Voices from the Field - IRC Blog

As the sun slowly rises over the pine-covered peaks, we continue our journey deeper into the Himalayas. Many exhausting hours later we stop in a valley with emerald green wheat fields flanked by white mountains. In dozens of villages in the remote Mugu district, like here in the hamlet of Shreekot, the IRC is providing aid to the many thousands who have returned after years of displacement sparked by the conflict between Maoist guerillas and the Nepalese army.

We sit down with a group of villagers. One of the elders, Dhana Saran, complains that despite Shreekot’s wheat production, the village suffers from food shortages, especially during the harsh Himalayan winter. 

Malnutrition is a major cause of death in Nepal and the mountain communities in the remote
Karnali zone have a long history of chronic food shortages and periodic famines.
Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC.

In this mountainous area, a very small portion of land is fertile enough to farm, my colleague Mohan Acharya, assistant protection manager, tells me. In other rural areas, medicinal plants and other cash crops can be grown to trade in the southern plains for money to buy food. But with the extremely poor transportation infrastructure in Mugu and the surrounding districts in the remote Karnali zone, this is not feasible. According to the United Nations, malnutrition is a major cause of death in Nepal and the mountain communities have a long history of chronic food shortages and periodic famines. The soil here is poor, food production from farming barely lasts six months each year and the area is often hit by droughts. The government is airlifting subsidized food to some of these areas, Mohan says, but it rarely reaches the people most in need. 

To help people grow their own nutritious food in sufficient amounts, the IRC has provided Shreekot and other villages in the district with agricultural training along with tools and special types of high-yielding seeds that can withstand excessive cold. The seeds can therefore be planted regardless of season. Crops include radishes, cauliflower, spinach and chili. In some villages, the IRC has helped start the production of apples and other fruit. 

Village elder Dhana Saran (left) says that Shreekot suffers from food shortages,
especially during the harsh Himalayan winter. “We need all the help we can get,” he says.
Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

“Clean water is also a problem in these communities,” Mohan adds. “To help prevent water-borne disease we installed a system for drinking water near the village clinic.”

Dhana Saran says almost everyone in Shreekot fled during the conflict. They are now returning to overgrown fields and broken houses.

To help the village recover in the long term, the IRC recently organized a course where the villagers were taught to write proposals for funding that will be submitted to the local authorities and aid organizations.

“Our village economy is very bad and the illiteracy rate almost 90 percent”, Dhana Saran says as we prepare to leave. “We need all the help we can get.”

 There is a serious shortage of health services, clean water and nutritious food
in Nepal’s western mountain communities. The IRC has helped people here restart their lives by
providing seeds, agricultural tools, livestock, essential household items and clothing.
In the remote village of Ludku, villagers are now growing apples and other fruits.
Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC.

Soon we are high above the village as we continue our walk to the neighbouring district of Jumla. The area is strikingly beautiful and still. After several hours I realize that I haven’t seen a living thing – not even a bird. The only thing I hear is a mild wind rustling through the trees and the crinkle of dry leaves beneath my feet. Each time we reach a peak, I find myself knee-deep in snow. The valleys far below us are springtime green. 

Suddenly I spot an old man and a little boy, dressed in camouflage fatigues, coming toward us on the narrow trail. We take a break and strike up a conversation. Seven-year-old Janak Rokaya and his grandfather Dhanasingh are on their way to their village a day’s trek away. Dhanasingh tells us that Janak’s father served in the Maoist army and was killed in battle three years ago. Shortly thereafter, the boy’s mother left, leaving the old man to look after him.

On the four-day journey from Mugu to Jumla, Mohan Acharya (pictured) and I must cross
several mountain passes, like this one at an altitude of 5,000 meters. The area is strikingly
beautiful and still. Sometimes we walk for hours without a single sign of life.
Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC.

 “It is very hard for us to survive,” Dhanasingh explains as he takes out his son’s death certificate, issued by the party’s armed wing, from a worn nylon bag. “We have almost nothing and we have seen no compensation from the party.”

