After arsonists incinerated the very foundations of the Nepali state, the air still reeked days later of scorched buildings and charred government files.
The Singha Durbar compound in the capital, Kathmandu, was once home to an ornate palace and about 20 government ministries on its verdant grounds. It is now a crime scene, all but destroyed within a few hours of fiery frenzy on Sept. 9. Workers emerged from the wreckage of the prime minister’s office on Monday heaving salvaged documents on their shoulders. Other papers fluttered through the air. A dog stopped to urinate on a pile of demographic reports.
“We don’t know anything, it’s a mess,” said Pashupati Mahat, an under secretary of the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation. The ministry’s entire legal department had gone up in flames.
Down a blackened hallway, past a staircase that ended midstep between the second and third floors, the education minister’s office was dark with soot, one wall punched out by fire. Pens and paper clips sat on the minister’s desk, along with two phones with no dial tone.
Outside each ministry, parking lots had transformed into cemeteries of seared cars and motorcycles. The government now has almost no official vehicles on hand. A computer motherboard was wedged between rhododendron bushes.
A singed office chair had somehow rolled into the middle of the road, taking on a strangely permanent position.
Nestled in the Himalayas, Nepal has suffered from earthquakes and endured a decade of civil war. But this arson spree ripped the heart out of the country’s government in a single afternoon. The destruction was as if the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and almost every graceful government building in Washington was ransacked, and nearly every state capital, too.
The protests began with peaceful students angry about official corruption and a widening wealth gap. Then mobs unleashed their attacks. The scale of the damage leaves Nepal’s new caretaker government, installed in the wake of the protests and a deadly crackdown by security forces, even more vulnerable.
Sushila Karki, the interim prime minister, is working from one of the few unscathed government buildings. The handful of ministers that she has named so far have no working ministries. On Monday, after their swearing in, they posed outside in chairs placed in front of the rubble.
“All the institutions responsible for running the country and documents were destroyed,” Ms. Karki said on Sunday, after her own oath taking. “We are in a zero state.”
After Parliament was burned, mobs stormed the Singha Durbar, or the Lion’s Palace, with its Italian glass chandeliers, intricate woodwork and marble staircases. They anointed its splendor with gallons of fuel.
They lit up grand ministries: education, home, health, transport, energy, among others. They set ablaze the Supreme Court, destroying 60,000 case files, according to one estimate. The Special Court, which handles corruption cases, was not spared, complicating any future efforts to combat graft.
More than 70 people died in two days of violence last week, and the trappings of an entire political class were targeted, including the headquarters of political parties, the homes of ministers and politicians, and the businesses of politically connected entrepreneurs. In the Kathmandu Valley, 112 police stations were wholly burned, Shekhar Khanal, the senior superintendent of police there said. The police have set up tents to work. Some directed traffic in civilian clothes because their uniforms and boots had burned.
The arson — nothing more sophisticated than a match igniting fuel — extended through much of the nation. Of Nepal’s 753 local governments, about 300 sustained serious damage to their buildings. In the city of Pokhara, the gateway to the Himalayas, nearly every major government structure was scorched.
In a nation without everything stored digitally, some of the country’s paperwork — audits, intelligence, even originals of international agreements — went up in smoke, as did the records of a national investment trust. Employees of the state-owned bank said that all cash deposits had disappeared in one branch. The bonfires consumed birth certificates and company registrations.
“We can rebuild,” Ms. Karki said. “But those records and age old files and details are fully damaged.”
The passport authority, though, survived, and in the days after the military lifted its strict curfew, Nepalis flocked to apply for an escape. Already, more than 2,000 people a day leave for abroad because Nepal cannot generate enough jobs for college graduates and day laborers alike. This latest crisis has provided one more incentive.
The protesters who were killed have been named as martyrs, with Wednesday designated a holiday in their honor, but the government has so far only promised about $7,000 to their families.
No one knows what compensation might be extended to those who lost their property. Outside the finance ministry in Singha Durbar on Monday, a group of men wandered through a landscape of twisted metal wreckage, searching for their vehicles.
By identifying the number inscribed on its chassis, Rajendra Shrestha eventually found what was left of his motorcycle. It wasn’t much.
“It’s mine,” he said. “But it’s completely ruined.”
He walked away.
Bhadra Sharma contributed reporting.
Hannah Beech is a Times reporter based in Bangkok who has been covering Asia for more than 25 years. She focuses on in-depth and investigative stories.
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