Red Dawn

Pedro Ugarte / AFP / Getty Images

Not so long ago, few in Nepal believed Pushpa Kamal Dahal actually existed. The Maoist guerrilla leader was a creature of myth — no one knew what he looked like or in which mountain fastness he hid or quite how he and his fighters, ragtag and ill-equipped, had managed to plunge Nepal into a decade-long civil war that claimed 13,000 lives. But now all know Prachanda, the nom de guerre by which Dahal is more often referred, as not only a man of flesh and blood, but of suits and expensive pens. As results filter in from Nepal's April...

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