Obama's Af-Pak Overture
US president Obama was crowned with Nobel Peace Prize within weeks of his ascension to US presidency ? and how a mockery of truth it was! The Norwegian government had borne five times the value of the prize money of $ 1.4 million for security of Obama so that he may attend the prize distribution ceremony. And this messenger of peace, Obama, affirmed that he and the imperialist government he represents, what they really stand for with his announcement of 30,000 more troops to be sent to Afghanistan over and above the already existing 70,000 to smash up and bludgeon the terrorists in Afghanistan, dumping his earlier promises of withdrawal of force, etc! What a prize he had been given for so blatant hypocrisy! This also reaffirmed the farce that usually goes on in the name of Nobel Peace Prize which in the past also decorated many champions of imperialist, capitalist interests.
The masses who are facing the brunt of Obama Government's peace policies are not at all confused or duped by this. Continually for several years they are showing unrelenting opposition to the US attacks that are repeatedly killing thousands of civilians and inflicting destruction on their crude and impoverished belongings. The terrorists, the desperate suicide attackers, are harboured in the midst of those masses, enjoying some sort of support whether they endorse this path fully or not. Many more are out in the streets against the US imposed war across Afghanistan and Pakistan, the reverberations of which are seen among the recession struck US masses struggling amid economic hardship. But in the din of the media this violence and killings are made to appear simply as a collateral damage in a conflict in the war on terror and jihad!
That history is being sought to be erased that time and again in the whole region of Middle East the mass struggles for democracy has been subverted and for that ages old fundamentalism and violent forces of reaction raked up, armed and supported. Now some of those imperialist nurtured forces have become Frankenstein's challenging imperialist USA's smooth sail for hegemony.
But that is also nowhere near the whole picture. The imperialists are caught up in a bigger dilemma. It is no more the starting period of war-on-terror as it was six or seven years earlier. No more talks of hidden weapons of mass destruction by Saddam in Iraq or Afghanistan's sheltering of 'bin Laden' nor dreadful stories of Chemical or Nuclear weapon of Iraq has the same magic influence. The democratic structure and democratic governments installed from the top by US imperialists have been proved to be fruitless exercises, neither ending armed conflict nor able to gain popularity or a semblance of trust of masses. Both the Iraqi election and the recent Hamid Karzai's govt election smelled obnoxiously of manipulation and large section of masses did not participate in it. Neither the assemblage of thousands of sophisticated, armed soldiers or remote controlled drones are able to crush and end the violent opposition.
It is the dilemma of the number one imperialist power facing its Battle of Waterloo in Afghanistan amidst its home-grown financial crisis and recession. The fear of losing the whole region of influence in global competition for loot, exploitation and other geo-strategic concerns is more and more getting hold of them. In spite of the fact that there is no equal contending superpower present nor any growing force of communism in the world.
Now, after the break up of Soviet Union, by its inherent overzealous attempts to get hold of the major share of the prized cake that this oil-rich and gas-strategically well placed Middle East is, U.S. imperialism and its allies are rousing the masses themselves starting from Iraq, through Iran upto Afghanistan and Pakistan. Remember one simple shoe throwing incident on the former U.S. President Bush was the real prize of indignation and hatred against U.S. imperialism as expressed in the rejoiced reaction of the masses. It became as much symbol of protest against the unrepentant exploiters that it was repeated once again against a World Bank official in Turkey, then in front of the White House by American citizens and in a different context against India's erstwhile Home Minister Chidambaram.
On the other hand spreading from Afghanistan into Pakistan, the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces of fundamentalism, assembled and armed by the U.S. in the late 1970s to fight and drive away the erstwhile 'social imperialist' Soviet Union's war machine from Afghanistan, have turned against their mentors the U.S. and Pakistan ruling classes, and showing no signs of cowing down in front of increasing military actions. Rather the sympathy and support of the masses are still with them, a major sections of whom see the U.S. as the unjust occupation-force and war-imposer.
