Obama’s Afghan War Crucial to U.S. Bosses’ Global Control

The fight between the U.S. imperialists and their Russian, Chinese and Iranian rivals — for control of the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia region and the pipeline routes to take these resources to market — is leading to wider Middle Eastern wars and eventually to an inevitable global confrontation. Controlling this region is crucial to the U.S. bosses’ efforts to regain absolute control of oil-rich Middle East, which have been the basis for their dominant imperialist position since the end of World War II.

Obama chose to concentrate on the Afghanistan war in hopes the U.S. backed TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline) could be built.  This pipeline, bypassing both Russia and Iran, could reverse Russian-Chinese advances in the energy-rich former Soviet republics, giving the U.S. control of this strategic region.

If successful, together with a new string of U.S. bases in the area, TAPI would put Russia and China on the defensive militarily, break Russia’s growing world energy monopoly, especially of the European Union’s energy market, and position the U.S. bosses to potentially starve China of the energy resources needed to fuel its economic and military rise.

It would also free the U.S. military machine to deal with Iran, if it hadn’t capitulated by then. Iraq could then be more easily pacified and U.S. imperialism’s dream of extending its hegemony well into the 21st century would be within reach.

As U.S. imperialists’ political, economic and military hegemony shrinks, their ability to control the outcome of world events becomes limited. An example is the recent Afghan presidential election, aimed at getting rid of Karzai, who has become an obstacle to their geopolitical goals in the area. He’s been cozying up to China and deepening his ties with the warlords of the Northern Alliance, backed by Russia, Iran and India.

Their electoral scheme failed. So far, with 99% of the votes counted, Karzai is the winner with 54% against the U.S candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s 28%. Plan B was to claim massive fraud and call for a run-off election rigged to guarantee Abdullah”s victory. But some among their ranks like Zbiegnew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter, disagree with this plan. They claim it would further destabilize Afghanistan and increase the “growing risk …that the Taliban …be viewed as a resistance movement against foreign occupation… and that would be a strategic defeat.”

The U.S. ruling class is clearly at odds over this. Some are making frantic efforts to force Karzai into a unity government with his rival Abdullah Abdullah (known in Afghanistan as “Obama’s wife”). Others see no option but to accept Karzai and to configure a government run by their ambassador Eikenberry and General McCrystal. Some call for the “Afghanization” of the war while others demand Obama’s unfailing commitment to his surge. Some, with Saudi Arabia and Britain, are working for a negotiated settlement with the “good Taliban.”

Besides, some of their European allies also disagree with the plan and are reluctant to send more troops. German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the elections, while demanding, with leaders from Britain and France, an international conference to force the “Afghanization” of the war so “that the international engagement can be reduced.” Brzezinski agrees, arguing it might reduce “the growing risk of the war becoming a war of foreigners against Afghans,” and the Europeans allies “might be less likely to pull out entirely…. [Leaving] the U.S. alone in the lurch.”

Whatever tactics the U.S. butchers finally decide on, pipeline TAPI may never fly. It is detrimental to the ambitions of China, Russia and Iran. A U.S.-Taliban agreement will never bring peace to Afghanistan as the warlords of the Northern Alliance, the Taliban’s sworn mortal enemies, will fight desperately to survive.

Even if the U.S. imperialists carve out an independent “Pashtunistan” from Afghanistan-Pakistan, as some are planning, the war is likely to widen as the area’s instability helps China and Russia further consolidate their grip on the Caspian-Central Asia region. The Iranian nuclear issue  — nothing but a fig leaf to hide the vital role of Iran’s energy resources and strategic location in the fight for world domination — is rapidly forcing a showdown between the U.S., Russia, Iran and potentially Israel.

How many more millions must be murdered, maimed and displaced for the profits of the imperialists of the world? No election, peace agreement, U. N. resolution or slick-talking politician like Obama will ever put an end to this butchery. Workers, students and soldiers, getting angrier at the cutbacks and layoffs, need to see that the widening imperialist genocide, inherent in capitalist crisis, is costing $billions and murdering so many members of our class! Students need to unite with soldiers and workers who bear the heaviest burden for the capitalist war economy. Only an international communist-conscious working class under the leadership of PLP can put an end to this bosses’ inferno, with a communist revolution.

Obama’s Afghan War Crucial to U.S. Bosses’ Global Control

The fight between the U.S. imperialists and their Russian, Chinese and Iranian rivals — for control of the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia region and the pipeline routes to take these resources to market — is leading to wider Middle Eastern wars and eventually to an inevitable global confrontation. Controlling this region is crucial to the U.S. bosses’ efforts to regain absolute control of oil-rich Middle East, which have been the basis for their dominant imperialist position since the end of World War II.

