Ready for battle: Maoist guerrillas during an exercise in Bhojpur, eastern Nepal. AFP file picture

Kathmandu, Jan. 14: Climb on the spine to hit on the head or “dhand ma tekera touku ma hanne” is the Maoist slogan, which defines their emerging strategy. The spine is the highways, supply routes in the periphery, the areas of military presence; and the head is Kathmandu.

The Maoists want to show that the armed forces of the state cannot provide safety and security in the urban centres, not even for holding municipal elections.

This has been evident in their attacks on the security forces near Nepalganj and in Dhangarhi, after they called off their four-month unilateral ceasefire for lack of response from the king.

“The Maoists are holding mass meetings in the periphery of the cities and towns surrounded by their own security personnel. Step by step, they are converging towards the city centres and the municipalities. They will be there by the time of the municipal elections on February 7,” said Mahesh Maskey, a leading member of the Citizens’ Movement for Democracy and Peace.

Shyam Shreshtha, editor of the Left-wing Mulyankan magazine, also feared an upsurge in urban violence. “The Maoists will create a big disturbance in the urban centres. Despite their commitment to the UN (that) they will not kill non-combatants, in my estimation, in the next 30 days you will see a lot of violence in Nepal.”

C.K. Lal, an eminent political commentator, pointed out the downside of the Maoist strategy. “The problem with this strategy is that paranoid foreigners will once again begin to see the king as the saviour.”

He thought an agitational mode with relatively open Maoist participation would give the king less room to play, even though it may take a little longer.

However, the indications are of an intensification of violence. Sudheer Sharma, a political analyst who has studied the Maoists closely, claimed that they are increasing their military strength and that “their tactics are becoming Kathmandu-centric”.

Sharma pointed to the re-organisation of the military command structure of the Maoists as an evidence of this. The Peoples’ Liberation Army of the Maoists used to have three divisions ? now it has been expanded to seven.

“To meet the recruitment challenge, they are converting 50 per cent of their political cadre into military cadre. They believe that the decisive phase of a republican movement is always violent. They want to go with the political parties, but should the parties be enticed away by the king, then they fear violence would intensify.

“Even otherwise, they think that increased military strength will give them increased bargaining power with the parties,” Sharma said.

Earlier, the Maoists had three separate geographical military commands ? East Central Command, West Central Command and the Mid-Central Command. The Mid- and West Central Commands have now been merged. And a new Special Central Command that includes Kathmandu and its surrounding areas (previously under the East Central Command) has been created.

“Now the political and military moves from both the east and the west will be towards Kathmandu,” Sharma explained.

“The Maoists believe that they can help lift the movement in Kathmandu and increase its intensity. In the first phase, they will not go for violence in the capital.

“They will take military action in the areas identified as the spine or the lifeline of Kathmandu. This will both further the republican agenda and affect the municipal elections,” he said.

In the last and decisive phase of the agitation in Kathmandu, the Maoists believe that the king will use violence to suppress the movement.

“At that time, they think that even the two big political parties, the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist), may invite action against the Royal Nepal Army (from the Maoists),” Sharma said, looking into the future.

The king has been clever up to now and has not used force against the people.

But this is increasingly becoming a republican movement and it is not unthinkable that a time would come when he might have to suppress it with all the force at his command.