Front and Back Covers. Volume 20 Number 1. February 2004

Back cover caption
CONFLICT IN NEPAL
This photomontage, taken from the cover of the journal Ekkaison Shatabdi ('The 21st Century'), issue 58, March 2002, shows the bodies of dead policemen in front of the destroyed palace of Mangalsen, Achham, in western Nepal. The ancient royal capital of the kingdom of Achham, now the headquarters of Achham district, was attacked on 17 February 2002 by Nepal's Maoist insurgents. The ensuing battle between the guerrillas and state security forces was one of the bloodiest in the eight-year-old civil conflict which began when the Maoists declared a 'people's war' in 1996. According to the Nepali Defence Ministry, 57 soldiers, 49 policemen, and five civilians were killed, and scores of Maoist rebels were also reported dead. Over 8000 people — Maoists, security personnel and civilians — have been killed since the conflict began, and an alarming rate of disappearances and other human rights violations committed by both the Maoists and the security forces makes Nepal one of the world's most rapidly escalating hotspots.
Anthropology Today extends recent focus on anthropology and terrorism, war and conflict with two articles looking at the situation in Nepal. Marie Lecomte-Tilouine (translated by David Gellner) considers the coincidence of regicide and Maoist rebellion by looking at the continuities between royal and Maoist symbolism. Judith Pettigrew, Sara Shneiderman and Ian Harper address the ethical issues of conducting ethnographic research in a country such as Nepal where violent conflict unexpectedly engulfs one's fieldsites and compels radical changes to fieldwork methodology.