In the rapidly moving crisis in Nepal, a few
lines are clear. King Gyanendra, with the
desperation of the failing despot, tosses a small
concession from his leaking boat. On the streets,
the democracy movement reacts with contempt and a
renewed determination to be rid of him. In the
hills, the Maoists watch, alert for signs of
betrayal by the seven political parties with whom
they signed an agreement last November to push
for a constituent assembly and a democratic
constitution. Nepal - the world’s only Hindu
kingdom, with a population of 28 million people -
is on the edge of a collapse, with far-reaching
implications for the entire region. And in the
shadows, the external powers, India, the US,
China and Europe, are pulling strings, trying to
exert leverage on this complex situation. So far,
their intervention has been inglorious.

In India there is a growing outcry at the part
played by the prime minister and his special
envoy, Karan Singh. Dr Singh was not an
accidental choice. The son of the last maharajah
of Kashmir, he had to flee his own royal palace
as a boy. His wife is a member of the Rana
family, until 1960 Nepal’s corrupt and despotic
hereditary prime ministers. And her niece,
Devyani Rana, is the woman for whom Nepal’s crown
prince massacred most of his family in 2002.
Dr Singh was sent to talk sense to a king intent
on hiding from the anger of his people behind the
guns of the Royal Nepal Army. Gyanendra’s Friday
night statement, in which he offered to hand over
some power to a prime minister and council of
ministers, was the result. He did not apologise
for his power grab last February, or the
brutality of his armed forces. Nor did he offer
to restore parliament or give up his control of
the army, and he made no mention of a constituent
assembly. Gyanendra offered, in short, a return
to the situation of late last year, when, having
dismissed parliament, he ruled through an
executive whom he could dismiss at will.

India brokered the November agreement between the
Maoists and the democratic opposition, so it came
as a surprise when Dr Singh and the Indian prime
minister immediately welcomed the king’s move. In
Kathmandu, the ambassadors of the US, Sweden,
France, Britain and Germany went to the home of
Girija Prasad Koirala, president of the Nepali
Congress party, to try to persuade the leaders of
the seven-party alliance to accept. As the
ambassadors cajoled the politicians inside,
thousands of protesters outside chanted their
opposition.

The democratic leaders did not accept,
recognising that the deal would leave them
powerless but facing renewed hostilities from the
Maoists in a war that, as all serious observers
agree, cannot be won on the battlefield.
Accepting it would have ended all hope of a
political settlement of the decade-long war,
which has claimed more than 13,000 lives. It was
a blueprint for greater bloodshed.

In the Duwakot armed police barracks, where they
languish in detention for defying the king’s ban
on peaceful demonstrations, a group of 20 eminent
civil society leaders issued a powerful rebuttal
of the ambassadors’ position. In a letter
smuggled out of their prison, the group, who
include one of Nepal’s most distinguished editors
and two of the framers of Nepal’s 1990
constitution, wrote:

"[We] believe that your governments’ welcoming
response to Friday’s address by King Gyanendra
was based on a misperception of Nepali political
reality and a misreading of the address itself
... Your reaction has needlessly delayed a
peaceful transition in the country at a critical
hour, when millions of Nepalis are on the streets
agitating for an immediate return to democracy.
This show of people’s solidarity ... deserves
more respect than has been accorded by the
international community."

The king’s offer, they argued, would return Nepal
to a state in which the king could dismiss the
prime minister the next time the mood seized him.
That, they said, would not be long coming: "We
appeal to your excellencies to also recall the
many times that the royal palace
has played the game of deception with you, and to
introspect whether King Gyanendra, retaining all
the powers as head of state not
responsible to a legislature, will allow any
forthcoming government to act independently. Your
attitude seems to be ’the king has given
this much, take it and make the best of it.’ "

Why did India and the ambassadors get it so
wrong? The king, as one of India’s leading
journalists wrote, is a despot on the wrong side
of history. But there is one external power that
does believe in a military solution to Nepal’s
Maoist uprising. After Gyanendra seized power, a
procession of US “security experts” visited Nepal
to urge the king and the army to step up the war.
Many Indian commentators see in the Indian prime
minister’s apparent change of tack the results of
the new strategic partnership between the US and
India, in which the US will give India nuclear
cooperation and India will become a US ally in
Asia and the “war on terror”.

The newspaper Asian Age yesterday reported that
“informed sources” said the Indian government
"was acting along with the US that has also been
very keen to isolate the Maoists and retain the
king as a constitutional monarch". In Nepal,
activists told the newspaper that New Delhi "must
learn to listen to the people of Nepal instead of
working out secret deals with the king and the
Americans". It is a message that the EU would do
well to heed. There is one way out of Nepal’s
crisis: the king must go and a full democracy
that includes the Maoists must be established.