Obama chose to concentrate on the Afghanistan war in hopes the U.S. backed TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline) could be built.  This pipeline, bypassing both Russia and Iran, could reverse Russian-Chinese advances in the energy-rich former Soviet republics, giving the U.S. control of this strategic region.

If successful, together with a new string of U.S. bases in the area, TAPI would put Russia and China on the defensive militarily, break Russia’s growing world energy monopoly, especially of the European Union’s energy market, and position the U.S. bosses to potentially starve China of the energy resources needed to fuel its economic and military rise.

It would also free the U.S. military machine to deal with Iran, if it hadn’t capitulated by then. Iraq could then be more easily pacified and U.S. imperialism’s dream of extending its hegemony well into the 21st century would be within reach.

As U.S. imperialists’ political, economic and military hegemony shrinks, their ability to control the outcome of world events becomes limited. An example is the recent Afghan presidential election, aimed at getting rid of Karzai, who has become an obstacle to their geopolitical goals in the area. He’s been cozying up to China and deepening his ties with the warlords of the Northern Alliance, backed by Russia, Iran and India.

Their electoral scheme failed. So far, with 99% of the votes counted, Karzai is the winner with 54% against the U.S candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s 28%. Plan B was to claim massive fraud and call for a run-off election rigged to guarantee Abdullah”s victory. But some among their ranks like Zbiegnew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter, disagree with this plan. They claim it would further destabilize Afghanistan and increase the “growing risk …that the Taliban …be viewed as a resistance movement against foreign occupation… and that would be a strategic defeat.”

The U.S. ruling class is clearly at odds over this. Some are making frantic efforts to force Karzai into a unity government with his rival Abdullah Abdullah (known in Afghanistan as “Obama’s wife”). Others see no option but to accept Karzai and to configure a government run by their ambassador Eikenberry and General McCrystal. Some call for the “Afghanization” of the war while others demand Obama’s unfailing commitment to his surge. Some, with Saudi Arabia and Britain, are working for a negotiated settlement with the “good Taliban.”

Besides, some of their European allies also disagree with the plan and are reluctant to send more troops. German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the elections, while demanding, with leaders from Britain and France, an international conference to force the “Afghanization” of the war so “that the international engagement can be reduced.” Brzezinski agrees, arguing it might reduce “the growing risk of the war becoming a war of foreigners against Afghans,” and the Europeans allies “might be less likely to pull out entirely…. [Leaving] the U.S. alone in the lurch.”

Whatever tactics the U.S. butchers finally decide on, pipeline TAPI may never fly. It is detrimental to the ambitions of China, Russia and Iran. A U.S.-Taliban agreement will never bring peace to Afghanistan as the warlords of the Northern Alliance, the Taliban’s sworn mortal enemies, will fight desperately to survive.

Even if the U.S. imperialists carve out an independent “Pashtunistan” from Afghanistan-Pakistan, as some are planning, the war is likely to widen as the area’s instability helps China and Russia further consolidate their grip on the Caspian-Central Asia region. The Iranian nuclear issue  — nothing but a fig leaf to hide the vital role of Iran’s energy resources and strategic location in the fight for world domination — is rapidly forcing a showdown between the U.S., Russia, Iran and potentially Israel.

How many more millions must be murdered, maimed and displaced for the profits of the imperialists of the world? No election, peace agreement, U. N. resolution or slick-talking politician like Obama will ever put an end to this butchery. Workers, students and soldiers, getting angrier at the cutbacks and layoffs, need to see that the widening imperialist genocide, inherent in capitalist crisis, is costing $billions and murdering so many members of our class! Students need to unite with soldiers and workers who bear the heaviest burden for the capitalist war economy. Only an international communist-conscious working class under the leadership of PLP can put an end to this bosses’ inferno, with a communist revolution.

Korea: From U.S.-Japanese Colony to Pro-Communist Land to State Capitalism

On June 12, the U.S. had trade sanctions placed on North Korea to punish it for testing a nuclear bomb. This conflict is part of a rising one between the U.S. and China, one where the U.S. tries to marshal anti-communism to win U.S. workers to support increasing military action worldwide.

North Korea is repeatedly presented as a mystery, a place impossible to understand, with a crazy, untrustworthy leader, likely to irrationally attack the U.S. or Japan or other “play-by-the-rules” nations. Ironically, U.S. imperialist urge workers to trust them — the only ones who have experience using these “weapons of mass destruction” in war!

