These days I am in Nepal lecturing and teaching neurosurgery. I first came to this country in 2015, six months after the terrible earthquake that killed thousands of people. I have returned many times since then, as Nepal’s first and most famous neurosurgeon – the now late Professor Upendra Devkota – was a colleague and friend of mine from our time studying together in London in the 1980s.
Like many people from the affluent West, I have grown to love Nepal and its people, despite the fact that I can clearly see the inequality, poverty and destitution that prevail there.
Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, although it has its own wealthy elite, and the dirt of the urban slums contrasts with the world’s most amazing landscapes. Nepali men have long gone to work abroad, and globalization has only intensified this phenomenon. About 23% of the national income is money received from Nepalis working outside their country.
Nepalese men have a long-standing tradition dating back to the nineteenth century of enlisting as soldiers – known as Gurkhas – in the British army, even though Nepal was never part of the British Empire. In the nineteenth century, the empire employed Nepali Gurkhas to help subjugate and control India. Gurkha regiments still exist in the British Army and have always been regarded as some of the best and bravest soldiers in the army. In Nepal itself, getting into the British army is considered a great achievement and a matter of great prestige, the British perceive them as heroes, although in fact, they remain just mercenaries.
I also came to Ukraine as a doctor, but not for the last eight, but for thirty-two years in a row, and I have been there several times since the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022. It so happened that I am very familiar with both countries and their complex history. Also, before becoming a doctor, I studied Russian history and politics at Oxford.
Therefore, it was a horror for me to learn that Russia recently started recruiting a large number of Nepalis to fight against Ukraine. The Nepalese government says it knows of 200 men who have gone to war, but informal sources put the number closer to 15,000. Part of my horror is that Nepali mercenaries are fighting on the side of an inhumane and despotic regime that has invaded a free democratic neighbouring country, and part is that these men, driven by poverty and in many cases, an understandable desire to help their families, are themselves becoming victims of a ruthless and brutal militarist regime.
Fighting as mercenaries for Putin’s Russia is far from the same as joining the British army like the Gurkhas.
The Nepalese who go to fight in Ukraine do not know how the Russian commanders will use them in waves of “meat assaults” against the Ukrainians. There is clear evidence that the Nepalese were under Bakhmut. They hardly realized that they were fighting alongside convicted criminals. Many of these Nepalis have disappeared without a trace, and their relatives in Kathmandu are holding demonstrations, demanding that the Nepalese government find out from Russia what happened to their relatives.
Several men who have returned to Nepal tell terrible stories about the realities of the Russian army at the front: about the “restrictions” in the traditions of the NKVD behind insufficient and at the same time humiliating training, about terrible losses on the battlefield.
I wrote an article in one of Nepal’s leading newspapers, which I concluded with the following words:
Nepalis are making a terrible mistake when they go to Russia to fight against Ukraine. The chances of returning alive or unharmed are minimal. I beg you, I beg you: “Don’t go! You will be treated like a waste! You will fight on the side of evil! And you’ll just ruin your lives!”
I am glad that the Nepalese government has recognized the problem and is trying to solve it. One would like to hope that it will succeed, although there is no certainty in this.
Henry Marsh
Українська правда
