The Military in Nepal

In any revolutionary gain, the military is always a sore subject. Coups can reverse any progress. So this is from:

http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/MAOIST_REVOLUTION:

There has been a great deal of controversy (as some may be aware) about the Maoist peoples liberation army in Nepal. It was forged in a decade of guerilla warfare that successfully developed political base areas over 80 percent of the country, and that fought the much larger Royal army to a stalemate. then in a rather stunning tactical move, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) decided, in 2005, to take a detour -- in order to win a much broader, consolidated mass support for their final assault of power. Rather than trying to "take kathmandu from the countryside, " under international, domestic and military conditions they judged to be highly unfavorable, the Maoists pushed for a specific negotiated arrangement -- that included to the stationing of both armies in bases, and to elections to a revolutionary Constituent Assembly (CA). Among some forces (including particularly in some circles within the internationalist Maoist movement) it was alleged that all of this was betrayal -- that they had abandoned the road of armed struggle (particularly the model of Maoist peoples war), and that no good could come of these moves. The RCP,USA wrote (in a March 2005 letter): The most likely result is that the CPN(M) will be defeated fairly at the elections If in the extremely unlikely event that the Party did come to occupy the key positions of government through this electoral process the very alliance required, the entanglement in bourgeois political institutions and with the ‘international community’ will ensure that there is no transfer of power to the proletariat and the oppressed classes and no basis for the state to carry out the revolutionary transformation of society. [this letter was once secret, and has now been published as part of a series of increasingly hostile exchanges between the RCP and the CPNM -- they are published as a printable pamphlet in PDF form here: http://mikeely. wordpress. com/pamphlets/ ] In fact: In the events following 2005, the king was deposed, the country became a republic, and the Maoists won a startling plurality in the electons to the CA, emerging (paradoxically) leading the government of a state apparatus they had not yet defeated. Part of the argument denouncing the CPNM is that they have agreed to give up their army. This is a potent question because for Maoists maintaining an independent party, and independent armed force (i.e. maintaining the initiative for revolutionary communist forces within various alliances) has emerged as a widely acknowledged principle. So, for example, the RCP wrote in their recent summation article (labelling the CPNM with the r-word..... revisionist) : The organs of people's power built up in the countryside of Nepal through the revolutionary war have been dissolved, the old police forces have been brought back, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), although never defeated on the battlefield, has been disarmed and confined to “cantonments� while the old reactionary army (formerly the Royal Nepal Army, now renamed the Nepal Army) which previously feared to travel outside its barracks, except in large heavily armed convoys, is now free to patrol the country with the blessing of a CPN(M) Defense Minister.