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Background: In 1951, the Nepalese monarch ended the century-old system of rule by hereditary premiers and instituted a cabinet system of government. Reforms in 1990, after a bloody struggle for "democracy" called the jana andolan ("People's Movement"), established a multiparty parliamentary democracy within the framework of a constitutional monarchy. However, the Royal Palace retained a large amount of power.

People in rural areas had expected that their interests would be better represented after the adoption of parliamentary democracy in 1990. When promised land reforms failed to appear, people in some districts started to organize to enact their own land reform, and to gain some power over their lives in the face of usurious landlords. However, this movement was repressed brutally by the Nepali government, in "Operation Romeo" and "Operation Kilo Sera II" which took the lives of many of the leading activists of the struggle. As a result, many witnesses to this repression became radicalized.

February 12, 1996 saw the launch of the Maoist "People's War" -- an insurgency with the stated goal of overthrowing the existing monarchic/parliamentary state and establishing a communist republic, or a Maoist "people's democracy". (The term, as with "People's War", is in quotes because the validity of the concept would be challenged by some.)

Led by Dr. Baburam Bhattarai and Pushpa Kamal Dahal (also known as "Prachanda"), the insurgency began in five districts in Nepal: Rolpa, Rukum, Jajarkot, Gorkha, and Sindhuli. The Maoists have declared the existence of a provisional "people's government" at the district level in several locations.

See also : Nepal