The Beginning of the Maoist Insurgency
After Nepal’s elections in 1990, many of the political parties situated at the extreme left of the political spectrum resorted to street demonstrations and violence. At the same time, the parties also established political organizations to contest future elections, most notably the United People’s Front. Then the UPF won nine seats in the 1991 general elections and became the third largest political party in Parliament. After 1991, members and supporters of the UPF were frequently met with abuse from the Nepali Congress Party. In 1994, however, the UPF split into two separate divisions and the Electoral Commission recognized the faction that yielded forty candidates for the year’s election. Unfortunately, the party failed to win a single seat and the unrecognized group renamed itself the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). This new party proclaimed that because the Congressional government had failed to respond the United People’s Front list of forty demands, it was launching a people’s war in Nepal. The Maoist Rebellion officially began on 13 February1996 and about 5,500 large and small actions are carried out in the following week.

A Year of Chaos
The Nepali Government launched a major counter-insurgency attack called Kilo Sera 2 in May 1999. The attack transferred tens of thousands of specially trained armed police forces to twenty of the nation’s seventy-five districts and over 200 people were killed within the first two months of the operation. A year later, K.P. Bhattarai is elected as Nepal’s Prime Minister in elections boycotted by the Maoists. Ten months after Bhattarai’s election, he is ousted due to accusations that he failed to maintain law and order within the war ravaged country.

25 September 2000: The Attack on Dunai
At least 1,000 Maoist guerillas attack the Dolpo District in Dunai and fourteen policemen are killed. The new Prime Minister, Girjia Prasad Koirala, wanted to send the Royal Nepalese Army to combat the Maoist rebels and the RNA is deployed in sixteen districts.

A Royal Massacre
On 1 June 2001, King Birendra, his family, and other relatives were attending their customary monthly gathering at the Narayanhiti Palace in Kathmandu, when King Birendra’s oldest son, Crown Prince Dipendra opened fire on the group. He killed his entire immediate family, his Uncle Dhirendra, and five other relatives before fatally turning the gun on himself. The remaining Monarch retreated behind a veil of secrecy and on 4 June 2001, King Gyanendra, Birendra’s younger brother and the only family member not present at the dinner, was crowned as the new King of Nepal’s Kingdom. King Birendra was extremely popular in Nepal because he was the King who gave his people democracy and Constitutional rights. The Nepalese people experienced a mix of grief and rage following the massacre and many still remain suspicious of King Gyanendra’s absence from that Palace on that fateful night. They do not believe that a drunken and enraged Dipendra could possibly murder his family. Even the Maoists were quick to praise King Birendra for his patriotism and liberal values and announced that the massacre was the result of a conspiracy. Immediately after King Gyanendra was crowned, he carried out an investigation of the massacre, which reported that Crown Prince Dipendra consumed whiskey and cannabis before gunning down his relatives. He was also angry about his parents’ choice of his marriage partner.

A Nepalese woman mourns the death of King Birendra

2001: Violence and Terrorism
Besides the Royal Massacre in June, Nepal faced an extremely violent and politically chaotic year. In July, Maoist guerillas attacked police posts in many of Nepal’s districts. They organized a Committee to unify and coordinate activities of Maoist parties and organizations in South Asia to spread the people’s war in the region. Prime Minister Koirala resigned and was replaced by Sher Bahadur Deuba who called for a ceasefire between the Maoists and the RNA. Deuba also wanted to begin negations between the two fighting armies. After the Maoists agreed to ceasefire talks, they demanded an interim government, a constituent assembly, a new constitution, and a republic. They also expect the release of Maoist prisoners and a number of them, including top leaders, were actually freed. After the September 11 attacks, the Nepalese government expressed support of America’s War on Terror and Government officials in India began to call the Maoists rebels ‘terrorists’ and also pledged their support for the Government of Nepal. In November, Prachanda abruptly halted the ceasefire talks because he asserted that the demands of CPN (Maoist) were not being met. Shortly thereafter, the Maoist guerillas carried out violent actions in twenty of the country’s districts. King Gyanendra called on the RNA to fight the Maoists. A State of Emergency became months of arrests, censorship, and suspension of Constitutional rights. India, aiding Nepal’s own War on Terror supplied the RNA with weapons and the United States, China, Russia, and Japan all expressed support of King Gyanendra’s efforts to defeat the Maoist rebels.

The People’s War Rages On
A new ceasefire began on 29 January 2003 and the Government agreed to remove the terrorist label it had put on the Maoist insurgency. It also canceled the international arrest warrants and the bounties placed on Maoist leaders. On the other hand, the US States Department officially put the CPN (Maoist) on its list of official terrorist organizations. On 17 August 2003, the RNA opened fire on a house in a village in the eastern district of Ramechhap and killed one Maoist soldier before taking eighteen others away and executing them one by one. Following the deadly attack, Prachanda issued a statement exposing the RNA’s role in the killings and refused to participate in any further peace talks. Fighting resumed and in October 2003, the CPN (Maoist) declared that they now had control of eighty percent of Nepal’s rural areas.

Young Nepalese boys suffer poor health and starvation during the war

King Gyanendra And The Absolute Monarch
King Gyanendra, believing in his powers as an Absolute Monarch, began a palace coup on 4 October 2002. He removed Prime Minister Deuba, calling him “incompetent” and incapable of holding the scheduled elections. He also dissolved the entire Council of Ministers and assumed executive power. King Gyanendra then postpones the upcoming elections and appoints a new Prime Minister, Lokendra Bahadur Chand, from the pro-monarchist political party, Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP). (Side note: Prime Minister Chand resigned on 30 May 2003 and Gyanendra appointed Surya Bahadur Thapa as Chand’s replacement. On 7 May 2004, Prime Minister Thapa resigned after months of protests for the restoration of democracy. Finally, Gyanendra re-appointed Deuba as the next Prime Minister on 2 June 2004.) On 1 February 2005, King Gyanendra dismissed the Government for the second time and declared a state of emergency and also took control of the entire kingdom. He instated a curfew on the city of Kathmandu and completely shut the city off from the rest of world. The state of emergency is still in place to this day.

Prime Minister Deuba

The Rest of the World and Nepal's Maoist Rebellion
On 17 January 2002, Secretary of State visited Nepal and met with King Gyanendra, Prime Minister Deuba, and other top military officials. This meeting was followed by a meeting between Deuba and President Bush in Washington DC where the United States promised Nepal twenty-two million dollars as well as sending a dozen military experts to survey Nepal and map out operational plans for the RNA. Britain gave the country forty million dollars and also hosted an international meeting how the Government of Nepal could defeat the Maoist insurgency. Amnesty International visited Nepal in 2002 and found that nearly half of the people killed during the people’s war were innocent civilians targeted for their real or perceived support of the Maoists. Over 7,000 have died so far since the people's war began in 1996. In October 2003, the fighting began again and the United States Government declared the CPN (Maoist) a threat to national security and froze the group’s assets. After King Gyanendra’s second seizure of executive power in February 2005, the US State Department issued this statement, “This serious setback for Nepalese democracy risks eroding even further the Nepalese Government’s ability to resist the insurgency.” James A. Leach, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific asserted that, “It is self evident that that countries and organizations with the most extensive ties to Nepal – India, the US, the UK, EU and UN – must work together to forge a commonsense agenda designed to bring the King back from an authoritarian precipice which could too easily accelerate a violent Maoist takeover of the Government.” ("United States Urges Nepal’s King to Open Democratic Dialogue")