It has been a week now since the united Seven Party Alliance, together with the Maoists, called for a nationwide strike. It’s still going strong. The crowds of demonstrators are growing and the country is finding it hard to function. The government especially. Protests are going into their eighth day with all segments of the population participating. It’s no longer agitated students, journalists, and human rights activists. It’s businessmen and farmers and lawyers and teachers. Everyone.

The regime of King Gyanendra has proven itself to be even more brutal than thought. Just in the past week alone, over three thousand people have been arrested. His security services have shown that the only way to resolve the crisis is through the force of rubber bullets. Today was no different. And it’s all still being blamed on the Maoists!

Here’s the reality on the ground: the opposition has shown that it is a powerful force to be reckoned with and that it has mobilized vast segments of the population. All the King has to rest on is the security services, but his overall position has weakened to being below the opposition. They may blame the instability on the Maoists, but this is a political situation that the King created himself. It is his fault that the country is so unstable and that the Maoists have only gained in strength.

But it’s the opposition that really holds the cards. The King and the security apparatus are afraid of the Maoists and what would happen if they supplanted the current regime. And the Maoists can’t fight for their cause alone. The opposition is in the negotiating position, and even though the King insists on holding elections in a country not even under his control, as the King has finally broken his silence and called for negotiations with the political parties. The opposition wants to change the constitution; I’m willing to bet they’ll get what they want.

People power revolutions, in the past, have rarely yielded stable democratic systems. In fact, most transitions have occurred in which softliners in the regime negotiated with the opposition. Even more successful are transitions which occur when the opposition has a greater negotiating position than the regime, which I think is the case here. What will be interesting to see is if the security forces begin to pressure him as well.

One thing I am particularly happy to see is that the United States hasn’t fallen into the trap of supporting a dictator simply to prevent a Maoist insurgency from taking over. The fact is, the Maoists aren’t really Maoists. They don’t follow the ideology. Nepal is a really good case in point where we can see the new U.S. foreign policy in action when it comes to democratization.