Nepal: The Tactic of General Insurrection
Posted by Mike E on November 2, 2009
The following first appeared on Dissident Voice.
by Gary Leupp (Nov. 2, 2009)
“[N]ow we are focusing on the mass movement… [N]ow we [can] really practice what we have been preaching. That means the fusion of the strategy of PPW [Protracted People’s War] and the tactic of general insurrection. What we have been doing since 2005 is the path of preparation for general insurrection through our work in the urban areas and our participation in the coalition government.”
– Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, interview with the Britain-based World People’s Resistance Movement, October 26, 2009
Today (November 1) Nepal’s Maoists initiate, with torch rallies in Kathmandu, a mass movement to bring down the regime. This is the regime that succeeded the one their chair Prachanda headed as prime minister from August 2008 to May 2009–a compromise arrangement, always understood to be temporary and transitional, that collapsed when the Nepali Army refused to take orders from the Maoist prime minister.
Prime Minister Prachanda, noting the obvious (that the Maoists’ suspension of the People’s War and participation in parliamentary processes had not really given them state power), might have then ordered the resumption of the war. Instead, the first elected Maoist national leader made a surprising (I think even shrewdly Gandhian) move of resigning his post, while his party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) redoubled its efforts to organize support among the urban masses of Kathmandu.
The Maoists claimed that acquiring top posts in the government following the toppling of the monarchy in 2008 was less important than two other tasks: achieving goals in the composition of the new constitution and building that mass urban movement. The “Prachanda Path” has always been about combining Mao’s theory of People’s War (surrounding the cities from the countryside) with Lenin’s model of the urban uprising—the October Revolution.
As of November 2005 the Maoists controlled about 80% of the country. They surrounded Kathmandu Valley but felt incapable of taking it militarily. Meanwhile King Gyanendra, deeply unpopular, had made himself even more widely despised by dissolving the parliament and arresting mainstream political leaders. The Maoists cut a deal with the legal political parties to coordinate actions to bring down the king. They agreed to eventually lay down their arms under UN supervision, in return for the other parties’ acceptance of new elections for a Constituent Assembly to author a new constitution. In the April 2008 elections, Maoists won 220 of 575 seats in the assembly, double the figure of their nearest competitors. International observers such as Jimmy Carter verified that the elections were free and fair. There is no question the Maoists have a mass base.
And there’s no question there are real limits to what you can accomplish following the normal rules. Hence “the tactic of general insurrection.”
The U.S. State Department has always seen the Maoists as “terrorists” and even keeps them on the terror list now. That’s not because they’ve used violence to overthrow a social order that inflicts misery in subtle and not so subtle, violent and not so violent ways every day as the Nepali state presides or looks on indifferently. “Terrorism” in the State Department’s lexicon refers to anything that terrifies State Department officials, and the prospect of the red flag flying over Mt. Everest is one of their nightmares. But the fact is they do believe in the violent overthrow of oppressive institutions, they do believe the revolution isn’t by any means over yet, and they do have a program for seizure of power through what Bhattarai terms “the tactic of general insurrection.”
Knowing this, U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Kathmandu Jeffrey Moon called on Prachanda at his home in the city Oct. 28 to express U.S. concern about these upcoming protests. He was apparently told that the Maoists remain committed to the peace process and the drafting of a new constitution. But suspension of the guerrilla war is one thing. General insurrection centered in the city is another. And the People’s War and the urban insurrection may connect at some point in the near future, just as the government of neighboring India undertakes an assault on the Maoist movement that has come to control vast regions of that county.
I have no idea what the outcome may be. But history is clearly not over, Communist movements are clearly not dead, and the ideal of classless society has clearly not vanished in societies where class oppression is most intense.
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Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp (at) granite.tufts.edu. Read other articles by Gary, or visit Gary’s website.
Patrick said
Meanwhile in the Philippines the US Military is intervening directly against another Maoist Peoples Army:
US troops engaged in counter-guerrilla operations in Bukidnon
Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos
Spokesperson
National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Mindanao
November 2, 2009
http://www.philippinerevolution.net/cgi-bin/statements/stmts.pl?author=ndfm;date=091102;lang=eng
The National Democratic Front (NDF)-Mindanao has received more information regarding the actual participation of US soldiers in combat operations in Mindanao. This time, the operations are not just in Basilan and Sulu, but in other areas of the island as well. According to confirmed reports, US military personnel have been playing an active role in combat operations against the NPA in the hinterlands of Bukidnon.
