Nepal Military Personnel

Nepal is noted for its famed Gurkha soldiers. Gurkhas served both at home and abroad in the British, Indian, Singapore, and Brunei armies. Until recently, there were more Gurkas in service in other armies than in the army of Nepal itself. Roughly two hundred thousand (20 percent) of the adult male population in the country were drawn to India during the Great War, and approximately the same number participated in World War II. During the decade of Maoist conflict, the ranks of the NA more than doubled from some 46,000 to 96,000.

By 1950 all important army posts were held by members of the Rana ruling family. Many of the battalions had just returned from war duties in India and Burma; the battalions included some soldiers who had defected from British units and fought with the Japanese as part of the Indian National Army. The returning soldiers found that pay, rations, equipment, housing, and general conditions of service in Nepal contrasted unfavorably with what they had known under the British. Many of the general officers had never served in the lower ranks. The bulk of the army was stationed in the Kathmandu Valley, where the Rana government, aware of growing opposition, could keep potentially disloyal officers under surveillance. As remained true in 1991 , British recruiters attracted the best candidates for military service because of improved prospects for advancement and higher pay.

Gurkha remittances to Nepal were of primary importance to the economy and served as an important source of foreign exchange. By 1997, however, the number of Gurkhas serving in the British army was expected to be reduced from 8,000 to 2,500 persons, and the Gurkha garrison in Hong Kong was withdrawn gradually in the period up to 1995. As of April 1992, a token number of Gurkhas were serving in a United Nations peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslavia.

Armed forces personnel total in Nepal was measured at 157,750 in 2013, according to the World Bank. Armed forces personnel are active duty military personnel, including paramilitary forces if the training, organization, equipment, and control suggest they may be used to support or replace regular military forces.

Training is the key element for the professionalism of any Army. The Nepalese Army is no exception. The Nepalese Army has always given utmost priority to provide its personnel with adequate trainings. In accordance with the famous saying of King Prithivi Narayan Shah, the Great, "The abilities of the Soldiers needs to be polished at all times", the Nepalese Army has always emphasized and provided professional trainings to its Soldiers and Officers alike to keep the Nepalese Army ever ready to meet the challenges that they may have to face. The Nepalese Army also provides with specialist and vocational trainings to its troops. The Nepalese Army institutionalized modern training with the establishment of the Nepalese Army School in Chhauni in 1953. Today, the NA has many specialized army-level academies and schools under the Directorate General of Military Training (DGMT).

The main training establishments of the Nepalese Army are:

• The NA Command and Staff College, Shivapuri
• The NA School, Nagarkot
• The Nepalese Military Academy, Kharipati
• The NA Recruit Training Center, Trishuli
• The NA Jungle Warfare School, Amlekhgunj
• The NA High Altitude School (Mountain Warfare), Mustang
• The NA Intelligence School, Kharipati
• The NA Logistics School, Chhauni
• Birendra Peace Operations Training Center, Panchkhal
• The NA Para Training School, Maharajgunj
• Specific to Arms and Services Schools

Apart from these training establishments, all units from independent Companies upto Divisions provide their personnel with professional trainings on a daily basis. The units go through a few months long training cycle every year. The Nepalese Army has a policy that requires each rank from a Private to the General to compulsorily undergo certain trainings for promotion to a higher rank. Apart from these mandatory trainings, there are various other specialized trainings that any Nepalese Army personnel can optionally acquire. Nepalese Army personnel who obtain distinguished results in trainings conducted in various training schools of the Nepalese Army are also regularly sent to foreign countries for acquiring advanced trainings.

In order to maintain an army capable of defending the sovereignty and the territorial integrity, the Nepalese Army has accorded a very high importance to training. Trainings have been recalibrated to meet the latest international standards, to be practical and reflect the ground realities. The infrastructure of the existing training centers and schools have been upgraded and many more new ones established.

The Nepalese Army was unique in the sense that it was perhaps the only military to run its entire welfare program without resource allocation from the government. One of the most popular welfare activity has been the medical support provided to the serving personnel, the veterans and the families of both serving personnel and the veterans. Nepal faces an acute shortage of qualified and trained medical personnel and the Nepalese Army too was not free from this problem.

Nepal is a multiethnic, multilingual, multi-religious and multicultural country with a common aspiration and commitment to a united bond of allegiance to national independence, integrity, national interests and prosperity. By virtue of its diversity, the government seeks to provide more inclusive state institutions. But despite of its efforts, the issue of inclusion (Samabesikaran) of different castes, ethnic groups, genders and regions have been frequently raised in the country. In the Gurkha Regiments of foreign armies, the practice of recruiting from specific ethnic groups was still prevalent. But in the case of the Nepalese Army, it has always endeavored to maintain a national character principally in terms of inclusion of all castes, ethnic communities, genders, regions and religions.

Maintaining its tradition and reflecting the spirit of the institution, the Nepalese Army incorporating a system of reservation. This practice was prevalent in the Nepalese Army decades before the Government of Nepal implemented the policy on inclusion in the state legislature. The Nepalese Army has ethnic based battalions from Magar, Gurung, Tamang, Kiranti/Limbu and Madhesi communities. The total strength of these five battalions was about 3950, which make 4.2% of current strength. In the rest of the formations, units and subunits all castes / ethnic communities, religions and regions are given an equal opportunity based on open competition.

In compliance to the Nepalese Law, which states that 45% of all vacant government positions be reserved for excluded groups, the Army in 2006, amended its Army Act. After which, out of the 45% reserved position within the Nepal Army 20% was reserved for women, 32% for Janajati, 28% for Madheshi, 15% for Dalit and 5% for remote regions.

Recruitment was voluntary and competitive. Hence forcing citizens to sign up in the proportion of the demographic breakup of the nation would violate the rights of the people who may not want to join the Army and at the same time be unfair to those qualified and wishing to join.

