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Good News from Nepal:

There have been several military reverses for the Nepalese Maoists in the last few weeks. I suspect that this will count for more than all of those, although to some degree the reverses are why this is possible:

For the first time since the insurgency started in these mountains of mid-western Nepal nine years ago, a women-led anti-Maoist uprising has spread across Dailekh in the past week.

“Down with Maoism,” the demonstrators shouted at a big rally in Dullu on Monday, “Down with Prachanda.” Most demonstrators were surprised at their own audacity, wondering where they got the courage to be so defiant.

The protests were started by women, the men joined in and some came from as far as a day’s walk away. They were protesting rebel demands for money and food. Krishna Shahi, 42, says she and others in her village had complied fearing they would be killed: “When they said every family had to give one son, that is when I lost all my fear. We told them, kill us but you can’t take our sons. We had nothing left to give them, we couldn’t take it any longer.”

Indeed, the rebel threat to take away young sons and daughters appear to have been the main reason the women spearheaded protests in Dullu, Salleri and other towns in northeastern Dailekh.

When you've turned the mothers of the countryside against you, you've usually lost your insurgency. Guerrillas need the populace as 'the ocean in which the fish swims,' to paraphrase Mao. Mothers in traditional cultures are the ones at home, who know what and who passes in their village. They raise the children, from whom the guerrillas must raise their next generation. If they aren't telling their children the tales you want told, you will not have recruits.