It’s hard to find anyone in the area who hasn’t been deeply affected by the decade-long conflict. Even though the peace has been holding since late 2006 and largely non-violent elections saw the Maoist win a landslide victory, life hasn’t really changed for people here. Poverty is endemic and politics still frightens people in the countryside. Stories of local Maoist commanders, army officers and police harassing villagers for money and support are common. 

“We have trained people in human rights as part of our program here,” Mohan says as we sit outside a small mountain cabin where we are spending the night. In front of us the setting sun is casting its red glow on the mountains, signaling the end of the day. 

“Previously, people had no idea about the responsibilities of the army and the police. Now they know that the police need arrest warrants and that villagers can file complaints with the central authorities if they are abused. It is a start.” 

From the window of a small cargo plane filled with rice sacks and jerry cans, I get a close-up look at the magnificent Himalayan Mountains. The snow-capped peaks rise well above our cruising altitude and winds from the valleys below rock the aircraft with violent bumps of turbulence.
 
We have taken off from the town of Birendranagar in mid-western Nepal and are heading for Mugu district in the Karnali zone, the most remote region of Nepal. Hunkered down in the plane’s rear next to me, my colleague Mohan Acharya says that this area was also among the hardest-hit during the country’s long civil war between the Maoists and the Nepalese army.
 
“It is a very poor part of the country,” he says as we continue to bounce around in the turbulent Himalayan air. “Economic growth has taken place almost exclusively in urban areas. The rural economy has been more or less stagnant, especially here in the mountainous regions.”
 
There is a serious shortage of health services, clean water and nutritious food in Nepal’s western mountain communities. As a result, life expectancy in Mugu district is below 40 years, compared to 70 in the capital Kathmandu. Although the Maoist insurgency found fertile ground in these poor communities, the communist cadres drove tens of thousands of people from their homes in a campaign of terror.
 
“Both the Maoists and the Nepalese army were engaged in torture and abuses of civilians, and many people fled this area,” explains Mohan who works as an assistant protection manager for the International Rescue Committee in Birendranagar. “The Maoists demanded loyalty from people and those who disagreed with their politics were driven out. And there was also the risk of getting caught in the crossfire. Some people fled to Nepalgunj in the southern plains, others as far away as Kathmandu. Hundreds of people are still missing and are presumably dead.”
 
After the peace deal in late 2006, people gradually started to return after years of displacement. The International Rescue Committee came here to help people restart their lives by providing seeds, agricultural tools, livestock, essential household items and clothing.

One of the most isolated and impoverished areas of Nepal, life expectancy in Mugu district is
below 40 years, compared to 70 in the capital Kathmandu. Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC.
 
Engines roaring, the aircraft suddenly banks while making a rapid descent. Looking out through the window I cannot for the life of me work out where the pilot is putting us down. Then, barely visible in the rocky landscape, I see a short and narrow gravel strip carved into the side of a mountain. Seconds later, the pilot slams on the brakes and gives full reverse thrust. The plane comes to an abrupt halt nerve-wrackingly close to the precipice.
 
The only way to get to the villages in the Karnali area is to walk and Mohan estimates that our journey will require four days of hard trekking with few breaks. As we make our way uphill from the airstrip, we pass the ruins of a police station. The posts, often the only bastions of state authority in the countryside, were frequently targeted by the Maoist guerrillas during the ten-year conflict.
 
Struggling uphill, my eyes scan the trail for rocks and gravel that my boots could to cling to. Sweat pours down my back and I soon begin to feel the effects of the thin air, panting for breath with every step.

Her husband killed by the Maoists, Banchu Rokaya (second from left) is one of thousands who
fled the Karnali area during the Nepalese civil war. “This is not an uncommon story,” says
the IRC’s Mohan Acharya (right). Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC.
 
After hours of walking, we stop for a break at a small shack made from mud and stones next to the mountain trail. Banchu Rokaya, a 45-year-old woman with a wool blanket thrown over her shoulders, is serving tea with hints of ginger and black pepper. One of the thousands of people who recently retuned to this area, the woman and her family were helped by the International Rescue Committee with clothes, household items and tools so that she could repair her broken house.
 
Banchu says that her life was shattered three years ago when a group of men showed up in front of the house.
 
