Nepal

Nepal's King Prithvi Narayan Shah's famous ‘Yam between two boulders’ quote reflects the great understanding of Nepal's security dilemma, even as far back as the 18th century. 1 This has remained a cornerstone of Nepal's foreign policy to date, primarily driven by Nepal's geographic location. 2 Shah understood well that Nepal would always remain insecure vis-à-vis its powerful neighbours, that is, China and India, and urged the need to keep refining, adapting and adjusting Nepal's foreign policy in order to deal with its powerful regional neighbours.

• Rohit Karki
• July 2013
• Strategic Analysis

The election commission has started making necessary preparations and the political parties are already out on the hustings. But the road to elections is not without hitches.

• Post Bahadur Basnet
• June 24, 2013
• IDSA Comments

The Baidya-driven radicals want to adopt the party line of the Second National Conference in 2001 when they had decided to supplement their Chinese model of revolution (protracted people’s war) with the Russian model (armed urban insurrection).

• Post Bahadur Basnet
• March 20, 2013
• IDSA Comments

The Prachanda faction has made an ideological shift from being a revolutionary outfit to a parliamentary party with emphasis on republicanism, and has signalled its friendly posture towards India by discarding the previously ritualistic reference to India as an enemy.

• Nihar R. Nayak
• February 18, 2013
• IDSA Comments

America’s removal of Nepal’s ruling Maoist party from the list of global terrorist groups not only recognises the party’s transformation from a “violent” political outfit to a political party committed to democratic norms, but also signals renewed US interest in Nepal.

• Monalisa Adhikari
• November 27, 2012
• Issue Brief

Failure to provide justice will significantly undermine the capacity of the state to uphold the rule of law and undermine the foundations of the new institutions that are being instituted.

• Monalisa Adhikari
• November 21, 2012
• Issue Brief

Genuine negotiation efforts, timely discussions, and broader participation of groups asserting rights based on identity are necessary to help break the impasse in Nepali politics on the issue of federalism.

• Monalisa Adhikari
• July 02, 2012
• IDSA Comments

Nepal’s Constituent Assembly did have some positive achievements, the most important among these being the integration of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the UCPN-M, although it failed to fulfil its other main task of finalising a constitution.

• Anshuman Behera
• June 01, 2012
• IDSA Comments

A modus vivendi that accepts the concept of federalism in principle as well as the devolution of administrative and financial powers in key functional areas is the need of the hour.

• Gautam Sen
• May 29, 2012
• IDSA Comments

Nepal has conducted a slew of political experiments since 2006. By inviting the Maoists into the mainstream and collectively deciding to dump the Constitution of 1990, there was hope that a new era of peace and stability would begin with the end of the decade-long armed insurgency. The Constituent Assembly (CA) elections of 2008 saw the emergence of the Maoists as the largest party—which was a totally unexpected and surprising outcome for the international community.

• Nishchal Nath Pandey
• November 2011
• Strategic Analysis