Modern Korea began with Japanese and U.S. imperialism, and the wars they fought to gain control of the region. In 1905, Japan “won” Korea as a colony after a war with Russia. Teddy Roosevelt received a Nobel Prize for brokering “peace” between the two imperialist rivals, one that included Japan’s acceptance of U.S. control of the Philippines. In 1945, after 40 years of brutal exploitation and resistance to Japanese imperialism by Korean workers, the U.S. occupied southern Korea. As part of its World War II victory, the U.S. took what is now called South Korea as both an economic beachhead and a potential garrison for containing the Soviet Union and the communist-led, anti-imperialist movements of northern Asia.

Initially, a pro-U.S. government was staffed by Koreans who had served in the hated Japanese army and police force, but it couldn’t shut down the people’s committees that had been formed during the anti-Japanese resistance.

In June, 1950, after months of border skirmishes, most often initiated by the South Korean government, the U.S. demanded UN permission to attack North Korea for what it alleged was a foreign “invasion” of South Korea. Plagued by guerrilla resistance to landlords, to former collaborators and to U.S. rule, the U.S. hoped to “roll back” the northern communist regime that it blamed for civil war in the south.

The resulting Korean War demonstrated the lengths to which U.S. butchers would go to destroy communism and defend imperialism. As control of Korean territory passed back and forth between U.S. and North Korean forces, U.S. officials adopted a scorched-earth policy aimed at wiping out every city in North Korea.

By August 1950, B-29 formations were dropping 800 tons of bombs per day over North Korea, many of them pure napalm. Every city in North Korea was damaged, with most experiencing 75-80% destruction. U.S. bombers targeted dams and shot farmers in their fields. The goal: to starve the population into submission. The U.S. also threatened to use atomic bombs, moving them into Asia, and ran practice atomic bomb drops over the North.

As a result of this aerial bombardment, 4 million out of a population of 30 million died during the Korean War: 2 million North Korean civilians, 1 million South Korean civilians, and 500,000 North Korean troops. A million Chinese soldiers (who had joined in the defense of Korea just as Koreans had fought in their revolution) and 56,000 American soldiers were also killed. Like the Vietnamese a decade later, Koreans know from personal experience that U.S. imperialists have never valued the lives of the worlds’ working class.

A 1953 truce — officially the war has never ended — left Korea just as divided as before. The Korean communist party (the Workers’ Party) of Kim Il Sung governed the North. A fascist, pro-U.S. government ruled the South, aided by a permanent garrison of some 40,000 U.S. troops armed with nuclear missiles and tactical nuclear weapons. North Korea defied the U.S. military assault, but its own political weaknesses turned this victory into a defeat for the international working class.

Founded in 1925, the Korean communist party grew out of the resistance to Japanese occupation in the wake of World War I and the Bolshevik revolution. Part of an international movement, thousands of Koreans served in the Chinese Communist army during the resistance to Japan.

In 1946-47, the Korean communist party initiated land reform, made education and health care free for all, liberated women, and nationalized the large number of Japanese and U.S. factories in the North. But these socialist reforms did not move Korea toward communism. The Korean party focused on building “socialism in one country” which, over time, led to nationalism becoming its primary ideology.

In modern North Korea, no slogans call for workers’ power or internationalism. Banners proclaim “Long Live the Great Juche idea!” “Juche,” calls for national (Korean) independence in politics, economics and defense; the term is linked to monarchist ideologies that meld the people and the nation into the person and family of the ruler, now Kim Jong Il, the son of Kim Il Sung. Glorified images of Kim Il Sung — reminiscent of the cult    of the individual that weakened the Soviet Union and China — replaced the internationalism and the fight for communism that were once part of Korean practice.

Within its nationalism, North Korea retained wage differences and operated within the broad international economy. From the 1950s to 1980s it traded with the USSR and China for raw materials (oil) and manufactured goods. In the 1990s, with the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the intensification of capitalism in Russia and China, North Korea began to suffer the problems of all capitalist economies. Russia wanted hard currency for oil, and Korea had to find more markets for its goods.

The North Korean government had two responses to these economic problems, both reflecting state capitalism, not communist goals. One offered its workforce as low-wage labor by setting up free trade zones where South Korean and Japanese factories employ highly-skilled North Korean workers at low wages.

The other was to enhance its exports. In the 1990s, the trade in weapons became an increasingly important source of petroleum and foreign currency, and North Korea became a major supplier of SCUD missiles to countries such as Iran who are linked to China, Russia and other rivals of U.S. power. North Korea’s push to develop nuclear weapons is a tool to gain economic benefits and to manipulate the intensifying imperialist rivalries.