“It was the Maoists from this area,” she says, pouring us a second cup of tea. “They accused my husband of being an informer for the army. They tied him up and took him away. After three months I found out that they had shot him and dumped his body in the Karnali River. I was afraid for the safety of my children so we decided to run away from here.”
 
A year after the peace deal that ended the war between the Maoists and the government – and after almost three years in a camp for internally displaced in the southern city of Nepalgunj – Banchu finally decided to return.
 
“We couldn’t make any money in the camp,” she explains. “At least here I have a house and some land. But I had to start all over again; when we came back here, the house was damaged and everything looted.”
 
Banchu Rokaya grows some vegetables and makes a living by offering shelter and food for people traveling on this desolate mountain path. It’s barely enough to feed her family, she says. But her biggest worry is her two sons, aged 10 and 9, who were left behind in Nepalgunj.
 
“A man came to the camp one day and told me that he would take care of my boys and help them go to school. Now I know that they are working in someone’s house without pay. I can’t have them back until I pay 20,000 rupees ($310). I don’t know anyone who could lend me the money.”
 
Mohan, who is taking notes as the woman speaks, shakes his head.
 
“We can help this woman file a complaint with the authorities,” he says as we prepare to leave for a nearby hut where we plan to spend the night. “This is not an uncommon story in this area. So many people disappeared during the conflict. And so many people struggle to get by. There is too much suffering here.”

The sun has barely risen over the arid fields of Chediya, a village inhabited by one of the poorest and most neglected groups in Nepal. Known as Kamaiya, the people here are former bonded labourers. For generations, the Kamaiya had to work under slave-like conditions on plantations to repay debts that had been passed from one generation to another.Most of them remained illiterate and were never certain when, or if, their debt had been paid off. As a result, they remained in perpetual servitude. The system is deeply rooted in the complex caste system in Nepal which discriminates against groups identified as “untouchable” by higher castes.As we walk around the dirt track that runs through the village, flanked by simple clay dwellings, Virendra Singh Thaguna, programme manager with the International Rescue Committee, says that despite a government ban on bonded labour in 2000, life for the Kamaiya has hardly improved.

“Like here in Chediya, they have been given temporary land by the government,” he says. “But the houses are very bad and the land is infertile and unattractive.”

The bank of the Karnali River is just a stone’s throw away and every year the 4,000 people here are forced by seasonal flooding to leave their houses and sleep out in the open in a nearby forest. Poverty is rampant and many of the villagers see no other option but to go back and work for their former landlords for a pittance.

“The government freed these people without a back-up plan, Virendra sighs. “They have very few options now.”

The IRC has tried to make life easier for the villagers by setting up small-scale vegetable gardens and distributing household articles and livestock, such as goats.
 
Ramkrishni Tharu, a woman in her late 40s who lives in a mud hut with a straw roof, was released from her landlord only three years ago. During her years in servitude, she received small rations of food and rudimentary shelter in return for backbreaking work in her employer’s fields.

“We were often beaten by our landlord,” Ramkrishni tells me. “When we were finally freed I moved to this place. I cut bamboo and collected mud and the men helped me construct this house. I have very little money but at least I can decide over my own life.”

Ramkrishni makes less than two dollars per day, mainly by transporting heavy loads on her back for the local farmers. She grows a small vegetable garden outside her house and an IRC-donated goat is grazing in the shrubs. The villagers will breed the animals and share them with the community, Virendra explains. 

Although desperately poor, the community has seen many things change for the better. A large communal vegetable garden is providing much-needed additional food for the most needy.

The IRC has helped Chediya’s inhabitants organize themselves in a village council, which is
debating and organizing the development of the community. “This is very important for us,” says the
council chairman, Raju Choudri. Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

And with the assistance of the IRC, Chediya’s inhabitants are now organised in a village council, which is debating and organising the development of the community. Virendra tells me that its members, who have been elected by the people of Chediya, have just gone through an IRC training programme where they were taught bookkeeping and how to write formal proposals for funding, which will be submitted to the local government and aid groups.

“This is very important for us,” says the council chairman, Raju Choudri. “We have never asked for aid before, because we didn’t know the process.”

The council has just submitted a proposal to the local authorities. It is to fund a dam project that will prevent the banks of the river from overflowing, Raju says.

