NEPAL: Nepal's Maoist rebellion is said to be entering a new phase. Tom Farrell travelled to Rolpa district in western Nepal to meet supporters of a movement which controls large parts of the impoverished kingdom
It is a setting that seems as far removed as possible from Karl Marx's vision in the 19th century of sweat-shop factories being expropriated by the proletariat.
In Nepal's western district of Rolpa, a seemingly endless expanse of mountains is carpeted by pine trees, with the lower valleys sliced into ascending terraces of agricultural land.
The neglect of these territories by the government in Kathmandu has been a major recruiting tool for insurgents who draw inspiration from the revolutionary theories of the former Chinese leader, Mao Zedong.
According to Chakra Badhur Suvedi (62), a retired schoolmaster: "Before now, the people used to be angry because the old government prepared a budget but it never got to us."
He is standing near a hillside which has been dynamited. Men are hacking into rocks with pickaxes. Women, many with the bangles, nose rings and headscarves of the Magar ethnic group, strain to haul away baskets filled with earth.
A dusty road stretches away in both directions from the worksite, looping around the hills for many kilometres.
This is Shaheed Marg (Martyrs' Highway), a 91km (57 mile) road that the Maoists are building, largely with the manual labour of the villagers.
The district political cadre for Rolpa, a 50-year-old former teacher who calls himself Comrade Shaktiman, says that villagers spend 15 days working on the road.
They bring their own food, but the Maoists provide any medicines needed. At any given time, 1,000 people are engaged in road construction.
He adds that foreigners have also volunteered for work here; members of Turkish, Italian and Colombian Maoist parties affiliated to the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) have done fortnightly stints, although there are no foreigners here at present.
Although the project is said to be entirely voluntary, there are almost certainly Maoist prisoners involved, particularly those who fell foul of the "people's courts" set up in the Maoist areas.
Standing in the nearby village of Tilla, Shaktiman says that both of his daughters are in the Maoists' military wing, the People's Liberation Army (PLA). His 24-year-old son was killed in a PLA offensive last June.
"Three days before, he wrote us a letter saying 'In any way, I will play my part for the party, the people and the revolution'," says Shaktiman, without much evidence of grief in his voice.
A grave-eyed 25-year-old Nirmala Budha, oversees a Maoist-run co-operative shop in the village. With Shaktiman seated nearby, she answers all questions in a flat, subdued tone. Both she and her husband are party members and her brother regularly goes to markets in government territory to bulk buy goods that are sold at a discount to the villagers.
Nirmala points to a towel which costs 135 rupees (about €1.50) here, compared with 150 rupees in government territory.
However, the shop's selection is meagre, and apart from a few solar-powered electric lights, living standards in Tilla are near medieval.
"After the victory of the 'People's War' there is much for us to do," she says. "Our final victory is world revolution, so it means we have to do a lot of work." When the "People's War" was initiated a decade ago, the outside world paid little attention. The leaders of the embryonic Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), partly inspired by Peru's Shining Path guerillas, had proposed armed rebellion as early as 1986.
Later on, they were just one of numerous communist factions suddenly legitimised by the events of 1990, when King Birendra Shah conceded power to an elected government following mass pro-democracy protests throughout Nepal.
But the incompetence and corruption of the governments that followed created widespread disillusionment.
The first attacks on remote police posts in Rolpa, Rukum and Sindhuli districts took place after the Maoists presented the government with 40 demands for reform, including widespread nationalisation, rejecting all foreign aid programmes and abrogating treaties with India.
Perhaps aware that such demands were unlikely to be met, they attacked four days before the deadline.
A decade on, 13,000 lives have been lost and outside the major towns, soldiers of the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) have been driven back to their barracks.
The PLA, which often attacks in ferocious "human waves" that leave hundreds dead on both sides, has built up an arsenal of captured weaponry including M-16s and Lee Enfield rifles. It has also learned how to make roadside and pipe bombs; some of the training has come from RIM-connected Indian groups.
Says Comrade Bimal, a company commander in the PLA's Seventh Division: "A few years ago, we had training from the Indian People's War Group. We have since trained ourselves how to use the weapons, how to fight battles."
However, there is evidence that the Maoists may be prepared to renounce armed struggle. After the autocratic King Gyanendra, citing the threat of Maoist terrorism, declared a state of emergency last February, the seven opposition parties and the Maoists had a common enemy.
During a four-month ceasefire later in the year, the parties signed a 12-point agreement with the Maoists aimed at restoring multi-party democracy.
These moves have been welcomed in India, where there is growing fear of a refugee influx and a revival of the Maoist "Naxalite" movement that staged an insurgency in West Bengal in 1967-72.
But Washington has deplored these negotiations and the US ambassador to Nepal, James Moriarty, recently warned the seven parties not to engage with the Maoists.
However, if the Maoists decide peace talks hold no future, they may initiate the "final phase" of the "People's War", bringing the insurrection into the cities.
A particularly sinister development in the conflict occurred last February when upper-caste villagers organised by a local landlord went on the rampage in the southern district of Kapilavastu, slaughtering dozens of suspected Maoists.
For their part, the security forces have played into the Maoists' hands through their brutality.
Nothing is known of the fate of the 1,200 people abducted by the RNA since 2001.
In Nepalganj, a government-held city near the Indian border, a human rights lawyer who requests anonymity says: "When the armed forces have a search in the village, they have names from their spies and they will read a list off, one by one."
In Kathmandu, there is a widespread belief that if negotiations with the opposition parties fail to take place, the Maoists will attack the capital in force later in the year.
Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times, says that their latest slogan, "stand on the shoulders and hit the head" implies an attack on Kathmandu.
"Just the shock of having some major installation in Kathmandu, maybe even the airport where four or five army helicopters are destroyed, that sort of thing would be to their advantage," he says.
"And then the next day, they'd come out and say, 'Okay, now we're ready to talk'."
In the faraway hills of the western Himalayas, the fighters from the impoverished villages must feel they have come a long way in 10 years.