The violent Maoist insurgency ceased in Nepal. However, many internal political divisions are still hitting the country. Only twelve days after Martyrs’  Memorial day, when Nepal is officially mourning its people killed in various battles, the UMass Boston Center on Gender, Security and Human Rights organized a free lecture on the impact of the Maoist Insurgency. The February 6 lecture, held by Ms. Dyan Mazurana from Tufts University, also focused on the political stability of the state of Nepal with particular emphasis on the reasons for why many Nepalese Youth willingly join this group and this group’s role in contemporary Nepalese History. For the past twenty years, political instability has been a constant and overshadowing problem plaguing Nepal. “The reason,” according to Ms. Mazurana, “is that Nepal has not had a single fully legitimate government, capable of dealing with the causes of unrest within its borders, during this span of its history.” The trouble began in the early 1990s, when the monarchical government was challenged by every sector of Nepalese Society in a generally unified cry for reform and the creation of a constitutional government that was based on a multi-party system similar to most democratic states in the modern world. The monarch was forced to accede to this demand due to a highly probable outbreak of violent revolution by dissident factions – including elements of what is today called the Maoist Insurgency. Since that time, a multitude of governments have been formed, but none of them have survived for more than two years before being deposed by other political factions in Nepal. Needless to say, the welfare and national interests of Nepal have suffered as a result of this prevailing condition of general instability within the Nepalese government. In essence, Nepal is suffering from an acute case of political crisis due to internal divisions. The Maoists, otherwise known as the Unified Communist Party of Nepal, have been one of the organizations that have contributed to the chaotic state of the nation of Nepal. This group first came into its own when, in 1996, it became a splinter faction from within the Communist Party of Nepal by cutting its ties with its former cohorts. The platform of the Maoists has been centered toward the following points: (1) Revoke all privileges granted to the monarchy and its supporters; (2) End the unjust and wide-ranging treaty with India; (3) and Create a new constitution that eliminates disparities and traditional cultural norms that have oppressed Nepal’s ethnic minorities and women. The realization of all these aims, for the Maoists, is to attain complete control over the levers of power of the Nepalese Government and Army. The irony in all these goals is the fact that the women, youth and other disenfranchised classes, the target group of Maoist recruitment, are not included in the leadership of the Maoists, as its leadership is made up of men who have been actively pursuing powers since Nepal became a republic in 1990. During the decade after its founding, the Maoists actively pursued a violent insurgency, called the “Nepalese People’s War,” that it hoped to use to weaken all other political factions in Nepal to allow it to seize power and create a Maoist state. In the early years of this insurgency, the Maoists refrained from using heavy weapons in their campaigns to disrupt and weaken the Nepalese Government. In order to keep its ranks full, according to Ms. Mazurana, the Maoists have recruited heavily from the youthful generations of the Nepalese population, especially among females and minors, by appealing to their natural desires. To entice the young men of Nepal, the Maoists appeal to their desire to demonstrate their masculinity. On the other hand, young women are pulled into the Maoist Insurgency by appealing to their innate desire for liberation for the social conventions of Nepalese culture, which has effectively kept women in a labor-intensive and socially subservient position within their families. The Maoists also use the appeal of travel to the urban centers as one of its principal sources of attraction. More than 80% of Nepal’s population lives in the rural areas of the nation. The corruption and impotency of the Nepalese Government is also a strong point of attraction, as many young Nepalese have been victims or witnesses to government brutality and other immoral activities. These avenues of recruitment have been effective in keeping the Maoists a formidable force and have helped to transform the youth of Nepal – especially the women who have become somewhat more liberated due to their exposure to their Maoist indoctrination, according to Ms. Mazurana. The Maoists gave up on an armed rebellion against the Nepalese Government in 2006 and became a recognized political party participating in the nominally democratic politics of Nepal. Nationalism has been one of the key issues where the Maoists seem to win points among the Nepalese people, as most right wing parties dominating the Nepalese Government have the direct backing or support of one of Nepal’s giant neighbors, India. In 2007, the Maoists successfully used this issue, among other reasons for dissatisfaction with the right-wing parties of Nepal, to gain ground and take hold of the Nepalese Government by winning a majority of the seats within the Nepalese Parliament. After the Maoists’  outing from power in early 2008, the UN stepped in to mediate a peace agreement for shared power within the Nepalese Government between the right-winged parties that seized power and the Maoists, who had returned the role of insurgent. The ceasefire negotiated by the UN required that the PLA remain in containment camps and remain under the watch of UN inspectors. Ms. Mazurana discovered during her research that this was not so. The Youth Communist League, another branch of the Maoists, which acted as its agents within Nepalese society by continuing to recruit and act for the interest of the Maoists outside of the UN’s line of sight with the veterans of the PLA. The containment camps were filled with raw recruits and the non-militant branches of the Maoist insurgency. All-in-all the lecture on the Maoist Insurgency and its role in Nepal proved useful in giving an outsider a cursory understanding of Nepal’s political situation as it exists today. At the same time, it was also successful in demonstrating what a state with a shaky legitimacy problem looks like in the 21st Century. Nepal seems to be confined mostly toward its internal political divisions and has remained so for the past thirty years or so. The Maoist, on the other hand, provides the other side of Nepal’s problems. They are the agents who capitalize on the disorder within their nation by pursuing their political ambitions at the expense of their countrymen’s future. Together these two forces make for an unstable country that has lost itself in a cycle of uncertainty and disorder. The Nepalese people, on the other hand, seem to be the victims of strife within the political struggle as they attempt to live under uncertainty and violence. Foreign policy doesn’t seem to exist, as the situation is described by Ms. Mazurana, due to the internal divisions within the national politics of Nepal and its relative position between two giant neighbors – China and India. Nepal is a case of a weak state whose fate is in the hands of others as it relies on loans from the International Monetary Fund, UN Humanitarian Aid, and other forms of assistance from India. In my opinion, the lecture didn’t provide much else in the way of understanding how domestic politics can affect a state’s ability to conduct foreign policy and international relations. I have three grounds for this judgment: First, it established the fact that internal strife can be effective in subverting the legitimacy of the state. Second, it made it clear that a state which cannot uphold the basic mandate of modern governments can be exploited and plagued by organizations like the Maoists, who utilize the gaps in government to spread its influence and continue its determination to pursue its own political ends. Third, the UN seems to have proven itself to be a ineffective organization through its inability to evaluate the peace it brokered in Nepal and the transgressions that have undermined it. As a last word, one can say that this lecture provided an entertaining lesson on the challenges of managing a nation in the modern world amid internal problems caused by poor government.