Red Dawn

Not so long ago, few in Nepal believed Pushpa Kamal Dahal actually existed. The Maoist guerrilla leader was a creature of myth — no one knew what he looked like or in which mountain fastness he hid or quite how he and his fighters, ragtag and ill-equipped, had managed to plunge Nepal into a decade-long civil war that claimed 13,000 lives. But now all know Prachanda, the nom de guerre by which Dahal is more often referred, as not only a man of flesh and blood, but of suits and expensive pens. As results filter in from Nepal's April 10 election — the country's first in nine years — Prachanda's Maoists are poised to win a clear majority in the 601-member Constituent Assembly, a body that will draft the constitution of a new Nepalese republic. The once incendiary, class warfare-waging rebel may be on the verge of becoming Nepal's first President.

Prachanda's rise is testament to the striking political transformation gripping this Himalayan nation of 27 million. The election culminated a process begun two years ago, when Maoist-backed mass protests brought down Nepal's 240-year-old monarchy and leveraged the former guerrillas, still on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist groups, into the country's political mainstream. As the prime movers in Nepal's transition from royal rule, they will preside over the monarchy's formal abolition.

But it's far from clear how a Maoist-dominated government will govern. The economy is a war-ruined shambles; some question whether revolutionary fervor will translate into fiscal acumen. Although the election went off with few hitches, the voting was marred in part by the vigilantism of Maoist youth cadres. Prachanda must rein them in as well as convince nervous neighbors India and China of his group's commitment to stable, multiparty democracy.

Nepal has an opportunity to cast aside the ancient regime of kings for a modern republic, where women, low-caste groups and indigenous minorities will be fully enfranchised. The Maoists sparked this change with blood and guts in the countryside — it's up to them to bring it to peaceful fruition within the halls of power.