Four separate incidents were initially cited. Around mid-February and in early July, US soldiers were seen participating in combat operations in Quezon, Bukidnon. These troops, together with a unit of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), engaged an NPA unit in a firefight and committed fascist acts against the residents in the area. In April and again in September, US troops were also sighted with AFP soldiers in Valencia and Malaybalay asking local residents for possible NPA locations and even intimidating civilians in the area.
Aside from these reports, the NDF-Mindanao has also received similar information from reliable sources in South Cotabato, Central Mindanao and the Davao provinces.
The increasing participation of US troops in combat operations in Moro areas have become even more common. Last September, at least two US soldiers were killed in an armed attack against a convoy of US troops in Indangan, Sulu. Earlier that month, US troops in a knee-jerk reaction to a nearby grenade explosion fired their guns indiscriminately at the port of Jolo, Sulu, damaging dock facilities and a nearby mosque. Back in 2002, a US Army serviceman, Sgt. Reggie Lane, embedded among troops of the 18th IB, shot Buyong-buyong Isnijal, a farmer in Basilan whom a combined team of US and Filipino soldiers raided his house.
These reports increasingly expose the lies behind the template pronouncements of US officials denying the actual involvement of its troops in combat operations in Mindanao. They provide further evidence that US troops belonging to the Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF)-Philippines have been joining AFP units engaged in counterrevolutionary operations in the island.
Even as US and Philippine officials are quick to deny that US soldiers are engaged in combat operations, they do not deny that the US military has been actively involved in providing the AFP with combat and aerial intelligence as well as logistical support to AFP ground operations.
These incidents point clearly to increasing US military intervention and fascist atrocities in league with local puppet troops.
The NDF-Mindanao will continue to expose incidents of US military involvement in actual combat operations in the country, especially against the revolutionary forces and the people. Local commands of the New People’s Army in Bukidnon have been instructed to closely monitor the movements of US soldiers and their participation in counterrevolutionary and antipeople military activites.
The NDF-Mindanao supports the recent efforts by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, chair of the senate committee on foreign affairs to review the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). We, however, believe that these efforts must not simply lead to amending some vague provisions of the agreement. Instead, the NDF-Mindanao echoes the call of patriotic Filipinos nationwide for the abrogation of the VFA, the Military Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) and other one-sided military treaties.
It is these agreements that provide the framework for the US to permanently station its troops in the Philippines, engage in outright military intervention and wage war against the national democratic revolutionary movement in the country.
The NDF-Mindanao calls on the Filipino people to wage an allout, renewed, aggressive and sustained campaign against continuing US military intervention in the country.
We also urge the American people to demand the pullout of American troops permanently stationed in the Philippines and the cessation of US military interventionism in the country. We call on our Filipino compatriots in the US and other countries to help heighten public awareness in their host countries and internationally about US military intervention in the Philippines. #
Selucha said
Patrick, thank you for sharing that article… I’d like to see more coverage of the Philippines on this site.
Mike E said
[moderator note: We generally post articles on the Philippines on the South Asian Revolution site -- even though, formally, Philippines is not in South Asia. We will post the article Patrick shared there. And (as with Nepal and India) we can occasionally post major news and theory from the Maoist movement in the Philippines here.
Ka Frank said
The assumption of Gary Leupp’s article is that the UCPN (Maoist) will be wielding its November protest program as a launching pad for an insurrection, or at least as an important step in building a revolutionary mass movement that can develop into an insurrection when the objective conditions are ripe.
In fact, there is a real question whether the UCPN (Maoist) is united around that perspective. Party Chairman Prachanda has been saying for months, since he stepped down as Prime Minister, that the party is fighting for civilian supremacy, for forming a new Maoist-led government, and for carrying the peace process “to its logical end” through writing a new constitution and integrating the PLA into the Nepalese Army. This reflects a revisionist understanding of the bourgeois/feudal state that exists in Nepal today–that it can be restructured by a Maoist-led government with mass popular pressure–as opposed to the view that this state must be overthrown by the armed revolutionary action of the masses and replaced by a new democratic state.