The subversion of the masses' struggles for democracy and liberation from imperialist aggressors through the decades by coups, sabotages, proxy-wars and use of reactionary forces like Taliban and Al-Qaeda has reappeared in a perverted form of resistance placing the Taliban and Al-Qaeda other jihadi organisations at the head of the masses.
A similar history of the ruling classes in the Indian sub-continent has cast its shadow in the present Afghanistan-Pakistan situation. The ruling classes of India and Pakistan, their representative political parties ? the Congress Party and the Muslim league acceded to the British imperialist's designs of a communal partition. The fundamentalist communal forces were allowed to play havoc with the lives of common masses keeping the sub-continent entrenched in a deep conflict based on communal divisions. The aspirations for a secular, democratic republic free from imperialist meddling was suppressed. The big bourgeois ? big landlord rulers retained, on the whole, the old imperialist constitution and state structure. [Pakistan PM Mr Bhutto once jokingly said that an example of similarity between India and Pakistan was the Section 144 CrPC.]
Thus Kashmir, an independent state has been forcibly occupied and divided by India and Pakistan and since 1947 has remained in turmoil. Talking about the North West Frontier Province, of which 'Frontier Gandhi' Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was a popular leader, fighting against British rule, for self-determination of the Pakhtun inhabitants of the province said 'The Congress Party could not also give any other option other than joining India or Pakistan since other regions especially Kashmir could also then demand that option'.
'Frontier Gandhi' was neither a communist nor a nationalist revolutionary seeking separation of NWFP as an independent state. He was a Gandhian who united the Pakhtuns against oppression of the British, the repression of mullahs and an ancient feudal culture of violence and vendetta. He founded the organisation Khudai Khidmatgars during the 1920s based on Gandhian principles of satyagraha and worked with the Indian National Congress Party. He united the Pakhtun people for democratic reforms, secularism and was against partition and was hence targeted not only by the British but also ditched by the Congress leaders who also accepted partition, and later by the Pakistani rulers along with the feudal lords and parasitic clergy. In British rule and then after transfer of power Ghaffar Khan was put under house arrest upto 1980 ? for a total of 52 years of his life. The Pakistani ruling class led by Muslim League Party in open support with the British rulers on the verge of independence used farcical referendums and the communally charged atmosphere to batter the Pakhtun masses awakened with democratic aspirations and ensure accession of NWFP with Pakistan.
Similarly the SWAT valley, a district in NWFP only 160 km from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, was a princely state in NWFP until it was dissolved in 1969 which has become the present target of U.S. and Pakistani military being under Talibani influence.
Baluchistan, the biggest province of Pakistan includes the state of Kalat a princely state ruled earlier by Khans, with whom Pakistan signed an agreement recognizing its autonomy and sovereignty subject to future negotiation of relationship. But both houses of Kalat parliament asserted independence in 1947 and the Khan subsequently acknowledged he had no right to accede to Pakistan's demands for annexation, which he said he had done only under threat of military force. Since then a number of separatist groups in the province have continued armed struggle against the Pakistan government ? the most serious tribal insurgency being by Manri and Mangal tribes between 1973 and 1977 fighting for greater Balochistan comprising historical Baloch regions split between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2006 during Musharraf's regime the Pakistan Army killed Nawab AkbarKhan Bugti - popular tribal leader.
Thus the era of British rule in the Indian subcontinent and the subsequent partition and formation of the states of India and Pakistan aborting the real democratic struggles of different sections of the masses had its share in the present consequences emerging in Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions.
In continuance of this same heritage of the ruling class policies of dependence on the imperialist interests and thwarting the democratic aspirations of the masses the Indian government have become supporters of America's War-on- Terror. They have more and more succumbed to U.S. imperialism's designs in the region after the dismantling of erstwhile Soviet Union. India today has bagged the biggest civil construction contract worth Rs 5400 for construction of roads etc in Afghan territory rendering the biggest non-military support to the American war-on-terror in the region. Earlier for similar reasons they have reneged on oil pipeline agreements with Iran, as Iran has more and more come into the U.S. target of 'rogue states'. Nothing amazing that the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be one of the first international leaders to congratulate Obama for his Nobel Peace Prize win.