“We are just too tired of moving.”

Purushottam Ghimire, 30, has lived in quiet desperation for most of his adult life. Surviving on humanitarian food rations, he is unemployed and unable to leave the confines of Goldhap, a camp in eastern Nepal that houses nearly 10,000 of the country’s 108,000 refugees from Bhutan.“It’s not a good or interesting life we have here,” he contemplates as we sit down over a cup of tea under a blue tarpaulin flapping in the wind. “We have neither Bhutanese nor Nepali citizenship and we are not allowed to work. All of us here have become inactive and depressed.”In the early 1990s, the Bhutanese government began expelling its citizens of Nepalese origin, known as Lhotsampas. Seen as a demographic and cultural threat, the authorities stripped them of their citizenship and drove them from their homes in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. They now live in seven refugee camps in Nepal’s eastern Jhapa district.As another cup of tea is served, Purushottam tells me that he was 15 years old when his family was driven out of their home in southern Bhutan. He still remembers the harassment and abuse they suffered at the hands of the authorities before they were expelled.“We were threatened by the Bhutanese army many times before they finally chased us out,” he recalls. “They said that Bhutan was their country, not ours. And if we didn’t leave they said that they would set fire to our house at night while we were asleep. Soon after, they torched some of the nearby houses and we decided to leave for good.”

The camp is gloomy, its pathways muddy and the majority of the inhabitants are squatting under plastic sheeting after an accidental fire roared through Goldhap a month ago. Most of the refugee homes were destroyed along with a camp school. All that remain is a veritable forest of concrete pillars and charred wooden planks. The International Rescue Committee helped with hygiene kits, clothing and emergency supplies after the disaster.

On 1 March, a fire at the Goldhap camp destroyed nearly 1,300 out of 1,500 houses. All that remain
are concrete pillars and charred wooden planks. “The fire just added to our desperation,”
Purushottam Ghimire says. Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC.

“The fire just added to our desperation,” Purushottam says. “Under normal circumstances, it’s hard enough to survive. Since we can’t work, money is always a problem. If someone in the family gets sick or there are any other unforeseen costs, we have a big problem.”

Prohibited from working, some refugees have the possibility to volunteer as teachers and health workers in the camp. For this they are paid what is called incentives, which is lower than a normal salary. Most refugees, however, just kill time, Purushottam tells me.

“Sometimes people leave the camp and find small jobs in the local informal sector. But most of the time we play cards, drink homemade alcohol and wait for humanitarian rations.”

Despite these dire conditions, Bhutan has not allowed a single refugee to return and no prospects for a solution are in sight. Recognizing the predicament of the refugees, several western governments have pledged to resettle the Bhutanese, with the United States offering to receive about 60,000, which is almost half of them. In addition, thousands of refugees will get the chance to resettle in Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway.

Once they reach the United States, the IRC is one of nine humanitarian organizations that will resettle the Bhutanese across the country, helping them find housing, employment and access to English language instruction and health services. But since the announcement of the resettlement offer, tensions in the camps have been building because of rumours and misinformation about the nature of the offer itself. Some of the refugees also tell me that they have been intimidated by groups militantly opposed to resettlement who insist that the only acceptable solution is return to Bhutan.

“But we hope that the tension will ease as the resettlement applications are growing,” says Hari Adhikari, another of the camp inhabitants I meet outside the Goldhap school. “Of course we all want to go back to Bhutan – some of us have property that we had to leave behind – but the government will never take us back.”

Before I came here, Christine Petrie, the deputy vice president of resettlement with the International Rescue Committee, told me that resettlement in a third country is typically the very last option. But that for the Bhutanese, there is simply no other solution.

Purushottam Ghimire agrees. He has already applied for resettlement in the United States along with his family of five. Although the thought of never seeing his home country again is saddening, Purushottam says he is very eager to go. At the same time, he has no illusions that life in a new country will be easy.

“It will be very hard and a lot of competition for jobs,” Purushottam predicts. “I have no idea what life in the United States will be like, but I have to try. I can’t go on living like this.”

