Nestled in dense jungle and reachable only by canoe, this Maoist rebel camp will soon host United Nations observers monitoring arms as part of Nepal's landmark peace deal.
Dashrathpur is one of seven areas where rebels have pledged to place their arms and soldiers under UN supervision as part of a peace deal reached Tuesday with the multi-party government to end a decade of war. "Most of our weapons have already been stored, but some we are still using for security purposes," said commander Santosh, the rebel in charge of the camp.
The camp is 585 kilometres (360 miles) west of the capital and about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Nepal's porous border with India. The nearest town, Ramghat Bazaar, has 35,000 people and no government presence such as police, administrators or the army.
Hundreds of rebels are working to make the site suitable for the 1,700 Maoist soldiers who will eventually be contained there. Three other camps in the district were also being prepared to receive the same number of soldiers, Santosh said, adding the rebels felt they had won a victory in the war that claimed at least 12,500 lives since 1996 in the impoverished Himalayan nation.
"The signing of the peace deal is a victory for us and it is the start of forming a new Nepal," said the 28-year-old commander as he supervised hundreds of rebels who cleared weeds and dug latrines for the massive rebel camp being prepared on the site of an abandoned government agricultural centre.
The rebels have controlled the area around the camp for at least five years and there have been fierce clashes here between their forces and the army. But the clashes have halted since a ceasefire was declared about seven months earlier, after King Gyanendra bowed to mass protests in April and handed back power to political parties.
Khadka Bahadur Rawat, a grocer, said since the rebels and government began observing a ceasefire life had improved immensely in the small town of Ramghat. "Army patrols have stopped and in the past everyone would be in their homes before six - now people can go out and about," said Rawat.
The rebels, who draw inspiration from the people's war tactics of Mao Zedong, are accused of abduction, extortion and murder in their bid to abolish the monarchy and establish a communist republic.
Under the terms of the peace deal, however, they have agreed to join an interim government ahead of elections next year to elect a body to rewrite the constitution and determine the status of the monarchy. The king has already been stripped of control of the army and any political power. But the peace remains uneasy, and the rebels have been accused of stepping up forced recruitment into their ranks ahead of the elections.
Earlier this year, the rebels claimed to have 35,000 fighters, but other estimates put the Maoist fighting force at closer to 12,000. The current recruitment drive is seen by analysts as a way of bumping up the numbers of soldiers before the UN begins work cataloguing the fighters and supervising them.
"We are very happy about the peace, but we have doubts about whether it will be permanent," said Rawat, the grocer. "The Maoists are still engaged in recruiting youth. We are afraid that such activities could jeopardise the peace process," he said.
The Maoists have denied they were recruiting, but locals said nine tailors at Ramghat Bazaar were last week ordered to make 2,000 new rebel uniforms, which suggested the rebels were trying to swell their ranks.
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