In this lush Hindu kingdom tucked away in the shadow of Mt. Everest, a brutal Maoist insurgency has killed more than 3,500 people.

The fighting is escalating, and the casualties are mainly civilian. More than 1,700 Nepalis have been killed in the past four months alone, a greater number than in the previous six years combined.

The insurgency in Nepal is just one of three deadly conflicts in South Asia which have brewed quietly in the background of the Afghan conflict. But the lack of media attention is no indication of a lack of US involvement. In all three conflicts, which together have claimed tens of thousands of lives over the past two decades, US officials have quietly been applying pressure and support for peace talks, and, in the case of Nepal, a war against Maoist rebels.

• In Sri Lanka, the US has thrown its support behind a Norwegian-brokered cease-fire that's now in its fourth tenuous month, but the US has also sent emissaries to warn ethnic Tamil guerrillas to desist from terrorism.

• In the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, US diplomats are quietly pressuring both India and Pakistan to step back from their current war-footing, and resume talks over the Muslim-dominated state that they both claim.

• In Nepal, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba arrived in Washington yesterday to finalize a $20 million US military aid package – which reportedly includes counterinsurgency training by US special forces – to help fight against Maoists.

"All these conflicts have a common feature of not being at an end," says Kanti Bajpai, a national security analyst at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "Everyone is split and in doubt; everyone is waiting for everyone else to make the first move."

Of all the major conflicts in South Asia, Nepal's seems the furthest from resolution. The Maoist rebels, who declared a "People's War" in 1996, have accelerated their 10-year plan to overthrow the current monarchy and parliamentary system and replace it with an egalitarian "dictatorship of the proletariat." To date, nearly 3,500 Nepalis have died in the past six years, the vast majority of them civilians.

"The Maoists are today all over the place," says Ashok Mehta, a retired Indian Army general based in New Delhi, who has extensive contacts with the Nepalese Army leaders. "They just knocked off 22 police posts at will, and the state is unable to prevent them or respond."

Over the past five days, the poorly trained, poorly equipped Royal Nepalese Army appears to be making some successes, reportedly killing some 550 Maoists in the Maoist heartland in Western Nepal.

Despite a three-month cease-fire, following the June 1, 2001 royal massacre of King Birendra and much of his family, the Maoists have escalated the level of violence. In addition to attacking "hard targets" such as police stations or army patrols, Maoists have also attacked public services that benefit common Nepalis, such as village development offices, mini-hydropower plants, drinking water projects, airport towers, and telecommunication lines. Today, nearly one third of all Nepali villages have no local officials to run health or education programs; 17 out of 75 districts have lost phone service.

In addition, Maoists have begun rounding up citizens who they consider to be informers and executing them.

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