Thus the imperialists, the big bourgeois and the feudal lords and communal religious clergy sustained and utilised by them to stamp out every form of revolt of the masses for democracy in the region have gone on spreading the conflagration . On the other hand all attempts by these sections of the ruling classes to implant their puppet democracies from the top have at the best resulted in unstable fragmented democracies keeping the completion of democratic revolution on the agenda of the masses.
Looking from another angle, the real motive force that can complete this overdue process of democratisation of these societies can be understood. The U.S. President in 1979, Jimmy Carter, just prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ordered the infamous CIA to conduct covert anti-communist propaganda operations. Carter's advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski says "According to official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujhahiddeen began during 1980, that is to say after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." He recalled "we didn't push the Russians to intervene but we knowingly increased the possibility that they would. The secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap. The day the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, 'we now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War'."
An U.S. statesman can only look at the history of Vietnam as a defeat of an imperialist superpower. Because superpower America's defeat at the hands of Vietnamese people made them victims of Vietnam syndrome. But Afghanistan was nowhere near to be another Vietnam and also the present events in Afghanistan-Pakistan can not be another Vietnam for the U.S. At most it may be a Battle of Waterloo. Vietnam, Vietnamese people by defeating the mighty U.S. military raised the banner of spreading red rebellion of socialism and communism in the Indo-China and further away amidst a still living international communist movement. The Taliban and Al-Quaeda led defeat of social imperialist Soviet Union could never be so. Nor so even if today the U.S. forces face the same fate there. Vietnam's resistance and anti-imperialist struggle that vanquished the U.S. occupation force cannot come about with Taliban Or Al-Quaeda like reactionary forces at the head of rebellious masses. China's victorious anti-Jap resistance did not also come about with such reactionary forces.
Such anti-imperialist, revolutionary struggles surged there combining the heroic sacrifice of the masses awakened with the visions of a new future free from subjugation, exploitation and oppression. It surged ahead on the revolutionary working-class ideologies of communism.
The real prize for Obama and Bush, the imperialists, can only be such revolutionary Vietnams and China. The reactionary forces of Talibans and Al-Quaeda can never deliver that. The imperialists and the regional bourgeoisie and other classes colluding with the imperialists are just arousing the masses by their war and assaults. The Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other militant groups are only nationalist-reactionary responses to it that can bring to the forefront despotic, authoritarian rules on the masses as it happened through the Ayatollah's rule in Iran.
The real revolutionary ideology that can challenge imperialism in the region uniting the proletarian, plebeian and oppressed masses of these backward, dependant countries for national liberation and through anti-feudal democratic revolutions depends on the revival of the international communist movement. It depends of the unity with the revolutionary proletarian struggle of the proletariat of the imperialist countries and of the more developed among the dependent countries in and around the surrounding regions. History shows us that this revolutionary ideology of communism reared its head awakening the masses of the Middle East and upto the Indian subcontinent from the early 20th century inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. It imbibed the still nascent proletarian masses, the peasantry and intelligentsia with ideas of social revolution, with the twin tasks of sweeping away all forms of feudalism of the landlords, khans, sultans and despotic rulers from within the country and their patrons the imperialists for national liberation.
From these realities of a mobilized revolutionary force of the masses of lower rungs of these societies arose the possibilities of formation of anti-imperialist fronts, the visions of All Arab nationalities anti-imperialists front, and the rise of communist forces in the more developed countries of Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Palestine in the region. Lakhs of workers who immigrated from these countries for work in industrial areas in Central Asian republics of USSR returned baptised in the flames of the Soviet revolution. The possibility of even bypassing the capitalist path of development towards socialism, with aid and guidance of socialist countries became a concrete agenda before the revolutionary forces.
This can only be the real prize for Bush, Obamas and their allies - the real prize for tampering with and perverting the long held aspirations for liberation of the masses from backwardness, despotism, war-mongering and loot. But that wave of revolutionary upswing faltered and the torch of emancipation got extinguished, much due to degenerations developing within the movement. Until such forces and struggles emerge again and merge to lead the rebellious masses the hypocrisy of bloody killing and winning 'peace prize's will continue.
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