Shackled or unleashed UNMIN in Nepal’s peace process

When, in July, the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) was extended for a third time, the Indian ambassador to the United Nations, Nirupam Sen, while supporting a six-month extension, criticised the Mission for a "consistent effort to expand the definition of what Nepal sought in terms of support", and implied that UNMIN was trying to force on the Kathmandu government a political mission, one led by a special representative of the secretary-general, with the ability to use 'good offices' functions to mediate between parties. Underlying Sen's statement was a history of suspicion towards UNMIN, which India had harboured from the Mission's very beginning, in January 2007.

Over the past year and a half, UNMIN has played a crucial role in some aspects of Nepal's peace process. But it was also constrained in many other aspects by the fear and suspicion – on the part of Nepal's political parties, as well as New Delhi and Beijing – that the Mission would encroach on areas that should remain the sole responsibility and prerogative of the Nepali people. This fear persisted despite the fact that Nepal's political parties and India had already ensured that UNMIN was a focused mission of limited duration, one that did not include peacekeeping troops to enforce compliance of ceasefire arrangements but only arms monitors mandated with monitoring and reporting on compliance.

Even more than July 2008, it was events in November 2007, when UNMIN's mandate was first coming up for renewal, that clearly revealed the attitudes and sensitivities of Nepal's political parties and media – and those of New Delhi. At the time, the UNMIN leadership made a serious effort to push for an increase in responsibility in the peace process. This was a period when the future of that process was fraught with uncertainty. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had pulled out of the interim government, and elections to the Constituent Assembly had been twice postponed. A breakdown in trust had taken place between the Maoists and the other parties, and negotiations over the former's return to government and the setting of a new date for the polls were leading nowhere. There was discontent in the southern Tarai plains, which, in the absence of effective state authority, had become a cauldron of lawlessness.

In this period of uncertainty, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Nepal, Ian Martin, along with his former deputy, Tamrat Samuel, decided to assert UNMIN to a degree that it had not done before or since. In numerous interviews, Martin and Samuel mentioned three areas in which they thought they could be of help: support for the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (the CPA, the November 2006 agreement between the Maoists and the main political parties) and other agreements signed between the government and marginalised groups; assistance in discussions regarding the future of the Maoist People's Liberation Army (PLA), and the restructuring of the security sector in general; and advice to the police regarding security for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. Due to the sensitivities of all political parties and New Delhi, the government eventually declined to take UNMIN up on any of these offers.

Suspicion and resentment
In discussions with political parties and important diplomatic missions at the time, UNMIN officials emphasised various aspects of the CPA that remained unimplemented, and which had created mistrust between the CPN (Maoist) and the other political parties. But politicians in the old political parties considered these issues to be peripheral at best. It was argued that the Maoists had pulled out of the government and refused to participate in the election not due to any unfulfilled commitment, but rather because they were afraid that they were going to lose badly. The Maoists were responsible for a fundamental breach of good faith, this line of argument went, and UNMIN's efforts to draw equivalence between the two sides by underlining unfulfilled commitments on both sides provided legitimacy to the Maoist withdrawal.

Many leaders from the Nepali Congress and, to a certain extent, from the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), also felt that UN officials were acting with too much sympathy towards the Maoists. The feeling was that the latter had been successful in convincing UNMIN that the Congress, which controlled all major ministries, was deliberately pushing off fulfilling its commitments, and instead attempting to entrap the Maoists into a Congress-led political process, demoralising the Maoists and eroding their support base. In fact, this was the Congress's strategy. Many UN officials had become frustrated with the Congress's refusal to fulfil commitments, and at the same time were sympathetic to the Maoist socio-political agenda. To allow UNMIN a formal role in the implementation of the CPA was, potentially, to enable political manoeuvrings in favour of the Maoists.

