Madhyagaun is not this town's real name. But it is a sign of the times that we can't even identify the town here. It is situated in Nepal's mid-hills, and it is caught in the crossfire between the security forces and the Maoists. It is like a lot of other settlements across the hills: divided into an upper and lower town, with a river running below.

In more peaceful times, it used to be a bucolic place. Pretty and poor, like the rest of Nepal. Even today, its white-and-red houses with thatched roofs, community forests and the himals beyond look idyllic. Nobody is well-off in Madhyagaun, but people look after each other, and everyone gets by.

It used to take two days to walk here, but the road from the district headquarters is inching closer each year. People wonder what changes the road will bring, and land prices have already started to rise in the lower town, near the planned path of the road.

Madhyagaun's biggest concern, though, isn't land prices or the rains or the government, or even the gods. Madhyagaun is in the war zone, and is a contested village in the Maoist insurgency.

For five years the people of this town have been caught between the police and the Maoists, who alternately visited with demands for information and cooperation, and threats for anyone offering the same to the other side. The people are caught in the middle, and they are scared.
Maoists scrawled anti-monarchy graffiti on the village school in Madhyagaun two weeks ago, they threatened the school teacher and students with dire consequences if they revealed their whereabouts. The soldiers came the next day, forced the villagers to erase the slogans and took away the teacher because he was too afraid to disclose who wrote them.

A UML activist from Madhyagaun who for the past three years had single-handedly resisted the Maoists, opposed their extortion racket, and survived two assassination attempts, recently fled for the safety of a town on the highway. Earlier this month, the soldiers took him in for questioning as a Maoist suspect.

When 18 armed and uniformed Maoists walked through town on a quiet afternoon several weeks into the emergency, everyone knew what to expect. The Maoists explained calmly that they had called a meeting and attendance was mandatory. The band moved slowly through the upper and lower towns and outlying hamlets, stopping at every house.

The Maoists' message to the gathered town was simple: "The people's war is progressing nicely. The news from the government is mostly lies. The People's Liberation Army has killed and captured a great many soldiers. We will win and we will remember who our friends and enemies were. Think about that."

Then the commander told the silent crowd: "If anyone tells the army or police we were here, we will return and kill everyone in this village." With that, they walked over the hill and vanished.

The fight against the Maoists clearly has far to go, at least in Madhyagaun. But this incident should also gladden the hearts of the Maoists' opponents. Mao described a people's army as moving through the people and countryside like a fish through water. Nepal's "fish" seem reduced to threatening their "water" with death. The Great Helmsman might have reminded them what happens to a fish out of water.