Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s government demonstrated significant alacrity in defending China from accusations that it had encroached on Nepali territory in Humla district. The Nepali Congress, with no less ardor, continues to insist that the Chinese gobbled our land there.
To prevent the ‘China factor’ from splaying the ruling Nepal Communist Party’s already gaping fissures, top comrades have found a convenient ruse in the crisis in Karnali. If provinces need central intervention in such purely local issues as distrust in leadership, what good is federalism?
The stripping of the defense portfolio from Deputy Prime Minister Ishwar Pokharel has extended the diversion. Was Pokharel’s transfer to the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers aimed at appeasing the army, the Indians or Bishnu Poudel? Your guess is as good as mine. Pokharel, however, sees himself as having been entrusted with more expansive responsibilities. The logical next question is: Are Oli rivals Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Madhav Kumar Nepal really peeved or just pretending?
Externally, the equation is tightening. The Americans want our legislature to approve the MCC compact forthwith so that no future government would be able to wiggle out. Although publicly indifferent, the Chinese opposition is becoming more adamant in private. The Indians, unsure of the wisdom of enlisting Washington in their Himalayan conflict with China, want the two major global protagonists to duke it out in Nepal alone. But, then, New Delhi barely disguises where its preferences lay.
That’s enough to impel the Chinese to dig in their heels. There is a moral equivalence between a sliver of land in Humla and wider swathes along the Sino-Indian Himalayas. Since states big and small are equally sovereign, territory, too, cannot be differentiated based on size.
There has been no encroachment, Beijing has been insisting from the outset. Now it has produced satellite images seeking to prove the assertion. The Nepali Congress is not giving up. While training its guns on the ruling communists, the main opposition party knows the real target knows what’s being talked about. Concluding that the Humla dispute is New Delhi’s contrivance, the Chinese have candidly asserted that the Nepali Congress is a pro-Indian force. New Delhi may worry all it wants about how far Nepal’s premier democratic party’s loyalties have strayed from the land of its origins, Beijing won’t be guilted into doing anything it doesn’t want.
All this certainly cheers up our leaders. If the system collapses, Nepal’s post-2006 leadership can blame it on all the external contradictions that have accumulated since. Any secret letters that might have been exchanged with the 12-point understanding are not likely to see the light of day any time soon. Still, the Nepali signatories to Delhi Compromise II must have made a cluster of commitments before our regime changed. If the ambiguity of the enterprise is enough to bite India today, you can easily imagine the added disappointment of third parties resting on New Delhi’s guarantees.
In fairness, our leaders did try during the past decade and a half. Every step of the way, they negotiated a new compromise to save the preceding one just to uphold the sanctity of a flawed agenda. How long could the internal jugglery go on when the external patrons kept departing from the script? There must be a statute of limitations somewhere when it comes to violations of commitments long altered.
What will happen next? Nepalis have learned to live life as it comes. Who says politicians can’t do the same?
