Streets of Kathmandu

The streets of Kathmandu are dirty. The brown stew smooshed under foot and hoof and tire stinks of rot and feces. In Nepal it is illegal to harm a cow in any way, so they roam the streets, mooing cranky moos, staring blankly into the careening stream of motorbikes, taxis, motorbikes, buses, cars, bikes, students in uniforms, ladies in saris, motorbikes, whole families on motorbikes, taxis, me; covered in soot and smut from diesel exhaust. Both sides of almost every street are confined by tall brick walls, topped with even higher spikes or bars or shards of glass. When I first arrived the uncared-for chaos of public life felt oppressive and unwelcoming. It still does. But in the weeks since it’s become clear that the real life of Kathmandu happens off the lawless roads, down any winding path, around any corner, inside any gate. It often goes from the worst place ever to the best and most beautiful in under five minutes.

Almost everyone I have encountered in their personal spaces and communities are proud and gracious, and often take better care of me than anyone outside my family. The spaces outside and in between are left to the dirty dogs, skinny cows, and marauding mini-mobs of the camouflaged Armed Police Force swinging their weapons with familiar ease, seeming like an alien, invading force on the streets of their own country.

Kathmandu is far from being a war zone, but there are machine gun turrets about every 100 meters, guarding banks, houses, barracks, embassies, the old royal palace, the new politicians, the old politicians, and many other things, who knows what. Vicious looking razor wire, barbed wire, broken glass, and other means of slicing flesh uncoil across the tops of walls that line the spaces between the turrets, and armed men stand watch throughout the day and night.


Kathmandu is coming off 10 years of the ‘People’s War’ between the Maoists and the state security forces. The Maoists waged this war in the countryside, appealing to the discrimination suffered in the caste system and the material and social disparity that has plagued Nepal for generations. Both sides committed atrocities, with the Maoists abducting thousands of children to become child soldiers, and the army disappearing, torturing, raping and killing thousands more. The first phase of this fight was won by the Maoist party, and after landslide elections in 2006 the stars of that battle are now legitimately in power, negotiating deals with their former enemies inside the razor wire, outside of public view.

The war ended in November 2006 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The government, an unaccountable autocratic monarchy for many decades, officially became a republic. But other than cosmetic changes like the removal of “Royal” from the names of the army and police, those in power, with the addition of their Maoist counterparts, remain pretty much the same. Many of the Maoists’ demands were incorporated into the CPA, including provisions for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) within four weeks, to account for the disappeared and bring the country back together.

Unfortunately for the victims of the conflict, the Maoists acquired a great deal of patience for justice and revolution once power was won. Any talk of the still-nonexistent TRC revolves around amnesty for war-time offenses. Both sides say that any attempt to hold those in power accountable will throw the peace process into jeopardy. Since they are the ones in charge of keeping the peace and also the ones in control of their still-separate armies, professed ‘fears’ of the peace process derailing are just blatant threats: amnesty or we unleash the hounds.

Apart from the amnesty provision, the draft bill is superficial and incomplete. One important group missing from the mandate is children, who have been raped, killed, abducted, tortured, taken from school, forced to fight and kill, deprived of opportunities for development and learning of livelihoods, displaced, and otherwise abused with impunity. I am working on a project relating to the representation of young people in the transitional justice process, and how child rights activists and young people themselves can advocate for their interests in the fluid and fragile peace process. Hopefully the manual I make will be repackaged into a series of stories and plays to educate and inform young people about their rights and roles in rebuilding the country.

Hopefully this will become available and useful to people before they fade into the background of the negotiations for the future of the country. Most people lived out the People’s War as faceless nonentities, to be used by either party as they pleased. A common story from the conflict goes that members of one or the other party impose themselves into a family’s home by force and intimidation, and the next day some thugs from the other party come to punish them through the torture, abduction, beating, rape, or killing of one or more family members. The interests of the people were irrelevant then, and without quick and concerted action, will remain irrelevant as the battle moves into the back room.

The government is making overtures in the general direction of Truth and Reconciliation, but as of now it amounts to little more than lip service to the national and international legal community and a handy excuse to delay investigations and prosecutions. The battle for power is still ongoing, impunity still reigns, and both sides pose a serious risk to those who deign to seek the justice promised. (See for example the story of Sita Tamang)

The people who have been living here know this; they recognize the familiar faces in power; they can see the local goons still patrolling their streets. One line tossed about by well-meaning organizations over the years is that the truth itself has power, and that may be true, but where actual armies are involved, the truth tellers need to be backed up by actual power, meaning economic and material protection.

Perhaps it is part of the culture, that people take care of their own and leave what’s left to its fate. Government convoys speed through the dirty, pot-holed, death-dealing streets. No mind is paid to make them better. No law is made to make them safe. If the government doesn’t see its role as looking out for the interests of the people who live here on such a basic level, its hard to imagine from where the will to address the causes of the conflict will come, and hard to imagine that Nepal is really so far out of the woods.

While it is very exciting to be here at this time in history where there is an apparent opening for real change, it is a bit discouraging to be working on a post-conflict project while the war continues, for now, behind the razor wires, and the people themselves remain outside.