It was true that the racial and cultural character of the Nepalese Army was not a mirror image of the national picture but it depicts a picture which was far closer than most of the other organs of the state. The recruitment in the Nepalese Army was entirely voluntary in composition. The Army has been making a conscious effort in including as many of the minority groups as possible. It has aimed for inclusiveness since ages in the past. In recent times, the Army has also made important strides towards gender inclusiveness.

Policy and practice for women’s participation in the Nepalese Army was based on the national policy of gender equality and women empowerment. The Nepalese Army opened recruitment process for women since 1961.

Women’s participation in civil services and other security forces has followed an increasing trend since 1990. The Nepalese Army started enrolling women from 1961 in technical service and since 2004 in general service. After the socio-political changes in 1990, the awareness and practice of gender equality increased throughout the country.

Even though the concept of women soldiers was not new in the Nepalese Army, it has never before reached the proportions of today. Women’s participation in technical service in the Nepalese Army also expanded continually as follows: Nurses (1961), Para folders (1965), Medical doctors (1969), Legal (1998), Engineering (2004) and Aviation (2011).

In 2004 when the country was fighting against insurgency, the Nepalese Army opened its door to women soldiers in general service which comprised of combat related duties. First, women cadres in other rank were recruited in 2004 and then women officer cadets were enrolled in 2005. Since 2004, a number of other services have opened up for women soldiers. They are Military Police, Signalers, Office staffs, Army Band, Military Drivers, Military Clerks, Aircraft Technicians and in Combat, Combat Support and Combat Service Support Arms.

In the time of armed conflict, Maoists trained more than 30,000 combatants and more then one hundred thousand paramilitary personnel and large numbers of militia. The Maoists armies’ (re)integration into the Nepal Army to form a national army was a major challenge to the nation. The Interim Constitution of Nepal 2007 assured democratization of the Nepal Army and professionalization of the Maoist Army, but this was not implemented due to over politicization to both the institutions.

The ten year long armed conflict between the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the Nepali government officially ended in November 2006 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and the Agreement on Monitoring of the Management of Arms and Armies (AMMAA). Soon after the Maoist army and their weapons were cantoned across 28 sites in Nepal. Efforts by the Maoists in late 2006 -- in the context of the negotiation of the Arms Monitoring Agreement and the Interim Constitution -- to lock in numbers of combatants who would be integrated failed to make headway. The United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), with support from UNDP, then led the verification of combatants in the cantonment sites and identified 19,602 of them as members of the Maoist army, 2,973 as minors on the date of the ceasefire (25 May 2006), and 1,035 as late recruits. A total of 4,008 Verified Minors and Late Recruits (VMLRs). The second phase of arms management -- the verification of Maoist combatants -- finally started on 19 June 2007.

The Seven-Party Alliance and the Maoists agreed on November 8, 2006, in the so-called Baluwatar Agreement, that the Interim Government would form a special committee to carry out "monitoring, adjustment and rehabilitation of ... Maoist combatants." The November 21 Comprehensive Peace Accord provides that the Interim Government "shall work to supervise, integrate and rehabilitate the Maoist combatants." The December 8 Agreement on the Monitoring of Arms and Armies, which the UN witnessed, repeats the call for the Interim Cabinet to form a special committee. Its task was to "supervise, integrate and rehabilitate" the Maoist fighters. Article 146 of the Interim Constitution adopted on January 15, 2007, states that the Interim Cabinet shall form a special committee for "the monitoring, adaptation and rehabilitation" of Maoist combatants. The Cabinet shall determine its "functions, duties and responsibilities." The Interim Government established the committee on June 21. It was chaired by Peace and Reconstruction Minister Poudel. The other members are Home Minister Krishna Sitaula (Nepali Congress), Education Minister Pradip Nepal (UML) and Information Minister Krishna Mahara (Maoist).

The question of how to disarm factions was a key consideration in official peace negotiations, along with the related issue of how to demobilise fighting units, aiding their transition to civilian life. International actors have termed the phase of the peace process that addresses these issues as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR). The break up of fighting units, the disarmament and discharge of former combatants, their return to their families and reintegration into their communities was time-consuming, expensive and difficult.

The Maoists (the coalition leading party in the government, who started and won the battle to oust the traditional king and aged-old unitary state and declare Nepal a federal democratic republic) urged for the integration of the Maoist “Peoples Liberation Army (PLA),” converting the Nepal Army (formally the Royal Nepal Army) into a National Army.

Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Rookmangud Katawal was strongly opposed to integration of any Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army (NA). He argued that there should be no radical change in the NA for "five years." He believed it would take that long for democracy to take root. Five years would allow the Maoists time to turn in all their weapons and prove their democratic bona fides. The COAS stated that he had conveyed the same message to Prime Minister Koirala when the PM visited NA headquarters a day earlier. He said he had warned Koirala, "Don't toss away the Army or you will have nothing to fall back on" if the Maoists try to seize power.

The COAS maintained that it only made sense to unify a national army (in this case, the NA) and an insurgent army (in this case, the Maoist People's Liberation Army or PLA) after a conflict where the state, and the national army, had disintegrated. This was not Nepal's situation. Katawal pointed out that the NA remained a regular, disciplined, and professional army. Integrating Maoist combatants, whom he described as "thugs, criminals and terrorists," into the NA would destroy the Army.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)-led Coalition Government constituted a High-Level five-member Special Committee for Army Integration (SCAI) on October 28, 2008 headed by Deputy Prime Minister Bam Dev Gautama for integration and rehabilitation of the Maoist ex-combatants into the new National Army The demobilization and disarmament (DD) of the Maoists army under UNMIN supervision was completed by 2010.