Nepal earthquake: Five things to know about the Himalayan nation

Earthquake rocks Nepal Nepal is struggling in the aftermath of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake which struck on Saturday. More than 3,600 people are reported to have been killed, with that figure expected to rise as the scale of the devastation outside the capital of Kathmandu is assessed.

Here are five things to know about the history, economy, politics and geology of Nepal:

Years of civil conflictThe country has suffered years of civil war and political turmoil, with deep disputes over how the nation, and its 28m people, should be governed.

For nearly 240 years, Nepal was an absolute monarchy, ruled by members of the Shah dynasty, whose 18th-century founder, Prithvi Narayan Shah, united principalities to create his Hindu kingdom. Monarchs were revered by religious Nepalis as deities and incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu.

In 1990, King Birendra ended Nepal's absolute monarchy, legalising political parties and a rudimentary parliament. But in 1996, the country was rocked by a rebellion by Maoist guerrillas, demanding the monarchy's total abolition, a democratic constitution and big social and economic reforms.

In the midst of this brutal conflict, the monarchy suffered a devastating blow in 2001 when Crown Prince Dipendra gunned down nine members of his family, including his parents King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, before turning his weapon on himself. After the massacre, the late king's unpopular brother Gyanendra ascended to the throne

In 2006, after a decade-long civil war had claimed the lives of an estimated 16,000 Maoist fighters, soldiers, state officials and innocent civilians, the Maoists agreed to lay down their arms to make way for a civilian government, reducing the monarch's powers. In 2008, Nepal's three largest political parties voted at a special assembly finally to abolish the monarchy.

Since then, however, Nepal's political parties have failed to reach an agreement on the draft of a new constitution, leaving the country in a political limbo.

Asia's giants, India and China, are vying for influenceNepal is wedged between the world's two most populous countries. India and Nepal, which have strong ties of history, culture, language and a shared Hindu faith, have traditionally had close relations, and New Delhi sees Nepal as part of its natural sphere of influence. The two nations have long maintained an open border, which allows their respective citizens to travel freely, without passports or visas, and freely work in either country.

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China has tended to ally itself with Nepal's governments of the day, and has poured funds into the country to strengthen its road and rail connectivity to Nepal.

Beijing's courtship of Nepal has paid off. Whereas hundreds of Tibetan refugees once escaped to India every year, just a handful are now able to complete the journey, partly because of the vigilance of Nepali border authorities acting at China's behest.

Nepal depends on tourism to propel its economyNepal has been a magnet for foreign tourists since the 1970s, when road-weary European backpackers, who had travelled from Europe to Asia overland, arrived in Kathmandu and felt they had discovered the mystical Shangri-La.

Travellers have always been captivated by Nepal's Himalayan peaks, its deeply religious people and Kathmandu's ancient temples, shrines and palaces - many of which were preserved as Unesco World Heritage sites but were devastated in the quake.

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, tourism directly contributed 4 per cent of Nepal's economy in 2013, and directly or indirectly employed nearly 1.1m people, accounting for about 7 per cent of the country's jobs.

Before the quake, Nepal's tourism industry was expected to grow steadily, particularly driven by rising affluence in neighbouring India and China, whose citizens have visited in growing numbers.

Many mountaineers are dismayed by the commercialisation of Everest Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, has been climbed more than 6,000 times since Sir Edmund Hillary and his Nepali sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, made the first successful ascent in 1953.

But the mountain has also claimed ever more casualties, with at least 260 people perishing on its slopes as wealthy amateur climbers, without extensive mountaineering experience or technical climbing skills, pay up to $65,000 to be shepherded up the mountain by Sherpas.

The growing commercialisation of the mountain has dismayed many serious and dedicated mountaineers. In 1996, eight people died in a single day on Everest as it was hit by a freak blizzard - a tragedy documented in Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air. Along with the freak weather, the fatalities were also blamed on the sheer number of people trying to ascend the summit in a single day.

Last year, 16 Nepali Sherpas were killed in an avalanche at the notoriously dangerous and unstable Khumbu icefall while laying ropes and carrying heavy loads to stock altitude camps for fee-paying climbers.

Furious over the meagre $400 compensation Nepal's government initially offered to the victims' next of kin - compared with the tens of thousands of dollars each foreign climber pays to go up the mountain, hundreds of angry Sherpas staged a mass walkout of the base camp, abruptly ending the 2014 climbing season.

A seismic hot zone where geologists have long warned of a 'big one'Nepal is highly susceptible to severe earthquakes, as the Himalayas are the world's youngest and most geologically unstable mountain range.

In 1934, Nepal was rocked by an earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale, which killed roughly 10,000 people and destroyed nearly 20 per cent of the Kathmandu Valley's buildings, including a quarter of all homes. In the 19th century, Nepal was shaken by three earthquakes of similar magnitude. according to Nepal's National Society for Earthquake Technology.

In the mid-1990s, geologists mapped 92 active faultlines running through Nepal as part of a programme to develop appropriate building codes to ensure buildings can withstand quakes. In 1997, NSET worked with GeoHazards International to assess the potential damage in the Kathmandu Valley from a quake similar to that of 1934. With the area's sharp increase in population, the assessment suggested an 8.2 magnitude quake could see 40,000 killed, 95,000 injured and 600,000 left homeless.

Despite the risks, Nepal has struggled to enforce the seismic safety building codes it drafted nearly two decades ago. Few municipalities carry out any serious examination of plans for new buildings. Instead, most buildings are designed and built by owners and their contractors, with little regard for quake resilience.

Here is a list of web links to some of the international groups seeking donations for relief efforts in Nepal:

Unicef

Oxfam

The Red Cross

Save the Children

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