Nepali Congress President Girija Prasad Koirala has singled out a new breed called “conflict managers” for criticism. At the same time, he has alleged foreign interference in Nepal’s internal affairs in recent days, indicating that the United States and India have served to make the conflict worse. Addressing party cadres in the Congress head office in the capital on Sunday, Koirala said, “Because of the King’s regression and Maoist terror, Nepal has been caught in the games of weapons and dams and barrages.” And, according to him, this has endangered Nepal’s democracy and her existence. Stating that Nepal’s crisis has

benefited foreigners, Koirala has criticised them for sending dollars into the country in the name of conflict management and civil society in order to lure them. All this will lead the country down a wrong path, he said.

These charges, coming as they do from a person of Koirala’s standing and information, raise an issue of serious concern. But Koirala has not been the first to do so. Many have already spoken of foreign interference as coming from the very directions in which Koirala has pointed his finger. Weapons and dams, these are eloquent metaphors. Besides, his reference to conflict managers and civil society is significant. Indeed, conflict management has emerged as a cottage industry in the country and their managers are being rewarded with funds by foreign countries and organisations owing allegiance to foreign governments. A number of domestic and foreign conflict management groups and more studies and reports and programmes on conflict management have emerged within a couple of years or so, and almost all of them are inspired by interested countries, including those who could have played a key role in settling the Maoist insurgency through peaceful means. Somewhere in the capital, a foreign-aided Nepali institution has even started an academic course on conflict management.

Despite these domestic and foreign groups, the conflict continues to get from bad to worse, with no end in sight. And Nepali “experts” have jumped on the bandwagon that promises lucrative projects and opportunities rather than peace. Countries which call themselves friends of Nepal, if their claim is genuine, should refrain from instigating and materially supporting one party to the conflict against another, thus making things worse for the Nepalis, and from trying to take undue advantage of Nepal’s troubled situation. Instead, they will be rendering the Nepalis friendly help if they use their tremendous clout to nudge all rival political forces in the country towards accepting democratic norms, including, above all, the people’s right to decide, and arriving at a settlement within this framework.