“We heard about my brother’s death on a Friday and celebrated last rites two days later, on a Sunday. We didn’t know if his body would be repatriated. We are waiting for that day,” Shah told the Quint.
Mangal’s brother, Bharat Shah, 34, from Kailali district in western Nepal, joined the Russian army in August 2023. On November 26, he was killed in the ongoing war.
“One of my brother’s colleagues informed us that he had been shot dead on the border with Russia,” Mangal said. Bharat is survived by a four-year-old son and a three-month-old daughter.
Mangal laments that “it’s hard to earn a decent living in Nepal due to lack of jobs,” forcing jobseekers like Bharat to look outside.
According to the International Labour Organisation, the unemployment rate for youth aged between 15 and 29 years in Nepal is 19.2 percent, compared to 2.7 percent for the entire population.
Like Bharat, around two hundred young Nepalis have joined the Russian army since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This is the estimate provided by Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on December 4, 2023, as reported via The Kathmandu Post.
“We had been living in agony since the second week of December, but we still held on to some hope,” Badri Aryal, a resident of Nepal’s Syangja district, tells The Quint.
Badri’s nephew, Hari Aryal, 23, traveled to Moscow on Oct. 20, 2023. Five days later, he took a selfie dressed in a Russian army uniform and shared it on social media. He kept in touch with his circle of relatives until his last message on December 4, after which all communication ceased.
Hari Aryal.
(Photo: Facebook/ Oryal Hari)
However, on January 1, “our worst fears were fulfilled when an official informed us that my nephew, who had enlisted in the Russian army, had lost his life,” Badri al Quint recalled.
Hari Aryal.
(Photo: Facebook/Oryal Hari)
Hari, the younger brother of two brothers and a sister. At the age of 18, he had joined the Nepalese army, but was not satisfied. While earning 30,000 Nepalese rupees at home, he earned 75,000 Nepalese rupees while racing in Russia.
Badri recalls that Hari’s willingness to enlist in the Russian army coincided with the time when other Nepali men, who had enlisted on the country’s front lines, were sharing videos on social media platforms. “Hari was influenced by those videos and was tempted to enlist in the Russian army. We told him not to come but he didn’t listen to us,” the uncle said.
Sarala Thapa still remembers that dark day in November last year, when three other people showed up at her parents’ doorstep in Kapilavastu district to tell them that her brother Rupak Karki, just 24, had been killed in combat at the front. Ukrainian.
“I was on my way to my parents’ house for a stopover on the occasion of Tihar (Diwali) when three government officials came to the door and informed us of our brother’s death,” he said.
Rupak Karki.
(Photo: Accessed via The Quint)
“Rupak had gone to Russia in 2022 on a student visa. He last called us in January 2023 to tell us that maybe we wouldn’t listen to him during his six-month education era and that he would call us once education was over. “says Thapa. The Fifth.
Before leaving for Russia, Rupak had learned Korean in order to go out and look for paintings in South Korea. But he and a neighbor moved to Russia because it was “easier to get a student visa and find a job. “
According to local reports, Rupak has entered into a special military operations agreement with the Russian Ministry of Defense to serve in the Russian military. Russia’s Ivanovo Memoir reports that Rupak was killed on June 30, 2023, on the Ukrainian front while taking part. in the “special operation of the army”.
The Nepalese government on Thursday (January 4) suspended the issuance of entry permits to its citizens to Russia and Ukraine following the deaths of at least 10 Nepalese citizens who had joined the Russian army.
Nepal’s Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE), in a notice, said that the matter was of serious concern as several Nepalese youths were being illegally recruited into the Russian Army, according to local news reports.
Nepal had also asked Moscow not to conscript its citizens into the army and to fire any Nepalese infantrymen stationed in the Himalayan nation.
However, the government failed to acknowledge the problem of unemployment. In a now-viral Facebook post, Diamond C Myagdeli, a Nepalese national, recently shared that he is among those who once fought the Nepalese civil war on behalf of the Maoists, but has now been left to fend for himself and look for jobs in different parts of the world.
Dr. Ganesh Gurung, an expert on labour migration, tells The Quint that the number of people living below the poverty line has decreased, especially in Nepal, and the rate of overseas employment has skyrocketed considerably.
“It’s actually a paradox. Although remittances (which are a major source of income for Nepal) sent through functioning countries have lifted others out of poverty, the pace of task creation has been too slow. Nepal lacks the means and policies to absorb its labour force, fuelling emigration. Young people who risk their lives to fight on the front lines of another country are the result of unemployment in their country,” he adds.
According to estimates, in the fiscal year 2022-23, a record 7,50,000 youths left the country for foreign employment.
Meanwhile, Sanjay Sharma of the Nepal State of Migration study journal said this scenario is unprecedented.
“There is even a term for Nepalese infantrymen who went to earn money and even fight wars on behalf of others. They are called lahures. They went to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq, even though they knew the dangers involved were very high. ” he told The Quint.
Experts in the box also point to India’s Agnipath project, which may have contributed to the migration to other armies.
Binjoj Basnyat, a strategic analyst and the former Major General of the Nepali Army, highlights to The Quint on how the deadlock between Nepal and India over the Agnipath scheme may also be influencing these youths.
“For the past 3 years, the Indian Army has recruited all Nepalese infantrymen into the Indian Army. The first two years were due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And then in August 2022, the Nepalese government blocked the recruitment of Nepalese Gorkhas for the Indian Army’s 43-battalion Gorkha Regiment under Project Agnipath, claiming that it violated the 1947 tripartite agreement signed between the two countries and the UK,” he told the Quint.
Nepalese constitute about 60 percent of each battalion of the Gorkhas, while Indians make up the rest.
Basnyat explains that applying for the Indian army is considered a matter of great prestige for the Nepalese. “Many young men are ready to enlist in the Indian Army. But with conscription through the Indian army suspended, those young men “still have no choice to go over and fight on the Russian front line. “
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