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NepalMissions
National Defense
The primary mission of the armed forces was defense of
territorial integrity against external attack. Wedged
between India
and China, however, Nepal was clearly unable to mount
anything more
than a token conventional defense in the face of
overwhelming odds.
By necessity, governments in Kathmandu have always had to
rely on
diplomacy and the restraint of neighbors, rather than
Nepal's
military strength, to ensure national survival. During
peacetime,
the army's routine border defense duties included
assisting the
police in antismuggling operations and providing security
in remote
regions where there was no police presence.
In the event of conventional attack by either China or
India,
Nepalese military forces would mount a token defense to
stall the
enemy advance until international pressures could be
mobilized to
bring about a cease-fire and a return to the status quo.
If
international mediation failed, the military and police
units that
remained intact would withdraw from populated areas to
lead a
guerrilla war against occupation forces. Substantial
numbers of
Gurkha and Royal Nepal Army veterans also would be pressed
into
service, thereby multiplying the available military forces
two or
threefold. Nepal's position as a buffer state between two
historically antagonistic powers also dictated that a
beleaguered
government in Kathmandu probably would appeal for
assistance from
the nonbelligerent neighbor.
Most of Nepal's population outside the Kathmandu Valley
lived
in hamlets that were either cut off from the rest of the
country or
else connected only to a local economy and communications
infrastructure. Hence, the loss of some rural districts
during a
conventional conflict would not necessarily bring about
the
capitulation of the entire country. Semiautonomous
guerrilla bands
acting under the direction of retired or serving military
officers
could operate almost indefinitely and substantially raise
the costs
of an occupying force. However, loss of the valley, the
political
and cultural nerve center of the nation, could well mean
the end of
organized resistance. Partly for this reason, Nepal's
national
defenses were deployed primarily to defend the capital
area in
general and the national leadership in particular.
Geography also limited Nepal's capacity to mount a
conventional
defense of the nation. Although the Himalayas provided a
nearly
impenetrable shield against large-scale, rapid movement of
troops
from China, the harsh terrain also prevented Nepalese
forces from
erecting significant defenses along the 1,236-kilometer
border. A
paucity of roads, bridges, and airfields in the region
would
confine the Nepalese military response to provisioning
scattered
border outposts and positions near the mountainous tracks
leading
to some fifteen passes along the northern border
(see Roads
, ch.
3). The only land corridor of any significance in a
conflict with
China would be the main road, built with Chinese
assistance, that
connected Kathmandu with Tibet. New Delhi has repeatedly
expressed
its fears that the road could serve as a Chinese invasion
route,
not a Nepalese resupply route.
Mounting a conventional defense against India posed an
equally
daunting challenge. India boasted significant ground force
assets
along its 1,690-kilometer border with Nepal; moreover,
these
formations were connected by extensive lines of
communication to
the Indian heartland, where reinforcements could be
introduced into
Nepal in short order. Nepal had virtually no combat air
capability
and its rudimentary air defense assets were no match for
the Indian
Air Force, second in size and capabilities only to China's
among
Asia's air forces. Within Nepal, defense against a
concerted Indian
advance in the jungles and foothills of the Tarai was
clearly
impractical. Although the East-West Highway, or Mahendra
Highway,
connecting the extreme ends of the country was nearing
completion
in 1991, most of Nepal's approximately 4,500 kilometers of
allweather , motorable roads ran north-south, thereby
complicating
cross-country military movements. Avenues of approach
leading north
from India were considerably better developed than the
generally
primitive east-west lines of communication available to
Nepalese
forces. The country's rail network was limited to a
forty-eight-
kilometer spur line running from the border town of Raxaul
to
Amlekhganj and a fifty-three-kilometer narrow-gauge track
from the
Indian border town of Jaynagar to Janakpur and Bijalpura
in Nepal.
Data as of September 1991
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