Scott Wallick says: The last thing that I wrote about safety and security in Nepal got my webpage shut down by Peace Corps' Washington D.C. office.
Safety & Security
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
The last thing that I wrote about safety and security got my webpage shut down by Peace Corps' Washington D.C. office. Perhaps it's just coincidental that my predictions about the situation in the Rautahaut, Bara, and Parsa disctricts have mostly come true, much to the annoyance of Peace Corps' Kathmandu office. Not that it matters. The fact is that we Peace Corps volunteer are ourselves responsible for our safety. How can someone expect someone else to take care of them?
Let me explain the situation. Since December 19, 2003, when I wrote an update for my webpage titled Bombs Over Birganj, there have been around 18 bombs detonated in the Birganj and Kalaiya areas, all Maoist. There was also a large attack by "several hundred" Maoists on the Simara airport (the local airport for Birganj, about 12 km north of Birganj). The office where I work, the District Education Office, was bombed on February 18, 2004.
Fortunately I was not at the office that day. I was in Kathmandu finishing my close-of-service medical check-up. There had been two bandhs (strikes) called while I was in Kathmandu so everything took a bit longer than it should have; however, this is the way of Nepal nowadays and so one must just get used to the on/off tendencies of the country. One day things are on, the next they're off.
When I arrived that the Kathmandu airport on February 21, 2003, I checked in a went into the waiting area past security to wait for my flight. As soon as I was inside, a friend who works for another airline told me that because of a "security problem," a previous flight had been unable to land in Simara. He wasn't clear what was sure, but assured me that my flight would be cancelled. I waited.
Ten minutes after my flight was supposed to leave, an announcement over the loudspeaker said that all persons flying to Simara should return to the check-in desks. We were told that the flights to Simara were cancelled, as said before, because of a security problem. I had just found out while in Kathmandu that my office had been bombed, so I was a bit nervous. I called the Peace Corps' duty officer and asked them to do a little research on the ubiquitous security problem and get back to me before I scheduled my flight to Simara.
When the duty officer called me back, he told me that there had been a total of eight bombs planted along the runway. He didn't know what type of bombs they were, just that the army was in the process of safely detonating them. He also suggested that I wait until a few other planes landed safely in Simara before taking a flight back. I agreed.
So I day later (and after two other planes landed safely) I boarded a plane bound for Simara. The flight was rough and I was wondering if it was the weather or the pilots preoccupations with landmines on the runway. Once at the Simara airport, I was present when the minister of information (Kamal Thapa) was arriving. The first person to exit the plane was a fatigued soldier carrying an M-16. And so was the second and third until Kamal Thapa himself emerged.
Even I thought this was strange.
Back in Birganj, I stopped by another airlines office, where yet more friends work, to see if I could get some better answers about what had happened the day before. They told me that five minutes after their plane had left Kathmandu bound for Simara the bombs had been discovered. The flight time between Kathmandu and Simara is about 15 minutse.
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Early on the day I was flying to Simara, I ate some sekuwa just below the airport and then walked my way up to the terminals, which takes less than 10 minutes. As I was walked into the airport, the army folks were off to the side of the road where they are usually standing guard. There were three kids, about 14 or 15, standing on their heads with their shoes off. One of the army guys was smacking the kids' feet with a switch of some sort.
They waved me by without even asking for my ticket, which is the standard procedure. I stopped for a moment and asked what was happening. The army-man-in-charge-of-beating-feet told me that the kids were naughty. I asked why. "Because they don't have jobs," I was told. I thought about the kids, Maoists, and bombs at my airport.
About a week ago in Kalaiya the army murdered two civilians in their houses and then took their bodies to the jungle where they were buried. Family and other folks found out about this and went out into the jungle and found the buried bodies, dug them up, and marched in the main bazaar area in Kalaiya, putting the bodies on display and rallying in front of the army barracks.
The people called a bandh and there was some confrontation with the police and the army, ending with the army lining up and firing blanks at the crowd, injuring 15 people. This is how you when the people's support, right? Since December 2003 there have been two bombs at the army barracks and another at a police station in Kalaiya.
The number of reported cases by the Nepali media of the police and army killing civilians in Nepal has been escalating exponentially by day recently. Stories of rape, murder, and extortion are beginning to appear in the newspapers. Three youths were killed in Narayanghat on Mahashivaratri. A while ago in Hetauda, a bus conductor was shot through the chest and killed by an army man who apologized by saying he had accidentally aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.
After seeing those army men brutalize those three kids, I think that the army could not exist like it does without the Maoists, just as the Maoists couldn't exist without the army being the way it is.
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Somehow I forgot to mention this. Forgetting to mention something like this suggests something about how we all feel here in Nepal: safe. Yet it's a safety borne mostly out of complacency and a youthful feeling of invincibility that every volunteer here feels. I think that the the thing we overlook is that the people who we're working with here just can't leave the country if things get too bad.
Anyhow, when I got back from the training in Dharan, I was walking to my flat when I noticed a building about 200 meters from where I live looking quite a bit different. I though, "Oh, this must be getting demolished." Later I asked a local what was happening with the building and he told me that it had been bombed a few nights ago.
Even tonight I walked by that building. Bricks are strewn about the road in front and the one side of the building is mostly exposed. It was an empty, government building just sitting in a field — across from the the army barracks in Birganj. Why would the Maoists blow-up an old, abandoned government building that's across the street from the army barracks?
I guess because they can.