These are two different perspectives, reflecting revolutionary and revisionist political lines that contending within the UCPN (Maoist). How this two-line struggle is resolved within the party will be decisive in determining whether the Jana Andolan-3 (People’s Uprising 3) will help build a revolutionary movement that can seize state power when the time is right, or whether the mass protests will be limited to demanding the formation of a new government–keeping the UCPN (Maoist) and the masses it leads bogged down in the same reformist strategy it has followed since it signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in November 2006.
Green Red said
3,4 decades have passed from Mao’s being there and, in above named counries, Nepal, India, Philippine it is – the teachings of Mao is blossoming flowers.
But didn’t Mao himself has said read Mrax, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and, have their teachings lernt as manner of thinking and not, things to be copied?
That said, i thank Professor Leupp for writing so well about it.
And if anybody has doubts about correctness of the humanitarian element of Prachanda Path and, its specal necessity considering the world’s balance of forces, I invite those people to bring about other revolutions tha followed Maoist lines in the history… Was there anywhere beside Kampuchea that proclaimed revolution line and, it did take power at least for a while?
If what i am saying is true, then more than ever, you need to thank Prachanda to be clearing the name of an ideology, through the most humanitarian way. I am presenting to all critiques of Nepal’s revolutionary party and its line, be it Avakianists or, others. Friends, each revolution has its own peculiar conditions within the country, and outside the country.
Maz said
Ka Frank: Your claim that since 2006 the revolution has been bogged down in a reformist strategy is wide of the mark, and completely fails to grasp the trajectory of things for the past few years. I think it’s clear from reading literature and interviews with party figures that despite their many differences, the UCPN(M) leadership has always held to a genuine mass line that requires the masses of people to make revolution themselves.
Prior to the signing of the peace treaty, the Maoists had relatively little support in urban areas – some strength amongst workers in the hospitality industry, but very little influence (and quite a bit of wariness and distrust) among middle class people. They also faced the problem of large numbers of people who didn’t share their Marxist understanding of the new for forceful overthrow of the state.
Through the process of the constituent assembly, they have been able to do major political work among the urban masses, and have been able to expose both the Nepali Congress and UML as being monarchist vacillaters. The whole scandal with UML and NC backing Katawal when Prachanda tried to fire him further showed their anti-democratic nature. To form government after Prachanda’s resignation the UML had to bring in a guy for Prime Minister who lost to an unheard of Maoist youth in his constituency in the CA elections! They have been thoroughly exposed as undemocratic.
Now the Nepalese masses can clearly see the need for initiating a new round of struggle to continue the revolutionary changes. Now the Maoists can lead these people in a fresh round of struggle, just as they have been doing for the past two nights in the streets of Kathmandu. Revolutions must be made by the masses, and the Nepalese Maoists have been applying their tactics to do just that.
Gary said
This assessment from Outlook India http://news.outlookindia.com/item.aspx?668922 appears quite objective. It shows how the Maoists are claiming the moral high ground, noting the refusal of the CPN-UML and Congress parties to confront the Army’s refusal to accept civilian authority and the terms of the 2006 Comprehensive Agreement between the Maoists and seven parties that ended the People’s War. It shows how the Maoists’ slogans expose the regime as a “puppet” one, “unconstitutional,” defying “civilian supremacy” while activists use peaceful methods to paralyze its operations.
Maoists Intensify Anti-Govt Agitation Across Nepal
Maoist cadres chanting “down with the puppet government” slogans today paralysed work in offices and clashed with ruling CPN-UML activists in several parts of Nepal as they intensified their anti-government agitation.
Curfew was clamped in the eastern Dhankuta district for an indefinite period after Maoist cadres clashed with activists of the ruling CPN-UML, police said, even as the security forces stood on high alert.
Shouting slogans of “down with puppet government,” and “remove unconstitutional government”, the Maoists demanded that President Ram Baran Yadav’s “unconstitutional” move to reinstate Army chief Rukmangad Katawal be rectified.
Heavy security was in place throughout the capital but the protests here were peaceful.
In Kathmandu hundreds of Maoists carrying red flags picketed the District Administrative Office and prevented the government staff from entering the office.
Traffic was disrupted for hours in several places as the activists held demonstrations demanding restoration of “civilian supremacy”.
