Interview with Dan Smith, Secretary General of International Alert

Nepal's interim government and the Maoists have been in peace talks to end the country's decade-long armed conflict since mass protests ended King Gyanendra's direct rule in April. However, international groups and diplomats want the Maoists - who waged an armed rebellion against the state - and the government - a coalition of the country's seven parties - to sort out the process for disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) before the peace process is finalised. Dan Smith, Secretary-General of International Alert (IA), a British peace-building NGO, was in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, last week to share his expertise. He spoke with IRIN about the DDR and Nepal’s post-conflict situation: QUESTION: What kind of work is International Alert actually involved in? ANSWER: We are a peace-building NGO working in over 20 countries. We particularly specialise in working in countries which are in conflict or recovering from violent conflict or at risk of violent conflict. We work with local organisations to strengthen their capacity essentially to prepare and contribute for peace, mainly to do with dialogue, research, assessing the situation. We are also working on issues to do with public opinion and independence from place to place. DDR is one aspect we are working in. Q: Local peace experts say that Nepal is running out of time for the DDR process. A: Whenever you start the process of planning and discussing you could always think that it was a good idea that you could have started before. I wouldn’t really say that it is too late now to begin. I simply say that there is no point in putting off the discussion on planning. In fact the process of discussing on DDR is itself a discussion that can bring both sides together. That discussion is itself a part of the peace process. Q: How do you see the peace process developing in Nepal? A: The peace process is at a very early stage now. If you take any other example internationally you will find very uneven progress in a peace process. So, people need patience and determination in equal measure and you have to all the time be pushing forward not to be too disappointed when there is a roadblock. If you keep the momentum growing, you will go through. But it is a complicated process and time-consuming one. Q: There are reasons to believe that international DDR missions are already here or arriving in the country soon. What can the Nepalese expect from them? A: DDR is a very interesting phenomena. It has many components. For DDR to be successful it needs not just a good disarmament and demobilisation programme but also a need for a good economic programme. There also needs to be a decision taken by Nepal about, for example, how big its armed forces should be when peace is finally achieved. That number is likely to be smaller than the combined size of the Nepalese Army (NA) and the Maoists forces. You have to have a plan for bringing those numbers down. So for all these, the key decisions are of the Nepalis. But at the same time there is lot of information about expertise and advice that can be given from outside. You will probably need some sort of international observers to monitor the process and certainly you need international assistance for the social and economic managements of the process. And this is what the DDR missions will be about. Q: The Maoists are asking why should only they be disarmed. Is the DDR process good enough if it only disarms them? A: No. That is what I mean by necessity to fix the size, to have a sense of the size of armed forces that a peaceful Nepal requires. Sovereign states have armed forces, border and internal security. So what is the role of the military to be in a peaceful Nepal and how big a force is needed to fulfill that role? The size of the NA has increased during the war. A large army is an economic burden for the country to carry. There is every reason to want the army to be only as big as it needs to be in order to fulfill its role. The whole issue of management of arms and DDR is one which applies on principle on both sides. Q: Normally, how long does DDR take place in a country like Nepal recovering from conflict? A: Well, it depends on how you define it. In some circumstances the disarmament phase is never really completed because people wrongly hang on to their weapons. There is a very sad and regrettable feature of bringing conflicts to an end that quite often the weapons used in the violent conflict come into the society and underworld - into the hands of the criminals. Demobilisation can be over fairly quickly. In many cases, it can be done in six to nine months. Reintegration is the more complicated part. This is where the international community is only now learning that reintegration means more than training somebody new skills. It means the ability of the people to return to the towns and villages where they came from and find there a decent job. That is more than a short training programme to assure one. The peace process as a whole lasts for several years, five to 10 years in many places. So it is a long slow process for a society to develop a self-sustaining peace process. Q: Nepalese women and children seem to be invisible in the talks about DDR process in Nepal. Are they being totally neglected? A: When it comes to DDR there are women amongst them whether they are fighting or not. And sometimes DDR process focuses purely on those who have guns and who actually fought. But those who did other tasks, not necessarily military, also have a stake in the process. They also need to be looked after and reintegrated. The issue of reintegration of child soldiers can be an enormous one because depending on what age they were recruited at, they may have very little sense of life except in military or in the rebel forces. In Africa there have been children recruited when they were seven or eight years old and then they go through brutal experiences. So for them to reintegrate into normal life is an enormous challenge. Q: What are your concerns if DDR process is delayed in Nepal? A: If in the long term, four or five years time, you have an elected parliament that includes Maoists but also their military force - which are still of the same size with plenty of weapons - and an army with the same size, you both have an economic burden on the country and a permanent risk of return to conflict. I don’t think you will have political stability with that. If instead of having a DDR process, which is organised and planned, you just get the Maoists essentially laying down the weapons individually after leaving the Maoist forces in an unplanned and disorganized way, then you will have a country with a lot of weapons in it that are not under legal control and that do not belong to the police or recognised authorities. That means the crime could get more violent. It also means that if things go wrong politically in a few years time, it might seem tempting for somebody to start a new rebellion rather than try to sort it out in a peaceful way. So if you don’t have DDR, you essentially leave problems around that will come back to you later. Q: Local experts have accused the government and Maoists of not having a clear plan for the DDR process. A: Yes, there is no current plan on DDR. Of course, there needs to be one at some point and negotiating that is part of the peace process. NN/GS/DS