What about Pakistan? And India?

Response to a post by a Pakistani talking about the absurdity of the Pakistani arguments for supporting the US in Afghanistan:

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Interesting insights and a good demonstration that the current rhetoric coming out of the Pakistani media is nonsense; but there are so many more dimensions to this situation.

On the one hand there is the matter of what strategic game the global imperialists are playing and why, and on the other hand there are the struggle of the Indian and Pakistani people with their own ruling classes - nationally and locally, politically and day-to-day.

Then there are the struggles between different factions of the Indian and Pakistani ruling classes, and the strategy of the dominant factions for regional hegemony.

Against all of this there is the struggle of the people on both sides of the border for democracy, in India the play of religions against each other in a divide and conquer strategy that always seems to draw in the specter of Pakistan, and in Pakistan the actions of the military officer corps as an apparently semi-autonomous component of the ruling class, fighting not only to keep the people down but to keep its own place in the structure, and justifying its actions by the danger from India which must always be kept alive.

Then there is the influence of the CIA and the multi-national corporations, with their agents, the political and military leaders they have turned, and the corporate leaders on both sides that they have drawn into their web. And add the budding US-Indian alliance and the continuing struggle of China to preserve or regain its special relationship with Pakistan.

And then there's the politics of The Bomb.

Finally toss into this mix the struggles of the little nations along the borderlands for autonomy or independence and the struggle over Kashmir. Like a bunch of wild cards that can turn the game unpredictably.

Now take this pot and turn up the heat on it with a global economic crisis, the US military buildup in Afghanistan and the invasion of Pakistan by flying killer robots and mercenary death squads, arousing the patriotic anger of the people, who have already had a brief, sweet taste of revolution.

Wow.

What about that?

As in many parts of the world this situation has reached a point of great tension, with a lot of stored and repressed energy - like an n-dimensional chess board where only a few pawns have been taken as each player has developed their positions and strategies to the limit. What happens when the denouement begins?

That's the question you are raising. It deserves a deeper answer.

Pakistan

TThe Taliban are not what most of us would wish on Pakistan or anywhere else, but the April 16 New York Times gives a hint of what is unfolding there, and why we can't "fix" it:

Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH, April 16, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/asia/17pstan.html?th&emc=th

What this story makes clear is that the Taliban is either leading or unleashing a long-overdue social revolution in the countryside, a rebellion against the power of the big landlords, and that is what all the "experts" have been so concerned about, why they fear and predict this "insurgency" will spread to all of Pakistan!

I've been shaking my head over every story coming out of Pakistan for years, asking: "What is really going on below the surface? This doesn't make sense!" We've been shown a country going unstable, but no satisfactory clue as to why. Finally here's a clue. We can be sure there's more, much more, but this piece of the story at least makes sense!

There are indications in the story that the fact that peasants were rising against their landlords under Taliban leadership was well known to journalists, perhaps five years ago, certainly by three years ago; yet only now has the Times deemed it necessary to share this information with the broader elite, the professionals, academics and "top 1%" who make up most of its readership. A Google search shows that the story was not picked up by other media; perhaps it came with a tag indicating "not for mass consumption"!

How does this square with Bhutto's land reform? Was that incomplete or corupt, leaving unfinished business? What about the Taliban in Afghanistan is unclear. Is the same thing happening there? The revolution of 1978-79 was also a revolt against the landlords, which failed and was crushed despite half a million Soviet troops trying to save it, but the class conflict in the countryside must still be there, as presumably the surviving landlords or their families returned to claim their land. Where is the reporter who will tell us whether unleashing a peasant rebellion is also powering the Taliban's success in Afghanistan?

Nor is there any hint here as to how this affects Pakistan's large urban working class. Are the Taliban championing their cause also? Could urban working people tolerate its call for Sharia Law? Pakistan's labor movement represents barely 2% of the non-agricultural workforce, yet it is active, militant, uniting, and winning victories, working with the basically corrupt Pakistan Peoples Party. What are their leaders thinking and saying? What they will do if Pakistan goes critically unstable? Will they be able to lead the working class? Is there an underground workers party that will suddenly emerge? Will they then join with the Taliban-led peasants or oppose them in a battle of competing revolutions? Our media rarely gives a hint that they exist at all. But without this information, our ability to understand the danger of and motives for US intervention in Pakistan, and our understanding of the need to block the Obama Administration from broadening US involvement, are very weak.

The Pakistan crisis has the potential to develop into a nightmare: US troops and mercenaries, with vast fleets of armed robots, wading into the midst of a titanic struggle between a long-overdue peasant revolution, led by religious fanatics, and a long-overdue workers revolution led by we don't know who, in a nuclear-armed nation ten times the size of Iraq, with India sitting on the wings ready to take advantage! This must not be allowed to happen!

The US can't fix Pakistan or save it from itself. Our "Empire" evidently cannot by its nature bring progress and democracy to anyone, no matter what the intentions of the people at the top, any more than the Soviet Red Army could save a revolution in Afghanistan. Theirs just wasn't that kind of an army anymore, and neither is ours. We've done enough damage already.

For better or for worse, the people of Pakistan (and Afghanistan) must be left free to work this out for themselves! Perhaps we do have a role to play though in persuading India to stay out of it too!