Among the most sensitive of issues regarding the restructuring of the state – and one in which the political parties were deeply resistant to the possibility of UNMIN engagement – was the integration of Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army and the restructuring of the security sector. The CPA stated that a special committee would be formed to "inspect, integrate and rehabilitate" Maoist combatants. This was vague and open to conflicting interpretations. The Maoist claimed, at least in public, that it meant that all verified combatants would have to be integrated into the Nepal Army. The other political parties disagreed strongly, maintaining that some combatants could be integrated into non-military bodies and others could be rehabilitated into society. Their strategy for integration, which was eventually revealed to be more an illusory hope than a strategy, was to wait until after the election, in which the Maoists would have performed so poorly that they would have no political leverage left to push for their demand.

In this, the parties had a powerful ally in New Delhi, whose engagement and ability to influence politics in Nepal remains unmatched by any other external power. In the Indian view, after the political turmoil of the past decade, the Nepal Army remained the only institution that remained intact and stable; as the only bulwark against a possible Maoist takeover, it had to be preserved more or less intact. At most, the Indian establishment held that restructuring the Nepal Army could involve no more than the integration of small numbers of Maoist combatants into its lower levels. Allowing UNMIN any responsibility in discussions on the future of the two armies could lead to an overly radical restructuring and a weakening of the Nepal Army – leaving India to deal with the consequences.

UNMIN's push for a greater role also raised suspicions in New Delhi that the Mission was actively seeking executive authority in the peace process that went well and beyond its mandate, and that it wished to prolong its stay in Nepal – something known in UN parlance as 'mission creep'. After a series of failures, it was argued, the UN desperately needed a success story. At a time when most political and peacekeeping missions existed only in Africa and West Asia, the UN was looking to expand its presence in Asia. And UN officials, often used to direct involvement in the politics of the countries in which they were involved, felt frustrated that they were occupying a relatively marginal role in Nepal's political process. Although there is no evidence that UNMIN wished to stay on in Nepal indefinitely, it is true that UN officials felt frustrated with the limited sphere of operations allowed them. Initially, the extent of Indian power in Nepal had not been clear to many UN officials. As recognition dawned of this fact and of its own marginality, substantial anti-India sentiment developed within UNMIN.

Polls and rights
Underlying mutual suspicion were also fundamental differences over what political developments were required to make Nepal's peace process a success. New Delhi thought that the elections to the Constituent Assembly should take top priority, as this was the only way that Nepal would stabilise. UNMIN officials, on the other hand, felt that trust would first need to increase between the political parties, disgruntled marginalised groups would need to be brought into confidence, and adequate security conditions created – even if that meant a delayed election. But Indian diplomats interpreted this emphasis on delaying the polls to mean that UNMIN was seeking an expanded presence in Nepal, both in duration and in responsibilities. In fact, UNMIN's diagnosis was flawed. Given the climate of uncertainty between January 2007 and April 2008, when the election were actually held, and increasing public disillusionment towards political leaders for their inability to hold the election on time, further postponement would have only increased the fragility of the peace process.

The Maoists, meanwhile, had long reasoned that a UN presence was necessary to serve as a buffer between the Nepal Army and the PLA, and to provide protection to Maoist leaders after coming aboveground. And although they understood that a UN presence was beneficial to them in some ways, they were as opposed to any role for UNMIN in monitoring the implementation of agreements as were the other political parties. In particular, they did not want UNMIN to get involved in the integration and rehabilitation of combatants. Despite public pronouncements to the contrary, the Maoists felt that the presence of a standing army could be beneficial to them during the election, and so did not want to tamper with the PLA before it. There was also some suspicion of UN motives. Even though UNMIN has consistently maintained that restructuring of the security sector should take place according to the provisions of the CPA, some Maoists claim that the UN initially wanted to dissolve the PLA outright.

In addition to such strategic considerations, the Maoists were also opposed to greater UN involvement on ideological grounds. The party remained hyper-nationalist, and viewed the UN mission as an infringement on national sovereignty that would leave the door open to greater Western interference in the future. Another fractious area was that, although the Maoists have in recent years adapted to the use of human-rights rhetoric, a rejection on ideological grounds of the universal liberal understanding of human rights still runs deep within the movement. In this view, human-rights defenders are representatives of class interests that seek to defend the status quo. Statements from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in favour of Tibetan protestors have, for instance, increased suspicions that the UN and other liberal Western organisations want to use Nepal as a base for their human-rights activism, and wish to prolong their tenure in Nepal for this reason.