In Nuwakot and Sunsari districts in central and southern Nepal, scores of Maoist cadres and policemen were injured as the agitating Maoist cadres clashed with the riot police.
All 75 districts of Nepal were affected due to the agitation and security has been tightened in government offices to prevent any untoward incidents.
Nepal is in the middle of a political turmoil since Prachanda resigned as Prime Minister in May following a confrontation with President Yadav over the sacking of the Army chief Rukmangad Katawal.
The Maoists have been blocking the Parliament since then demanding that the President rolls back his move of overturning a democratically elected government’s decision.
Tell No Lies said
Looking at it from afar it seems to me that while the Maobadi have politically prepared their cadres for the neccesity of an eventual insurrection that the tactic being pursued right now is the use of mass non-violent action to effectively cripple the workings of the government and commerce. These actions on their own are unlikely to topple the government but if they continue to be effective some sort of violent repression is almost inevitable. This would further expose the violent nature of the state and give much greater popular legitimacy to any insurrection. It puts the government in a very delicate situation. Every day huge numbers of people are gaining more and more confidence in their power in the streets. The government has to know that the longer the protests go on the worse their position is and at the same time that any serious repression is likely to provoke an escalation from the Maobadi who have dramatically shifted the balance of power in Katmandu.
Adrienne said
What Maz said. And, perhaps what TNL said is correct too…?
Mike E said
I think there is an element of “dress rehearsal” here.
If someone is considering a new push for power (or an insurrection) — that can’t be done from a “cold start.” There have to be rehearsals.
For one thing, the revolution’s leadership needs to gauge whether large numbers of people will answer their call, whether their own forces are mobilized and confident, and what the mood of all kinds of other forces is (the police, the middle forces etc.)
And also the apparatus of an insurrection has to be tested — do the street level cadre understand where the key government and military centers are, can they navigate the (often strange) city with numbers of forces, etc.
And there is also a process of testing the unity of the party — which might be united in one period around one program, but reveal major cracks if there are new risks and shifts in tactic.
It has struck me how many of the YCL organizers are former PLA commanders — apparently shifted from the cantonments to the capital.
And one of the things that might be learned from a “dress rehearsal” is that the forces are ready (or not ready). It is part of the decision and timing process. In 1917 there were three waves of Bolshevik street actions — in April (right after Lenin returned), in July (when there was a major mood of insurrection among the advanced in Petrograd), and then in October (when the insurrection actually happened). The first two were not that successful. But in September the major Kornilov crisis (and the later polling for the Soviets) convinced Lenin that the middle forces were swinging his way, and a new opening for insurrection was coming.
There is a bit of naive voluntarism in how such things are sometimes looked at: as if insurrection is just a decision of the leadership, and they are either for it (and therefore planning it ASAP) or they are against it (and therefore stalling). But there are real material factors to be weighed, measured, and transformed. And it all interpenetrates with the inevitable line struggle that accompanies any life-or-death leap.
Ka Frank said
I agree that political tests of strength and dress rehearsals are necessary. And that an insurrection cannot be launched until the objective conditions ripen, particularly with middle forces swinging to the left. In this sense, insurrection is not simply a decision of the party leadership.
However, what Mike’s analysis refuses to face is the crucial issue of whether the party is united around the goal of using mass struggle–such as the political protests now underway–to build up to the revolutionary goal of seizing state power, or whether that mass struggle is circumscribed and has the more limited and reformist goal of reinstituting a Maoist-led government and continuing the peace process “to its logical end,” including integrating the PLA into the Nepalese Army.
There clearly continue to be two lines representing these two positions in the party leadership, which will make it very difficult for the UCPN (Maoist) to develop the November protests into a real test of political strength that can build the revolutionary understanding and organization needed to overthrow the reactionary regime.
Gary said
This looks significant:
http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/1-top-story/2321-maoists-symbolically-announce-kirant-federal-state-.html
The declaration of federal states was part of the program the Maoists had announced beginning Nov. 1, then apparently backed away from last week (along with the announcement that they would close down the international airport). But here we have a federal republic proclaimed apparently with Prachanda’s specific approval.
Gary said
Both this
http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/2-political/2321-maoists-symbolically-announce-kirant-federal-state-.html
and this
http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/1-top-story/2324-maoists-block-vehicular-movement-from-and-to-kathmandu.html
are important I think