Garbage Time in Trash City

In the last two weeks, garbage hasn't been collected in Kathmandu because of protests in the town where the city's main landfill, which is just about full, is located. As a result large piles of putrid trash- plastic bags, animal waste, rotting vegetable matter, newspapers- have begun accumulating in neighborhoods around the city. What can't be burned in the street stays in he street. 5,000 tons of it so far, according to one report, though that seems like an extreme lowball. The above was taken in the neighborhood of Jamal.

As for the protests. Like I've described here before, it's a time honored Nepali tradition to close down streets or whole cities in order to meet a political objective. In this case, the protests were over a lack of city money being given to the town that hosts the landfill. Seems like a reasonable complaint, and it looks like an agreement has been struck to reopen the road to the landfill.

But as soon as that deal was struck, a protest popped up at another of the city's landfills, this one having nothing to do with trash. Protesters at landfill #2 agitating against the thuggish behavior of the maoist-affiliated Youth Communist League, a member of which allegedly chopped the legs off a local youth. The protesters are demanding that whoever did it be arrested and tried, and until then: no garbage dropoffs.

Uma Singh

We're back in Kathmandu. Since we've been gone in late December, the general state of things in Nepal has inched toward, well, a failed state. Power cuts have increased to 16 hours a day (that's worse than Baghhdad). The metropolitan authority has stopped collecting garbage. Bird flu has blossomed on the southern border with India. And most heinously, Uma Singh a young woman journalist was hacked to death at her home in the Terai area in the south, where a violent brew of familial, ethnic, and political disputes have been boiling over in recent months.

Uma Singh's story captures some of the tragedy and lawlessness that are playing out here right now. Her brother and father were abducted and murdered by maoist insurgents during the war. She said she became a journalist in part to bring justice to her family, and she wrote critically about the maoists. Since then, the maoist party has been elected to lead the government in what by some measures is a remarkably peaceful transition from monarchy to democracy. But in another sign that the transition may not be so peaceful after all, a maoist party member has now been arrested and accused of her murder.

And while no one serious is accusing maoist party leadership in Kathmandu of direct involvement, the general problem for an insurgent group which came to power after a brutal ten year war is clear: its hard to control the violent elements of your movement even once you've taken power peacefully. In fact there's a whole group of thugs who are affiliated with the maoist party, but aren't fully within its control. It's called the Youth Communist League, or YCL, and it's been responsible for all manner of beatings, theft, and other mischief in recent months. It's also part of the reason that giant trash heaps are piling up all over Kathmandu right now (I'll post a picture in a minute).

Update: Uma Singh's in-laws have been arrested in connection with the murder. Police now say it was over a land inheritance dispute.