The state of Nepal covers an area of 147,181 km². The landlocked country is a narrow strip in the southern Himalayas between the two most populous countries on earth: China in the north and India in the south. In the east it borders on the Indian state of Sikkim, in the south on Bihar and in the west on Uttaranchal. In the high mountain regions of the north, it borders on the Chinese autonomous region of Tibet.
According to neovideogames, Nepal stretches for eight hundred kilometers from northwest to southeast and is on average two hundred kilometers wide. The mountainous country stretches from 80th to 88th degrees east longitude and from 26th to 30th latitude north.
Founding: 1768
Head of state: Bidya Devi Bhandari
Head of government: Khadga Prasad Oli
Political system: Multi-party system
Democracy Status Index (BTI): Rank 96 (of 137) (2020)
Corruption Index (CPI): Rank 113 (of 180) (2019)
In its present-day borders, the state of Nepal was unified through the military activities of the royal family of the Shah of Gorkha between 1743 and 1816. Prithvi Narayan Shah, who in 1768 was able to militarily conquer the independent principalities of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur and unite them as a kingdom, is celebrated by the state elite as the founder of modern Nepal. The time before – prehistory and early times, the time of the Licchavi (approx. 350-750 AD), the Thakuri and the early Malla (approx. 750-1482), the three Malla kingdoms (1482-1769) – is represented mainly by accounts of the Kathmandu Valley in the history books.
In 1846 the power struggles between members of the royal family and various noble families were ended by Jang Bahadur Kunwar. The resulting family rule of the Rana dominated the country until 1951. After the elimination of the Rana rule in the 1950’s, the first cautious attempts at democratization began. At the end of 1960 these attempts ended in the restoration of absolute kingship under the guise of the non-party Panchayat system (1960-90). Only then did the breakthrough to a democratic form of government take place. In 1991 the monarchical government found itself under pressure from the political parties forced to tackle a reform of the constitution and to establish a multi-party parliament.
Civil war and creation of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal
In February 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) presented the coalition government led by the Nepali Congress with a catalog of demands calling for the end of the monarchy, nationalization of capitalist property, termination of agreements with India, declaration of Nepal as a secular state, and various social reforms and drafting a new constitution. After the government ignored them, the Maoists declared armed struggle.
Structural causes of the conflict can be found in the dramatic social injustices, extreme poverty in rural areas and the social exclusion of groups based on their ethnicity, caste or religion. The direct causes of the conflict were, on the one hand, the inability of the democracy that had only existed since 1991 to improve the living conditions of the population and, on the other hand, the radicalization of the extra-parliamentary left and the formation of the Maoists. The brutal reaction of the Nepalese security forces to the armed resistance, which was initially localized, contributed significantly to its spread.
Towards the end of the war, the Nepalese army, which was over 90,000 men strong and equipped by India, was able to defeat the 10,000 men strong, only lightly armed and guerrilla tactics operating “People’s Liberation Army”. Maoists controlled almost 80% of Nepal’s territory, but could not take any of the 75 district capitals.
King Gyanendra, who, with reference to the civil war, reintroduced absolute monarchy in February 2005, but was unable to translate his extensive power into military success, lost popular support. This drove Maoists and the traditional political parties allied in the Seven-Party-Alliance (SPA), led by the Nepali Congress (NC), into peace negotiations and an alliance against the king.
The alliance between the Maoists and the SPA created the conditions for the “popular movement” in April 2006, in which mass protests in Kathmandu forced the king to reinstate parliament and relinquish government power to the political parties.
The popular movement started official peace negotiations: Maoists and SPA signed a ceasefire agreement in May 2006 and the ” Comprehensive Peace Agreement ” on November 8, 2006″, which officially ended the ten-year” People’s War. “The most important demands of the Maoists, the fulfillment of which was guaranteed by the state in the peace agreement, included elections to a constituent assembly, the abolition of the monarchy, the integration of the Maoist People’s Liberation Army into the Nepal Army and the Creation of a federal republic of Nepal This declaration of intent was incorporated into the transitional constitution, which came into force on January 15, 2007. A transitional parliament with Maoist participation was convened, and on May 28, 2008 the abolition of the 240-year-old Hindu monarchy was resolved “Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal” proclaimed.
