By P.G. Rajamohan
With the Maoist terror extending across virtually the whole of Nepal, other issues plaguing the country have tended to be brushed under the carpet. Under the shadow of this neglect, at least some of these have been compounded by the enveloping troubles, and the problem of the refugees from Bhutan is one among these.
During his three-country visit in October 2004, covering Bhutan, India and Nepal, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Migration and Refugees, Arthur E. Gene Dewey had expressed Washington's increasing concern over the deteriorating situation in the refugee camps in Nepal's eastern District of Jhapa. Quoting reports, Dewey said, "Nepali Maoists have infiltrated in camps," and further urged India to play a more pro-active role in resolving the refugee question before it turns into an intractable security issue.
Earlier, on June 2, 2004, Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) forces had conducted a cordon-and-search operation in a Bhutanese refugee camp, Beldangi-I, on a tip-off that suspected Maoists were holed up in the camp, and subsequently arrested six refugees for their connections with the Maoists. Security forces had also seized some arms from the camp, and also found many refugees missing from their designated camps. These missing refugees were suspected to have joined the Nepali Maoists' People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Over 105, 000 Bhutanese Refugees reside in seven camps in the eastern Districts of Nepal since the ethnic exodus that followed implementation in Bhutan of the Citizenship Act of 1985 and the subsequent nation-wide Census of 1988. Protesting against the results of the Census, which had identified a large 'non-national' population believed to be illegal Nepali immigrants living in the southern part of Bhutan, and thought to be quantitatively 'diluting' the Bhutanese population in that region, some of the 'illegal immigrants' were involved in an unprecedented spate of attacks on human and institutional targets in late 1989 and early 1990. These incidents were followed by the forceful eviction or distress migration of a majority of the Nepali population from the southern Bhutan region, eventually confining them to designated camps in Nepal.
Since then, the refugee issue has been one of great contention between the Governments of Nepal and Bhutan. Though a process for their repatriation commenced in 1993, there has been little forward movement over the intervening 14 years. After 15 rounds of Ministerial Joint Committee (MJC) meetings, the Joint Verification Committee (JVC) had categorized some 12,000 refugees. However, this process was also stalled when the refugees attacked the Bhutanese verification officials at the Kudunabari camp in Jhapa on December 22, 2003, reportedly for the 'provocative and derogatory conditions' being imposed for repatriation, and after refugees demanded that their properties be restored to them in their homeland in Bhutan.
With world powers and the international organizations expressing renewed interest in refugee repatriation process, the potential threat they constitute to the host state has also come into focus. Analysts suggest that such a threat has three dimensions: social security, economic security, and political security, and point to the following circumstances:
The inherent tensions among the various refugee groups or refugees and the local populations - competition for scarce economic resources - have security implications for the host country.
Refugees' involvement in organized criminal activities increase law and order problems.
Refugees' assertion and growing influence over local politics, and competition between political parties to win over their support could add to existing irritants.
The refugees' pursuit of their 'armed struggle' against their home state (Bhutan) will affect the relations between the host country and the country of origin.
These threats are, at present and at worst, incipient. However, the threat of an armed struggle by the refugees against their home state is growing visibly. The emergence of a Maoist party in Bhutan - the Bhutan Communist Party - Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) (BCP-MLM) - which distributed a pamphlet announcing its birth on April 22, 2003, and urged all the 'victimised' citizens of Bhutan to join a 'people's war' to overthrow the Bhutanese monarchy and establish a people's republic sent alarm bells ringing across Bhutan. The pamphlet was signed under an alias, 'Vikalpa' ['Alternative'], on the 'authority' of the Central Organizing Committee of the BCP-MLM, and propounded the traditional strategy of 'protracted war' as their party's programme to take over villages and encircle the towns in Bhutan. In a Press Release on June 30, 2004, BCP-MLM Central Organizing Committee 'incharge', Vikalpa, indicted the Bhutan King and his Government for their 'insincerity' in the repatriation programme and asserted that "the communal policy of the ruling elite has brought forward the maximum chances of clash between various Nationalities." Further, the Release called on 'all the freedom lovers' to join the 'New Democratic Revolution'. The BCP-MLM has also criticized the 'Sikkimization' of Bhutan and charged their Government of 'selling out' to India on vital issues. There is evidence that the BCP-MLM was set up with the active support and collaboration of the Communist Party of Nepal - Maoist, as well as Indian Maoist groups, and the language and content of their various declarations closely reflects the perspectives of their mentors.