The Indian-built jeep struggles to negotiate the steep and muddy path leading to the village of Dhuseni in eastern Nepal. The track winds though a landscape of majestic hills and terraces lined with tea, the major crop here. Only a few kilometres away, across the border with India, lie the famous tea plantations of Darjeeling. We pass women in colourful saris carrying large baskets with tea leaves across rickety bamboo bridges straddling fast-flowing streams.
 
But the beautiful landscape sits in stark contrast to the realities of life here. Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, is only slowly recovering from the civil war which rocked this small Himalayan nation for ten years. Like many other rural parts of country, this area was a hotbed for the communist insurgency that pitted Maoist guerrillas against the Nepalese army.
 
Many of those who fought on both sides were under the age of 18 and after the peace accords, signed in late 2006, the International Rescue Committee came here to support the former child combatants as they began their difficult transition to civilian life. Because most of them had been unable to attend school or get a job, the IRC launched programs here and in other parts of Nepal to provide the former child soldiers with schooling or vocational training.
 
“This is especially important now, since many of them risk being re-recruited into the Maoist army,” says the IRC’s field manager Chandra Nath Sapkota, as our vehicle slowly makes its way higher into the hills. “They also risk being recruited for underpaid and dangerous work in the Gulf states, the Middle East or Southeast Asia.”
 
Chandra says that children served not only as fighters but also as porters, messengers and spies or took part in cultural and indoctrination programmes. They often joined the rebel movement - sometimes as young as nine years old - initially as entertainers and political workers, but later ended up in its armed wing.
 
Although the villagers in Dhuseni have been understanding about the plight of the former child soldiers, some communities have been less welcoming. Chandra tells me that the IRC supports youth groups that perform street plays explaining how many children were pressured or lured into the armed groups. And asking communities to give them a chance to reintegrate.
 
“Many of the former child combatants suffer from trauma and stress and require psychosocial support,” Chandra says. “The message of the street plays is that the children are victims of the war and that the communities must help them get back to normal again.”
 
We pull up in front of Dhuseni’s only store, a small shack selling mainly instant noodles and wash detergent, and a group of villagers quickly gather around the vehicle. The surrounding hills are dotted with women picking tea and goats graze freely in the shrubs. The Maoist party flag, emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, flaps on a bamboo pole marking the village entrance. There are still a lot of Maoist supporters here, according to the store’s owner, Rakesh Basnet.
 
“Others are just too afraid to say that they don’t agree with their politics or methods,” he adds.I sit down with 19-year-old Padam on the lawn outside the village school. He tells me that he joined the Maoists in 2003 when he was only 14 years old.
 
“I was being harassed by the police a lot because they suspected us of sympathising with the Maoists,” he said. “So in the end I thought that I might as well join them.”
 
“It was very hard. We fought a lot but I was brave. One time we were attacking a group of army soldiers over there,” he said, pointing at one of the surrounding hills. “Someone threw a grenade and I got shrapnel in my face. My left eye was destroyed.”
 
Like many other in the Maoist army, Padam stayed with his family throughout the conflict.
 
“When we came down from the mountains after a raid or a patrol, we would send our sentries out first, in civilian clothes. They were checking that the police or the army wasn’t around,” Padam says. “Then we would eat and sleep in our homes.”
 
Store owner Rakesh Basnet shakes his head when I ask him what life was like here during the war.
 
“There was so much fighting,” he says. “One time, a couple of years ago, 15 rebels and two government soldiers died in a clash here.”
 
“The guerrillas forced us to give them transport, lodging and food,” he continues. “They still control a lot of things here. Whenever they have a political rally we are forced to attend, even if we are busy working.”
 
Padam and a dozen other former child soldiers have just graduated from an IRC course in electrical wiring. They are among 1,400 former child soldiers and other vulnerable children across Nepal that the IRC is helping to go back to school or enrol in vocational training programs.
 
“We are confident that most of them will be able to find work, because the government has promised to soon provide electricity to this and other surrounding villages,” says Rabindra Gyawali, the IRC’s child protection officer here. “All the houses in this area need to be wired and hooked up to the main lines.”
 
Padam is positive about his future as a civilian. He shows me his new tool kit and tells me that the training has given him more confidence.
 
“I missed most of my schooling so I was very happy to learn a trade,” he says. “I have swapped my rifle for tools.”