Quotes of the Day

There might seem few places less likely to be scorched by the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, than Nepal. Outside Kathmandu, the Himalayan kingdom exists in a timeless trance of mountains and road-free valleys all but lost to the present day. True, the country faces a very serious internal-security threat—a Maoist rebellion—but even that menace underscores the fact that Nepal is fighting the battles of the last century.

Last week the age of terror caught up with Nepal. On Aug. 31 the Iraqi extremist group Ansar al-Sunna announced that it had killed 12 Nepalese migrant workers kidnapped outside Ramadi 11 days earlier. A grisly video showed two militants slitting one hostage's throat and holding up his severed head before they went on to shoot the other 11 in their heads. The group's statement admonished Nepal "and other lapdogs of the Jews and the Christians," adding: "Do not sympathize with this impure group. They have left their country and traveled thousands of kilometers to work with the crusader American forces and to support its war against Islam and the holy warriors." It was the bloodiest incident in Iraq's five-month plague of kidnappings, which have involved more than 100 hostages from 20 countries.

In reaction, the Nepali capital erupted in the worst violence in memory as Hindus took revenge on the country's million-strong Muslim minority. Mobs stormed and set fire to mosques, including Nepal's biggest, the Jama Masjid, burned the Koran in the street and built barricades of burning tires. Rioters ransacked Muslim businesses, tried to storm the Egyptian embassy and torched the offices of airlines of four Muslim countries. Shops, offices and schools shut down, and the government imposed a curfew in the capital and two other cities. When police opened fire on a Kathmandu mob, two people died and 46 were injured.

The killings were a gruesome reminder that the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq is supported by a very vulnerable secondary army of tens of thousands of migrant cooks, cleaners and drivers from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. (The same week, kidnappers freed three Indian truck drivers, three Kenyans and an Egyptian but killed three Turks.) The executions produced concerns of a different kind for Nepal's Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who was accused of not doing enough to free the hostages. The deaths capped a rough fortnight in which the Maoists tried to cripple Kathmandu by forcing 12 corporations to close and threatening trucks supplying the city. (They relented a week later in the face of popular defiance.) A few weeks later, supporters of one of Deuba's political rivals staged a one-day general strike.

Nepal's woes are tragically intertwined. For generations, Nepalis have traveled abroad to escape poverty. But the stream has become a torrent thanks to the bloody insurgency, which has claimed 10,000 victims in the countryside since 1996. Some 15,000 Nepalese are working in Iraq, several hundred thousand more in Asia and the West, and 6 million in neighboring India. Sudarshan Khadka, 23, was planning to find a job in the Middle East until he saw the video on television last week and recognized his 19-year-old brother Ramesh lying face down in an Iraqi ditch. "The future is so dark," he says. "People like my brother, like me, leave because they reach a limit. Now where do we go?"

Communal violence is not something that anyone in the region can take lightly. The modern shape of the subcontinent was formed by Muslim-Hindu hatred. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh were born amid communal slaughter. More recently, Indian Hindus have carried out two large-scale anti-Muslim rampages, and Muslim militants reacted violently both times. The Nepalese government sees the danger.

On the day of the riots, Home Minister Purna Bahadur Khadka summoned leaders of Hindu groups to warn he would hold them responsible for further violence. But for some, the divisions of the outside world had already poisoned centuries of harmony. "I feel shaken," said Mohammad Mohsin, the government spokesman and a Muslim. "The community feels deeply wounded." Suddenly in Nepal, isolation doesn't seem so bad.

• Alex Perry | Kathmandu
• The execution of 12 Nepalis in Iraq triggers religious riots back home