Both UNMIN and OHCHR have also faced suspicion and resentment for their work in supporting the rights of Nepal's marginalised, including by Kathmandu's political class, civil society and media. In this instance, the belief was that the deeper issues of historical wrongs against communities were an area that should be tackled through the political process, including the election to the Constituent Assembly. A related concern was the common perception, particularly during much of 2007, that UNMIN was actively seeking a negotiating role between the government and some of the armed underground groups operating in the Tarai. The government in particular was worried that any UN mediation would immediately provide these groups with a legitimacy they did not deserve. It is true that a non-Nepali advising UNMIN around that time was in touch with some of the armed groups, and advocated UNMIN mediation. But high-level officials in Kathmandu never pushed strongly for such an approach, and backed off when the government made it clear that they were not in favour of doing so.

While this issue eventually faded from view, suspicion over UNMIN's work with marginalised groups remained. In this, the attitudes of some OHCHR and UNMIN officials did not help. Many of these individuals had previously worked in places under blatantly tyrannical governments. These officials perceived themselves as working for the rights of the inhabitants, and against exploitative regimes. Such attitudes were carried into Nepal as well, where these officials adopted a simplistic view of Nepali politics as solely determined by caste, where a perennially oppressed population was pitted against an evil Brahminical elite. For the Nepali political class, civil society and media, fiercely proud of the achievements of the People's Movement of April 2006 and subsequent developments, such attitudes were patronising, insufficiently respectful of the country's political process and ignorant of Nepali political history. Moreover, the rise of identity politics had caused deep anxiety in Kathmandu about the future of the Nepali polity. Familiar notions of national identity were being eroded, as heightened communal tensions and violence caused fears about the fragmentation of the national fabric. In such sensitive circumstances, the UN's advocacy appeared to many in the Kathmandu political class, media and civil society as direct encouragement to the fragmentary tendencies of parochial ethnic politics.

Information is power
There are misconceptions about UNMIN's role, as well as resentments that arose as a direct result of the structure of the UN mission in general. Every mission needs to include sections dealing with gender and social affairs, in order to ensure that the needs of women and marginalised groups are taken into account. But such objectives were precisely what Kathmandu did not want UNMIN to get involved in, and thus it was perhaps inevitable that these sections would find themselves in antagonistic positions with the political class. And, as these offices were shielded from direct interactions with the political class, frustration with the Mission leadership grew. Meanwhile, a number of people in these sections, themselves frustrated with their limited circles of operation and feeling as though they were producing reports that were never going to be acted upon, blamed the Mission leadership for falling too much in line with Kathmandu's political class.

More than any other, it was UNMIN's Office of Civil Affairs section that displayed complete disproportion between its level of visibility and public evidence of the work it was producing. Perception of this disparity was widespread among the Nepali public, as it was mostly Civil Affairs officers who travelled across the country, meeting with a wide range of people. Indeed, outside of Kathmandu, perception of the Mission was shaped almost single-handedly by the activities of Civil Affairs officers, UN district election advisors and associated staff.

Under the terms of the UNMIN mandate, the responsibility of the Civil Affairs office (which has since been shut down, as part of downsizing after the April elections) was to assist with the monitoring of compliance with the non-military aspects of the ceasefire arrangements. It was to work closely with OHCHR, which was responsible for monitoring the human-rights aspects of the ceasefire arrangements. In practice, the Civil Affairs department, based in five offices throughout the country, travelled the length and breadth of Nepal, collecting information on anything that could conceivably impact on the peace process. It can be argued, as members of some diplomatic missions in Kathmandu did, that the establishment of this office could have taken place only through an exceedingly generous interpretation of UNMIN's mandate, in which even small clashes between political party cadres was interpreted as ceasefire violations.

