14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

Even the Armed Forces(pro-India) and the Armed Police Force (pro-China) are at each others throats.

Whenever India feels Nepal is getting too close to China, a crisis happens. When China feels Nepal is getting to close to India, a crisis happens as well.

It's like how Iraqi and Lebanese politics is always meddled in by Saudi and Iran.

Also, the social media ban is extremely damaging.

Most students use Google and YouTube to study, and WhatsApp is heavily used by Nepalis both domestically and abroad (a large portion of Nepalis work abroad in India, the Gulf, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, and Japan as migrant workers) so people are cut off from communicating with each other and getting job offers.

Then, Bangladesh,

Now, Nepal.

An unstable Nepal allows the destabilization of two critical states in India.

Regime change in India is the big prize.

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China and India do meddle.

But a classic color revolution, such as this one, is the signature of you-know-who.

In Nepali politics, Sher Bahadur Deuba is pro-India and Prachanda is pro-Prachanda (will back India some years, other years will back China).

The whole Indian internet conspiracy of "CIA ki saazish" is ridiculous when the US has barely 20 India scholars at all. There is 0 domain experience in India studies in the US, and that reflects in America's South Asia strategy (there is none).

[0] - https://kathmandupost.com/columns/2025/09/07/oli-s-diplomati...

I literally don’t.

People need to start learning XMPP, cutting off of centralized services is only going to get worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Without evidence, yes, it should be. Just as it should be dismissed, if proposed without evidence, that this was the product of Indian, Chinese or Iranian meddling. Particularly when we have credible evidence going the other way of legitimate reasons a population would flip out.

Shame, it’s one place I really want to visit, but it seems like it will be a bit of a challenge (well, at least not Iran-level challenge, which is another place I want to visit someday and has different but even bigger problems).

A lot of authoritarians just like to blame their self grown domestic problems on the CIA. China having another stock market crash? The CIA must have done it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9ta...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9...

What did Nepal fail to do for America that supposedly caused this?

Bay of Pigs wasn't a revolution, it was a failed invasion. The others, however, absolutely were instigated by the CIA.

You can compile similar lists for Iran, Russia, France and India. Reflexively dismissing every coup, much less protest, as the product of foreign involvement without evidence isn't thoughtful.

> Brigade 2506 (Brigada Asalto 2506) was a CIA-sponsored group of Cuban exiles formed in 1960 to attempt the military overthrow of the Cuban government headed by Fidel Castro. It carried out the abortive Bay of Pigs Invasion landings in Cuba on 17 April 1961.

IMO, the only American program that has a good program in Contemporary Indian politics and foreign policy is Stanford, as Sumit Ganguly acts as the primary linkage between American and Indian policymakers, and the FSI and Hoover Institution tends to host Indian policymakers and career bureaucrats as affiliates and fellows. For example, during the US-India trade negotiations, the only public visit Nirmala Sitharaman and her staffers had was at the Hoover Institution [0]. Even the USIBC is hosted at Stanford, and that event has a lot of Indian and American dignitaries and policymakers coming.

Other than Christine Fair and a couple Pakistani fellows at HKS, I can't think of a similar domain experts on Pakistan either in the US.

If you want to study contemporary Indian foreign policy outside of India, your only options are NUS, ANU, Stanford, LSE, and maybe Oxford.

It's the same reason why the best China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea scholars tend to be clustered at Harvard and Stanford.

[0] - https://www.hoover.org/events/laying-foundations-developed-i...

And I agree with them - the ongoing protests are a result of anger against the political establishment's corruption - while thousands of Nepalis go abroad to work in the Gulf and India as menial labor, the political establishment's kids go abroad to America, Canada, and Australia to study, party, and live their best life.

My point was orthogonal to that - I'm saying that Chinese and Indian influence on the political establishment has been strongly entrenched.

Even Nepali media calls out Sharma's pro-China leanings and Deuba's pro-India leanings, and Prachanda's "paltu Ram" antics.

Every country has problems that atleast look worthy of an uprising. CIA has both the means and the track record of messing with countries, so its natural to be suspicious.

If Russia had control of social media narrative in US and wanted to cause trouble, nobody would know for sure if an uprising was due to their meddling or due to current political climate.

Lack of evidence doesn't prove or disprove anything.

These entities are in the business—by their very nature—to lie and hide their activities as much as possible.[1] To dismiss speculation out-of-hand because it has no evidence is ludicrous.

[1] Not only that but to actively push counter-narratives.

But run the experiment the other way. A friend of mine once said that if a light bulb burns out on Tierra Del Fuego, somebody claims that it's a CIA conspiracy. Of all the public claims (gated by some level of seriousness or authority) of CIA involvement, what fraction turned out to be true?

True, if the goal of the CIA is to provide quality intelligence to the elected US government. That's a pretty big assumption, though.

Pakistan/Bangladesh is another manner. The way Imran Khan was ousted...

But historically there are definitely examples of the CIA achieving this. Iran's 1953 coup was overwhelmingly successful and a joint operation between MI6 and CIA. The consequences irrevocably tipped the balance of power away from Pan-Arabism and towards a globalist, American-driven order.

Neither China nor India have so far meddled in this. It came as as surprise to both nations.

Also, neither China nor India control Nepal's social media. You would have to look at the yanks for that.

This is Nepal's self owned problem. Corruption has got entrenched into the system and you need fresh blood and a large number of hard-working politicians to fix these issues and make the government accountable.

We had many extensive corruption protests in India before the national BJP took over 15 years ago and Modi made bureaucrats accountable. Sadly, there has been some slacking after the initial years.