KATHMANDU, March 15 -- Just as the government was defusing one crisis by getting Madhesi activist CK Raut to renounce separatism last Sunday, it was faced with another explosive situation created by breakaway Maoist radicals.
The ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) is made up of ex-UML and erstwhile Maoists, but the faction that enforced a nationwide shutdown on Thursday calls itself the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN). Its leader Netra Bikram Chand (Biplav) was mentored by NCP co-Chair and Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal, and was once comrade-in-arms of Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa. Biplav is now using the same tactics of violence and extortion that the Maoists perfected at the start of the war in the 1990s.
Thursday's shutdown affecte...