It is likely that, during the initial months of the operation of Civil Affairs, the presence of significant numbers of international workers travelling in large vehicles with sophisticated equipment raised hopes, among local populations traumatised by a decade of conflict, that the UN would offer protection from the various kinds of violence. These elevated hopes were probably what led to the statement made by many UN officials that the Nepali people in fact wanted a larger role for the UN. The citizens' hopes gradually turned to resentment, however, as it became increasingly clear that the sole purpose of the innumerable visits made by Civil Affairs officers was to collect information for the consumption of headquarters officials in Kathmandu and forwarded to New York. Many of those outside of Kathmandu who met with Civil Affairs officers – journalists, civil-society leaders, government officials – gradually accumulated grievances towards UNMIN. They come and meet us when they need information, but are very rarely available when we call them up to help resolve political issues or human-rights violations, went a common refrain. Even if they come later and file reports about the incident, the report is never made public, and so is never effective in applying pressure on the perpetrators.

UNMIN officials argue that the mandate of the Civil Affairs section was never to monitor, but rather to assist in the monitoring of ceasefire arrangements. Indeed, it was tasked with feeding information to a national monitoring committee that had been set up by the political parties in June 2006. But when that committee was dissolved following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in November of that year, a new committee was never established. In addition, officials argue, Civil Affairs served two crucial purposes in Nepal: providing information and analysis to UNMIN's senior management, and providing 'good offices' functions in districts torn apart by strife. In the first case, the information collected enabled the senior management to make judgements and recommendations to Nepali political actors; in the second, Civil Affairs officers played a facilitating role in creating an environment of dialogue and conciliation.

While it is difficult to quantify the impact of the Civil Affairs reports as used by UNMIN's senior management, the perception in the districts of the facilitating role was minimal. In fact, it appeared that in the absence of a national monitoring body the Civil Affairs office proliferated, taking on a life and purpose of its own. Between April and September 2007, when there was little indication that a national monitoring body would be formed, UNMIN continued to expand its Civil Affairs office – to 31 international staff members by the end, with national Civil Affairs officers being hired right up to the election in April 2008. The opacity of the precise function of Civil Affairs, combined with its free play across Nepal, also led to discomfort among the neighbouring powers, opposed to international interference in their backyards.

In Kathmandu, journalists and civil-society activists began to raise questions about where all of the information on local-level political dynamics collected by UNMIN was actually going. Besides the secretary-general's reports to the UN Security Council on Nepal, the only instances in which information was publicly shared occurred during the weeks prior to the 10 April 2008 election, in three weekly reports on the political and security conditions that could have an impact on the election. It is likely that these reports even succeeded in putting pressure on political parties where it was needed. Overall, UNMIN displayed extreme reluctance in sharing information – so extreme that it appeared as though UNMIN officials, by controlling information, felt themselves to be exercising a form of power.

That hundreds of UN staff members were travelling across Nepal was clear to all. But with what purpose was less clear. A significant portion of the blame for this obscurity can be actually attributed to the political parties, who, by never creating a national monitoring body, were responsible for creating a situation in which Civil Affairs was unable to fulfil its core responsibility. However, the example of the three pre-election reports indicates that UNMIN certainly could have shared a much greater degree of information than it did, even in the absence of such a national body. That it did not do so only gave rise to unfounded suspicions of ulterior motives, of attempts to insinuate UNMIN into Nepal's politics to a degree not acceptable to political parties or New Delhi and Beijing. This, inevitably, only served to damage UNMIN's credibility.

Two years later
In contrast to the grey areas of its Civil Affairs operations, UNMIN had more success in the two core areas of its mandate: monitoring the management of arms and armies of the Maoists and the state, and providing support for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. However, here too political circumstances caused complications in the discharge of its responsibilities.

