Nepal’s September revolution: Observers debate role of Uncle Sam

The fires in Kathmandu were still burning on Wednesday morning. Smoke was still rising from most of the buildings, the Supreme Court, Parliament, the Singha Durbar, the PM’s office and the main secretariat, supermarkets etc. which were torched on Tuesday by mobs, taking advantage of the protests by Gen Z against corruption and misgovernance.

There was, however, no news about the whereabouts of former prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli, the CPN(UML) leader tilting towards China, or about any dialogue mediated by the Army.

Even as the dust settled, observers were left to wonder if the uprising was truly spontaneous or instigated. While the unprecedented killing of 19 protestors and onlookers on Monday — never before have so many been killed in police firing on a single day — directed people’s anger towards the government, could a spontaneous protest have led to the downfall of the government in the course of just a few hours?

What was the role of the Army, which rescued the prime minister and used helicopters to fly him and other ministers to safety but conspicuously failed to intervene and stop the lynching of policemen and destruction of public buildings? Speculation is rife that the Army turned a blind eye to the prime minister’s orders and, in fact, advised him to resign.

The humiliating photograph of Oli sitting on the ground in his own backyard, surrounded by gun-toting troops seemingly waiting for a helicopter, could not have been circulated without the Army’s clearance, these observers argued.

It is the Army’s role, said veteran Nepal watcher Anand Swarup Verma to an interviewer, which persuaded him to believe that the uprising was directed by a hidden hand. How could the Army defy an elected prime minister, he wondered aloud. How did the Army demand that the PM must resign — as in Bangladesh?

A known communist sympathiser, Verma felt the Army in Nepal has in recent years come under the influence of the United States. Some observers seemed to support the suspicion and pointed out that it was ironically Oli, hostile towards India for a variety of reasons, who had nudged the Army towards China and the US for training, war games and joint exercises, as India’s influence waned after 2015.

Former diplomat and ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar too on Wednesday posted on X, “Delhi sounds clueless when rest of the world sees the unmistakable markings of a colour revolution in Nepal. (The) timing is immaculate — Trump's conciliatory words to Delhi coincide with birth of a proxy regime in Nepal that could pose another foreign policy crisis for Modi Govt”.

He was not alone in suspecting an American hand, though this was contested by others. Several observers pointed to the massive grants that the US government had been giving to Nepal to spend on education through NGOs. Last year, USAID gave $85 million to NGOs in Nepal working in the education sector, recruiting and training ‘future leaders’.

The playbook seemed similar to Bangladesh, where a large number of NGOs were funded by the US. Countless young people were given fellowships to study and visit the US, and the pattern of both uprisings in Bangladesh and Nepal was similar — youth rebelling against corruption and old leaders.

Communist sympathisers pointed to Nepal’s higher ranking in social and health indices than India, and claimed that despite a dysfunctional democracy, the country was doing better in various fields. They appeared convinced that this was another US government-funded regime change operation — carried out by organisations funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

They also pointed out that unlike platforms like Viber and Tik-Tok, the American social media companies like Meta, Google and Twitter refused to comply with the government’s directive to register themselves and appoint a local points-person for better coordination.

“From Kathmandu to Cairo. From Jakarta to Belgrade. Everywhere you see the same pattern. Workshops funded. Youth recruited. Protests livestreamed with foreign servers handling the traffic… it’s theatre and behind the curtain, it’s the same director every time,” posted one observer.

French commentator Arnaud Bertrand, however, believes there is no credible evidence to establish the role of a foreign hand. He concedes that the government in Nepal did not function beyond the cities. He also recalls seeing corruption and violence.

In a post on X on Wednesday, he wrote, “In fact the truth is that formal government structures barely function in much of Nepal — outside major cities, the state is more theoretical than real. It was crystal clear during earthquakes, but also at other times. For instance, I have seen, with my own eyes, that when a petty crime occurs, people don't call the police but resort to mob justice by default (and it's not pretty). The people are left to care for themselves almost entirely on their own…”.

So Bertrand, generally critical of US policies, doubts the role of an ‘American hand’ in Nepal. What could the US possibly gain, he wonders, before adding, “The US would gain influence over a government that cannot govern, in a country in which you cannot base meaningful assets, and from which you couldn't project power over China anyhow (there are high mountains in between...).

"India wouldn't care — they've already proven they can strangle any Nepali government that displeases them. China would shrug behind its Himalayan wall. And the Nepali people would wake up the next morning with the same impossible geography, the same dependence on India, the same unforgiving terrain…”.

Even as Nepal — which has had 14 governments in the last 17 years and where no prime minister has completed his tenure in the last two decades, where as many as five former prime ministers were assaulted this week and their houses torched — picks up the pieces of its ‘September Revolution’, the debate over the foreign hand continues to rage.