None of this benefits the working class. We can draw two lessons: One- no matter what sweet words the latest U.S. ruler coos, imperialism is a dead-end and a death trap for the working class. Second- there are no shortcuts to communism, to a society without wages, run by the working class. Nationalism has repeatedly been offered as a path to change, and it has repeatedly led workers back to capitalism and to death, whether in the Middle East, Asia, or the U.S. Only an international communist movement to smash capitalism worldwide can end war, racism and exploitation once and for all.

Obama Ups ‘Body Count’: Afghan Deaths,U.S. Jobless

Barack Obama won 62 million votes on a “peace” platform — that slated 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan — while promising “to create new jobs.” Instead, his brief regime has relentlessly attacked workers with intensifying war and economic misery.
Obama is sending 21,000 more GIs to Afghanistan now and backs his generals’ demands for an additional 10,000 this fall.

U.S.-led forces have slain 27,000 Afghan civilians since 2001. Obama’s surge can only worsen the death toll.

The U.S. war machine’s new commander-in-chief is also stepping up airstrikes into Pakistan. One such raid killed a dozen civilians on April 1. More than 400 people have died in the Iraq war since Inauguration Day. Bush Sr.’s invasion, Clinton’s sanctions and bombings, and Bush Jr.’s invasion and occupation took over two million Iraqi lives. Obama, despite his lies about “withdrawal,” is extending the U.S. oil war’s body count while pledging to keep combat brigades in Iraq.

Domestically, it’s workers’ livelihoods that suffer mass extermination. According to doctored government figures, at least 1.7 million jobs have disappeared on Obama’s watch, so far. The true figure, counting “discouraged” workers and part-timers who can’t find non-existent full-time jobs, is double that. And his scheme to “save Detroit” forces both job- and pay-cuts on autoworkers.

Obama can’t and won’t bring either peace or prosperity because he, like all politicians, serves his nation’s capitalist class. Obama’s top advisors, hailing from major corporations and ruling-class think-tanks, are tightly tied to the dominant, imperialist JP Morgan Chase-Exxon Mobil-Rockefeller wing of U.S. capital, as CHALLENGE has often noted.

Obama’s bailout of Citigroup, AIG & Co. further exposes his true class loyalty. It wipes out shareholdings that include workers’ pensions and 401Ks, but guarantees billions — via AIG’s bailout money — to creditor banks like Goldman Sachs.

White House Job No. 1: Wars to Save U.S. Oil Empire

Obama’s U.S. capitalist masters face sharpening political, military and economic competition from imperialist and regional rivals. Thus, he’s expanding military operations in the Mid-East and Central and South Asia to protect U.S. bosses’ most important single source of profits, oil, and its control as a weapon against its rivals.

But threats to Exxon Mobil’s and Chevron’s “black gold” keep mounting. Energy-thirsty China is building attack submarines and aircraft carriers to challenge U.S.-Navy dominance over oil routes. Iran’s oil baron mullahs exert growing influence in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, which surround Saudi Arabia, U.S. imperialism’s grand profit prize. Putin’s Russia, which supplies energy to much of Europe, using it as blackmail, seeks a new empire that includes a nuked-up Iran.

Obama is pouring $10.5 billion in lethal military aid into already nuclear, unstable Pakistan in hopes of rooting out Taliban and al Qaeda forces there.

At home, Obama’s “stimulus” won’t reverse U.S. capitalism’s inevitable descent into decay. U.S. workers’ real wages have declined over the past three decades. Yet producing useful goods here, with aging plants and infrastructure — increasingly costly to upgrade — has become, in the main, less profitable than in rival countries.

So U.S. finance capitalists turned from investing in cars, appliances and textiles to trading basically worthless “paper” instruments like bundled bad mortgages and credit default swaps, and at exorbitant prices. Fraud disguised as finance boosted U.S. earnings rates for a time. But the current bust lays bare U.S. bosses’ fundamental and widening global profit disadvantage.

Rival Rulers Draw Daggers at G-20 And NATO Summits

Obama’s feeble effect at recent G-20 and NATO summits underscore U.S. rulers’ deepening predicaments. Rising capitalist powerhouses China, India, and even Brazil played 800-pound-elephant roles at the G-20 economic confab in London, new threats U.S. bosses can’t deal with. Pundits said G-20 was more like the failed 1933 central bankers’ meeting in London, which highlighted the insoluble economic disputes that led in large part to World War II.

Meanwhile, Obama’s attendance at NATO’s 60th birthday party gained only token support for the U.S.’s Afghan war. Only Britain, whose Mideast-focused Shell and BP tie it to the Exxon-Chevron-Pentagon agenda, pledged more than a few hundred soldiers. The NATO festivity also unintentionally prompted a 20,000-strong pro-Russian protest in Ukraine’s capital Kiev against president Yushchenko’s bid to join the U.S.-led war coalition.

