on the plains of Nepal were products of their situation. Rather than fight, we must work to give them other options.
