Political crisis leaves Nepal’s Maoist fighters in limbo focus 09/07/2010

Political crisis leaves Nepal’s Maoist fighters in limbo

focus

09/07/2010
DAHABAN — As a commander in Nepal’s Maoist army, Ram Lal Roka Magar led his soldiers in more than 50 battles against the state security forces.

But for the past four years, the 38-year-old father of two has been biding his time in a military cantonment in a remote part of western Nepal as he waits for the country’s warring politicians to decide his fate.

Magar is one of thousands of former fighters in the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) still living in UN-monitored cantonments set up across the country after the war ended in 2006.

The arrangement was intended as a temporary solution pending a merger of the PLA and the national army.

But it has dragged on because the Maoists, now the main opposition party, and their political rivals have been unable to reach agreement on the issue.

The former fighters are free to leave whenever they want, and thousands have drifted away in the intervening years, ditching their PLA uniforms to return home to their families.... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100907com6.html