By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : Nepal’s Maoists, who waged a guerrilla war against the government for 10 years, now have an army with only over 19,000 soldiers, the UN said Thursday after completing its verification of the combatants.
In January, the new government of the opposition parties and the Maoists had asked the UN to monitor the arms and soldiers of the underground People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as well as the Nepal Army to facilitate peace negotiations and the election.
When the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) completed its first head count of PLA soldiers, who have been living in 28 camps since their party signed a peace accord, there were initially 31,318.
However, after the barracked soldiers were scrutinised to assess if they included child soldiers or illegal recruits who joined the PLA after the peace accord, almost 38 percent of the combatants were disqualified, leaving only 19,602 bona fide soldiers, UNMIN chief Ian Martin said Thursday.
There are over 3,800 women soldiers in the camps, some of whom are also nursing mothers and nearly 3,000 child soldiers.
At present, there are over 4,000 combatants in the camps who are either illegal or child recruits and should be discharged as per the arms accord signed by the Maoists.
The UNMIN has made the uneasy discovery that over 8,600 combatants, who were in the camps when the verification started, have disappeared since then.
It could indicate that a large number of Maoist soldiers are at large. They could still be serving the party or joined the mushrooming armed gangs.
With a large number of armed police and Nepal Army soldiers also at large after having deserted during the insurgency, there is a serious security threat, especially as some of them could be still armed.
The bona fide Maoist soldiers have to be merged with the Nepal Army, as per the Maoists’ agreement with the government.
This is a contentious issue with the Maoists themselves admitting that a section of hardline army officers have grave reservations about such a merger.
The discharge of the nearly 4,000 people found to be illegal recruits also poses a serious problem.
While the Unicef is helping to reintegrate child recruits with their families, it was not clear immediately when the Maoists would release them.
In the past, another UN agency, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal, had said it had documented incidents of the Maoists pursuing child soldiers who had left the camps and forcing them to return.
There are also fears that the Maoists did not put many PLA members in the camps. They have now been reassigned to the youth wing of the Maoists, the Young Communist League that was dubbed the Young Criminal league by the prime minister himself due to their growing tendency to take the law in their own hands.