Aware that the large number of frustrated youth in the Refugee Camps in Nepal could constitute a strong recruitment pool, the BCP-MLM has been insistently raising the issue of their repatriation to their home state. Bhutan authorities firmly believe that Nepalese Maoists are behind efforts to extend the network of Left Wing extremist terror into neighbouring states, particularly Bhutan. The Speaker of the Bhutan Assembly, Ugen Dorje, had claimed in July 2004 that 2,000 refugees had joined the 'Maoists Army'. The numbers may well be exaggerated number - and observers in the region put the realistic number at under 200 - but, given the recent trajectory of Maoist movements in the region, these developments are a matter for serious concern for a small and peaceful country like Bhutan.
The seven refugee camps of Nepalis from Bhutan, moreover, are located in the eastern region of Nepal, where the Nepali Maoists have constructed a strong base, and their power had been demonstrated in a major attack in the mid-eastern regional district Bhojpur during March 2003. The cumulative successes of the Nepal Maoists will certainly act as a magnet to a proportion of the refugees in the area, and this constitutes a potential threat to both the host and the home countries.
On the repatriation front, after the long process of discussions and meetings, both Bhutan and Nepal have agreed to categorize these refugees in the camps under four heads:
1. Bhutanese forcibly evicted,
2. Bhutanese voluntarily migrated,
3. Non-Bhutanese and
4. Bhutanese with anti-national and criminal records.
The Bhutan Government has tended to resist all repatriation because most of the refugees are of Nepali origin, and this is seen as creating a 'demographic imbalance' in areas of the thinly populated country, as well as a threat to the Monarchy. While growing international pressure has forced Bhutan to accept the idea of repatriation of some refugees, non-Bhutanese and Bhutanese with anti-national and criminal records will certainly be excluded, accounting for a sizeable and potentially volatile chunk of the refugee population. Bhutan also fears that the repatriated groups may be 'infected' by the Nepalese Maoists, and that they would include a significant representation of radical sympathizers who would bring the 'peoples' war' to Bhutan. On the other hand, Nepal, among the poorest and currently deeply disturbed, countries in the world argues that it cannot be expected to bear the burden of this additional population.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the major supporter of the refugee camps, is gradually cutting off its assistance, drastically affecting the support programmes, especially education projects. Growing unemployment and scarcity of resources in the refugee camps has led to tensions, even clashes, with the local population in the recent past.
Significant strategic threats also emerge from the current situation, compounding the many strong anti-establishment insurgent movements that plague the whole region - Nepal, Bhutan and India's Northeast. After Bhutan's military operation against the bases of Indian insurgent groups - ULFA, the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) - in the dense forest areas in South Bhutan, the country has just begun to return to a state of normalcy. Any significant population movement at this time has the potential to destabilize and endanger all three countries. Intelligence reports suggest that several youth from the refugee camps had been trained by the ULFA, and the KLO is believed to have been instrumental in formation of the BCP-MLM, and had mediated its contacts with the Nepali Maoists. There is a complex and unstable mix here, and, while humanitarian considerations demand continuous relief to the refugees in Nepal, the relocation of 100,000 persons in a region deeply afflicted by multiple insurgencies, at this point of time, cannot be expected to have a positive impact on the potential for peace.
(Author is Research Associate, in Institute for Conflict Management and this article was originally published in South Asia Intelligence Review. Volume 3, No. 19, November 22, 2004. -Ed)
