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Back in rebel territory, the guerrillas hurry up the mountain pass, and by dusk they've descended 2,000 m to the village of Gairigaon to join 400 fellow soldiers from the First Brigade, People's Liberation Army (P.L.A.) Mid Division. Despite the carnage in Kharikot, spirits are high, almost giddy. This youthful exuberance isn't surprising, given the age of many of the rebels. One female fighter wears a Britney Spears T shirt under an ammunition belt, another dons a Jurassic Park shirt, and several wrap themselves in towels decorated with images of Spider-Man or Winnie the Pooh. The men joke and play-fight, the women giggle and hug, and everyone plays volleyball and swaps the latest Bollywood tapes. The New York-based rights group Watchlist reported in January that 30% of P.L.A. recruits are under 18—and in Gairigaon, that feels like an underestimate. Indeed, First Brigade's vice political commissar, Atal, says enlisting children is the norm: "According to Lenin, once they are 15, they can join up."
As well as the human-rights issue, their youth raises doubts about the rebels' effectiveness. While the Khmer Rouge proved that children could be imaginatively murderous, the young Maoist fighters lack training and experience. Atal confirms that almost none have seen combat. Few seem to have working knowledge of their weapons: some carry them slung backward over their shoulder, safety catch off and pointed at their comrades' waists; others stuff the barrels with cloth and mud to keep out the damp. Ammunition is also a problem. Only a handful of fighters have a spare clip. The sheer variety of weapons—from American M-16s to Belgian guns captured from the R.N.A. to AK-47s bought from gun smugglers—makes it impossible for the rebel army to keep them all loaded. But the Maoists have one world-class weapon: the Himalayas. Their territory, a maze of giant ravines so remote that many maps of Nepal contain large tracts of blank space, is the perfect launching pad for guerrilla warfare.
From the safety of his mountain lair, Prachanda has been free to build his brave new world. His hierarchy is traditional Stalinist: he serves as Party chairman and commander-in-chief, while beneath him there's a Party central committee, a politburo and an army command, district and subdistrict committees, and village heads. Prachanda's regime has constructed several "model" villages that embody his vision of a Maoist Nepal. In the Maoist capital Thabang, a day's hike from Gairigaon, hammer-and-sickle flags fly from the roofs and a mural in the main street depicts Prachanda alongside Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
Thabang's chief, Raktim, says religion is discouraged and will eventually be "eliminated." A new Marxist school curriculum will teach Party history to children from age 5. Raktim and his subordinates collect taxes, dragoon recruits for the P.L.A., veto or approve marriages, and bestow revolutionary names—Raktim means "Red"—to new comrades in order to emphasize their entry into the communist family. The rebels have press-ganged some 1,000 villagers to build a road east from Thabang, but that's the extent of their development work. Pointing out a 100-sq-m patch of razed buildings in Thabang's center, Raktim's political officer Gulab explains: "If we build clinics or irrigation channels, the army just comes here and destroys it. We do the same to them." But one thing remains firmly in place—a rudimentary judicial system of "people's courts," whose primary work is punishing traitors. "If his offense is serious, we give him hard labor," says Raktim. "But if he doesn't change, we shoot him. Or use a kukri [knife] if we don't have the bullets." Raktim says he has personally overseen "two or three" executions. Human-rights groups have documented hundreds of similar killings.
The suffering at the hands of the Maoists takes many forms. In another village in rebel country, a 33-year-old teacher who asks not to be identified says he has endured years of intimidation and indoctrination. "They take people to the hills for days, weeks, even months. They call it 'camping.' They tell you everyone must be proletariat, that we are too materialistic, too middle-class, that it doesn't matter how people think, only how the Party thinks, that nothing can happen without their permission. They want our heads empty and our eyes sightless so that we follow them blindly. That's why they like children." He says the rebels barred him from holding university-entrance exams "because they don't want people getting their own ideas." Raktim admits that the Party takes mostly teenagers to its instruction camps, but insists the sessions are educational, not coercive. "We feel that if people understand us, they'll support us."
The programming often works. In the village of Pipal, Jhima Rana Magar, a girl guerrilla who looks 15, declares: "I am ready to give my life for the Prachanda Path," referring to the chairman's own Little Red Book. "If we follow the Prachanda Path, the people will get their rights." Asked how she squares this with forcing impoverished villagers to feed and house them while doing nothing to improve their lives, she is adamant: "We are fighting for the people. So we eat in their houses. How can people say we are doing bad things?" Her certainty knows no bounds. "Not only will we be in Kathmandu in months," she says, "we'll spread all over the world." Such confidence infuses the rebellion. Prachanda asserts: "We deeply believe that what we are starting in Nepal is part of a worldwide 21st century revolution." But the teacher complains that the rebels assume rather than earn support: "People hate them. They're vicious and they take and give nothing back. They think power and the gun are everything. Sadly, they have a point—what can we do if they've got the guns?"
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