Regarding the monitoring of arms and armies, the fact that no major violation of the ceasefire occurred can be considered to be an achievement. It is true that it is difficult to measure the degree to which UNMIN deserves credit for this, as opposed to the leaders of the armies themselves; but the Mission did play a substantial role in the mechanisms created to separate and monitor the two armies. Before UNMIN formally set up shop, top officials – including Ian Martin and General Jan Erik Wilhelmsen, the chief arms monitor – played a mediating and advisory role in the negotiations leading up to the Agreement on Monitoring of the Management of Arms and Armies (AMMAA), in late November 2006. The Joint Monitoring Coordination Committee (JMCC), chaired by a member of the Mission, including members of both the Nepal Army and the Maoist PLA, met weekly and succeeded in creating a climate of confidence between the two forces.

At the same time, there also appear to have been occasions during which there were insufficient personnel to manage various aspects associated with the storage of Maoist arms and the consignment of PLA combatants to cantonments. When PLA combatants left their camps to protest before the election, and the Kathmandu businessman Ram Hari Shrestha was murdered by Maoists within the Shaktikhor cantonment in Chitwan during the immediate aftermath of the polls, UNMIN arms monitors remained unaware of these incidents. But the harsh criticism following these occasions by certain politicians and civil-society leaders, accusing UNMIN of gross neglect of duty, was not justified. After all, as Ian Martin repeatedly explained in public, given its mandate UNMIN did not possess any supervisory or enforcement capability. Its responsibility was only to monitor the management of the two armies by their leadership.

According to a former UNMIN employee (who wishes to remain anonymous), the UN bureaucracy in New York had decided to authorise the deployment of only up to 183 arms monitors. This was ostensibly because the Kathmandu government did not want UNMIN to have any enforcement capability, and wanted only a small presence in Nepal. Therefore, at any given time there were only between four and seven arms monitors at each cantonment, and often none at the sub-cantonments. But though this may be the case, the two incidents mentioned above were severe breaches; the fact that arms monitors became aware of them only after media coverage raised doubts about their vigilance and suspicions that there may have been any number of other breaches that went unreported and on which UNMIN did not follow up. There could also have been greater efforts by UNMIN officials to remind the parties and the public of their limited monitoring ability and the dangers posed by the loose cantonment regulations. When asked why there was non-stringent monitoring of cantonments, Ian Martin said that the Maoists had demanded that, in that case, such monitoring should take place in all Nepal Army posts – for which they would need thousands of monitors, which was impossible.

Despite some interruptions caused by the Maoists, UNMIN also concluded the verification of Maoist forces, finding that 19,692 out of the 32,250 personnel in cantonments were genuine combatants. There have been subsequent accusations that verification was perfunctory, that a much larger number of combatants were found to have been genuine members of the PLA than should have been the case, and that UNMIN deliberately delayed the verification process and exaggerated the PLA's size. But it is important to remember that verification was largely a technical task; according to the AMMAA, UNMIN was mandated to use only two criteria for verification: everyone in the cantonments who was born after 25 May 1988 and had joined the PLA before 25 May 2006 were to be qualified as genuine combatants. Furthermore, according to the agreement between the political parties, UNMIN was not allowed to use documentary proof of age as evidence, thus leaving verification teams the difficult task of judging age through physical appearance and probing questions. It is thus certainly possible that a higher number of combatants were verified than should have been the case; but given the circumstances, accusations against UNMIN are unfair. At any rate, all sections have been hesitant to publicly question verification results, and it is unlikely that even the more strident critics of the process will call for a re-verification. This is, therefore, a broad acceptance of UNMIN's findings.

Some in the Nepali Congress and the CPN (UML) claimed that there was heavy intimidation and violence by Maoists against cadres of other political parties before and during the election, and criticised UNMIN for not doing enough to publicise these incidents. Underlying this criticism is the belief that the Maoists swept the election through widespread fraud, and that the international community was guilty of complicity with the Maoists by declaring the election credible. Much of this criticism is misplaced, however, especially considering the fact that many of these critics had been extremely dismissive of UNMIN during the pre-election period when, for many months, UN officials had sent out constant reminders of the need to improve state presence and security measures across the country. Political leaders regarded UNMIN's reminders as a lack of faith in the government, and rebuffed its offers to provide police advisors.

