By DAMAKANT JAYSHI
July 2, 2007: “The verification teams are fully UN – led by UNMIN arms monitors, with UNICEF child protection officers and UNDP registration personnel,” said UNMIN spokesperson Kieran Dwyer, while disputing media reports on disqualification of Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighters.

May 9, 2009: “The verification exercise was discussed in the regular meetings of the Joint Monitoring Coordination Committee (JMCC). The JMCC, including the Nepal Army, was satisfied with the outcome and signed off on it,” UNMIN chief Karin Landgren, in an interview to myrepublica.com.

How times have changed!

There was a time when the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) wanted to present its verification work as independent and not involving the Nepal Army (NA). Now, after the Videogate, which has raised a big question over the functioning and competence (if not its neutrality) of the UN special mission, it is trying to give an impression that the political parties and the NA were somehow involved in the verification.

But was any member of the political party or NA part of the UN verification team? Nope.

Here’s an incident that is timely and worthwhile to recall.

When verification results of Chulachuli cantonment, Ilam, were given to the CPN (Maoist), they raised a hue and cry and questioned the UN agency’s method of verification, besides casting aspersions on its absolute neutrality.

The pressure mounted by the Maoist leadership forced the UN´s special mission to carry out re-verification of disqualified PLA combatants. The number of ‘qualified’ combatants increased after the re-verification. The deduction in the number of those deemed “disqualified” was reached despite “using the exact criteria” (words used by UNMIN website) agreed by the parties to the monitoring agreement.

So we already have a history of re-verification.

There is no way we can accept the ‘verified’ 19,602 PLA soldiers. That number is fake and highly inflated, as the Videogate has proved. Landgren is right in pointing out that re-verification will be time-consuming.

Post-Videogate, we need to zero in on actual number of Maoist PLA. If the Maoist chairman doesn’t identify 7000-8,000 real PLA, let us have re-verification. The Maoists should return the extra money that each of the fake combatants was given.
There’s no way this nation can approve this four- to five-fold inflated number. We need another verification. But can UNMIN do it? Given its performance during the verification, very few will go for it.

I suggest a team comprising arms expert from one of the Scandinavian countries (most of which have soft corner for the Maoists), Japan (as strictly neutral Asian country) and the United Kingdom (one of the permanent Security Council members) conduct the re-verification.

One of the Maoist ministers, Janardan Sharma, has ruled out another verification. This is not surprising. And why will the Maoists go for another verification? The money that comes in the name of PLA fighters is too good to leave.

The only way we can avoid re-verification is if the Chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) Pushpa Kamala Dahal points out the real 7,000-8,000 PLA combatants, as he claimed on the Shaktikhor video of January 2, 2008.

Dahal not only has to identify the real PLA combatants, the party has to return the extra money to the state that it took in the name of the PLA. Let me do a little math here. If the number of real PLA is around 7,500, the amount the party has to return to state coffers is at least Rs 500,000,000. I arrived at this amount by multiplying the monthly amount of Rs 3,000 for each extra combatant, that is, 12,100 (UNMIN ‘verified’ 19600-7500) for the first nine months between December 27, 2007 (when the verification results were published) and September 2008 (when the Budget was announced). Add to that a raise of Rs 2000 for each of the fake combatants announced by Finance Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai in that budget. The amount does not include the cost of rations for the combatants.

This amount belongs to the people and not to the fake 12,100 PLA combatants. If we remember what Dahal said in the video tape, a part of this amount was to be used to buy weapons for capturing the state.

The political parties which are negotiating the shape of the next government may be too busy to grill the Maoists on their doublespeak and their nefarious designs. The greed for power may blind them yet again. They should read some of the comments that appear in myrepublica.com which make it clear that the people seem to condone the Maoists’ actions simply because they see the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML as good-for-nothing, power-hungry and corrupt parties.

The image of these parties forces these people to ignore daylight robbery of the state fund and violent acts of the Maoists, let alone their murderous past.

One great service the non-Maoist parties can do to the nation is by making the Maoists pay for their betrayal of the peace process.

The way forward is only if the Maoists come clean. It is up to them how they can prove their commitment to multi-party competitive democracy, rule of law and writing of the new constitution.

One way to start is an apology to the nation by the Maoist chairman. Sadly, he continues to act as if Videogate happened on alien land. This perhaps will make up for his utter lack of sensitivity to the families whose near and dear ones were murdered by his men, both during the 10-year old conflict and after Jana Andolan II.
Courtesy: Myrepublica