NEPAL: Nepal's capital Kathmandu began staggering back to normal yesterday, after Maoist rebels fighting to overthrow the monarchy and establish a constitutional republic unexpectedly lifted their week-long blockade of the Himalayan city.
Scores of trucks began streaming into the capital carrying essentials for the 1.5 million residents who had only a few weeks of fuel and food left after the blockade choked off the city's main supply routes from the southern plains and from neighbouring India.
The Maoists gave the government a month to honour their demands to release their jailed comrades and to investigate the killing of their cadres in what they claim were staged fire fights.
"If the government ignores our demands, we will launch protests and blockades more serious than the present ones," a Maoist statement said declaring that the blockade had been called off following appeals from a "wide range of society".
"This [the blockade] was a test case which proved successful," said Mr Padma Ratna Tuladhar, who brokered two rounds of fruitless peace talks between the rebels and the government in 2001 and 2003.
Next time, the Maoists could create a serious problem, he warned adding that by imposing the blockade the rebels may have been testing the classic guerrilla strategy of encircling key cities after taking control of the countryside.
The Maoists, believed to control almost two-thirds of the Himalayan kingdom's rugged countryside, used the threat of reprisal over roadblocks and physical intimidation to enforce their diktat.
Analysts said the rebels had successfully demonstrated they could hold Kathmandu to ransom merely by threatening force and an astutely managed campaign of fear.
A longer blockade, they said would have made the Maoists unpopular with the people, who the rebels cannot afford to alienate as their eight-year-old movement which has swiftly gathered momentum, claims to be fighting oppression by the ruling elite. More than 10,000 people have died since the Maoist revolt erupted in 1996 in penury-ridden western Nepal and has now spread to each of the nation's 75 districts.
It gained popularity following rampant government corruption and injustice.
Nepal's embattled coalition government yesterday said the lifting of the blockade would help restart peace talks, in order to end a conflict that both sides admit could not be won through force, but provided no road map for that process to begin.