Furthermore, such criticism also reveals a misconception about UNMIN's role. UNMIN was not mandated as an observer group to judge the quality of the election. In the context of the election, its primary responsibility was to provide technical support to the Election Commission through the UNMIN Electoral Assistance Office (EAO). Although the Election Commission and political parties were selective in taking the advice of the EAO, there was genuine appreciation for the technical support that the Mission provided in all aspects of the process, from recommendations regarding election laws to logistics. A separate Electoral Expert Monitoring Team (EEMT) was to assess, at various stages of the electoral process, whether the preparations for the election were proceeding in a manner that would lead to an election of acceptable quality. The five-person EEMT released five reports throughout the electoral process; these were not made public, but rather were used by the Election Commission and political parties for internal reference. It is true that OHCHR, with the help of Civil Affairs, monitored the election, but their mandate was only to monitor the human-rights aspects of the election – not to pass judgement on whether it was free and fair.

Too weak?
Twenty months into UNMIN's involvement in Nepal, most areas of its mandate have been completed. It remains, in drastically downsized form, solely to monitor the management of the two standing armies and their arms, all the while waiting for the government to take a decision on the future of the Maoist combatants. The chief concern of Ian Martin and his colleagues now is the lack of progress on integration issues, which means that there is no clear exit route for UNMIN. In order to help bring the peace process to what is being referred to as its 'logical end', Mission officials have again offered a facilitating role and UN expertise on the integration and rehabilitation of combatants. It was for this purpose that UNMIN pushed for a continuation of its political mission in July 2008.

UNMIN is unlikely to be offered a facilitating role in the political negotiations leading up to integration. It may have by now become largely peripheral to the political process, but the Indian and Nepali political classes (including the Maoists) continue to be suspicious of its involvement. Besides, despite public assurances that the peace process will be brought to a close in six months, the new Maoist-led government is in no hurry to begin the integration process. This has been a source of frustration for UNMIN, and many are saying that it should, from the very beginning, have been more vocal in pointing to the urgency of setting up a mechanism for the transformation of the PLA. Indeed, this view maintains, the UN should have accepted its mandate only on the condition that it had the ability to mediate and facilitate, and to have made the integration and rehabilitation of combatants a precondition.

Given the extreme aversion to almost all political involvement by UNMIN on the part of the political parties and neighbouring powers, however, it is unrealistic to expect that UNMIN could have been given more powers if it had pushed for it. Nor would this have been desirable, within Nepal's political context, where even limited engagement has led to so much friction. During the course of finding its bearings in Nepal, UNMIN stepped on too many toes. The political parties were constantly sensitive that the Mission's involvement could take control out of their own hands and lead to undesirable, unforeseen consequences. Although India had to accept a UN mission, given that no other body could play the crucial role of creating a buffer between two standing armies, it constantly bristled at every indication of excessive interference in its backyard. And the high degree of conspicuousness of the Mission even led to resentment among Nepalis. If UNMIN had been given greater powers, friction between it and the political forces would have been much higher – compromising, rather than enhancing, its ability to fulfil its mandate.

As a secondary actor, UNMIN's ability to perform its role was completely dependent on the political parties' ability to take the peace process forward. Given the constraints within which it had to operate, with its responsibilities limited mostly to technical issues, its tenure in Nepal has been a success. It now bides its time until its mandate expires in January 2009. Integration issues are not likely to be resolved by then, and it remains to be seen whether UN arms monitors will be asked to extend their stay in Nepal, or will be replaced by a body of Nepali counterparts. What has changed in Nepal is that the former rebels are now leading the government, and are also an 'interested party' on the matter of the integration and rehabilitation of the combatants in the cantonments. The Maoists today hold the portfolios of prime minister, defense minister as well as minister of peace and reconstruction. In the newly evolved equation, it remains to be seen how effectively UNMIN will be allowed to continue and conclude its mandate. This will depend upon the attitude of India, the Maoists and the other parties of Nepal, some of whom are in the government with the Maoists and the others without.

~ Aditya Adhikari is with the Kathmandu Post.