World War III Needs Spur U.S. Infrastructure Schemes

If Obama does, in fact, overcome a dysfunctional Congress to create jobs, it won’t be to revitalize GM’s Pontiac sales, but rather to beef up U.S. infrastructure, enhancing its capacity to wage world war. Felix Rohatyn, a major U.S. imperialist strategist, has written a book, “Bold Endeavors,” which recounts past huge U.S. public/private undertakings that enhanced “national security.” These include transcontinental railroads, the Panama Canal and interstate highways.
Rohatyn urges Obama to rebuild rails, ports and roads to make the U.S. not just more productive but better able to withstand attack and project its considerable military might overseas. U.S. rulers, and servants like Obama and Rohatyn, understand that, ultimately, recovery lies in destroying rivals’ productive capacity (including human capital) through war and forcibly seizing their territory, raw materials and markets.

War-maker, job-destroyer, union-buster Obama nevertheless enjoys a high 66% approval rating, according to pollsters. Many people, who rely on government to solve their problems, believe his election struck a blow against racism. But Obama, by winning workers to support the government, actually helps U.S. rulers get away with racist murder, quite literally in their Iraq and Afghan slaughters.

Unemployment under Obama, approaching 30 million and counting, hits black, Latino, and immigrant workers hardest. Obama’s military cold-bloodedly targets unarmed Arabs and Asians.

For workers, supporting Obama, or any agent of the class enemy, is a big mistake. Rather we need to organize to destroy the profit system, which can’t provide us a living but often deals us death. That is our revolutionary, communist Party’s long-term aim.

Afghanistan Center of Imperialist Dogfight over Oil, Gas

The U.S. imperialists are desperately trying to regain full control of their empire’s cornerstone at any cost: possessing the world’s energy reserves, especially those of the Greater Middle East. Since their main focus now is the Caspian Region, Afghanistan is Obama’s main foreign policy objective.

How many more U.S.-NATO troops Obama will sacrifice in this war is not known yet, nor how many more Afghan workers, women and children will be massacred. But the stakes are high for the U.S. rulers, and they aren’t going to let the prospect of more blood on their hands stand in the way.

The stakes are also high for their capitalist-imperialist rivals in the region, particularly the Russians and Chinese bosses. Russia’s rise as an aspiring hegemon is dependent on controlling the world’s energy resources; while China needs ever-greater quantities of crude to fuel its industrial and military might. Their contradictions with the U.S. will develop into military clashes, with large-scale war looming on the horizon.
If pacified enough, the U.S. rulers hope Afghanistan’s strategic location will transport vast energy resources, bypassing Russia’s territory, and positioning them to replace Russia as the main controller-distributor of Caspian-Central Asia’s energy.

This would break the energy chokehold Russia has on the European imperialists, crucial if the U. S. hopes to get the EU’s support on important geopolitical issues, wider wars and the coming global war (See Box). A U.S. success in Afghanistan would also pressure China to become U.S.-energy dependent.

All Roads to Afghanistan Go Through Moscow, China and Iran

U.S. bosses’ military success in Afghanistan depends on supplying their troops, which has become ever more difficult. At present, three-quarters of supplies bound for Afghanistan must pass through Pakistan where “almost half of the US supplies …… [are] pilfered by motley groups of Taliban militants, petty traders and plain thieves…” (Asian Times on Line, 1/27/09)

With the Pakistani rulers less willing or capable of guaranteeing their supplies safe passage, the U.S. rulers must find alternative routes. But, the only possible routes, besides Iran and China, run through either the Caspian Region or Russia, all of which require Russian cooperation. Thus, the U.S. rulers’ big dilemma is how to get it and at what price. Nevertheless, whatever agreement these imperialist butchers reach will only intensify their contradictions and speed up their military confrontation.

Afghan President Karzai too Close to Russia and China

After seven years of racist U. S. terror and genocide against Afghani workers, a resurgent Taliban controls between 50% and 70% of the country and the U.S.-NATO forces are losing the war. To try to salvage the situation, Obama’s approach is to pacify Afghanistan enough to build the pipelines to safely transport energy resources to market. Thus the U.S. bosses are trying something that was unspeakable in the days after 9/11, the “inclusion of the Taliban or Taliban elements in a coalition government.” (George Friedman, Stratfor, 1/29/09)

This plan calls for dumping Karzai, who is refusing to go quietly. He is railing against Afghani civilians murdered by U.S. raids and moving closer to Russia and China. Against U.S. opposition, he recently accepted Russian military aid offerings. Also, in Moscow last January 23, Russian and Afghan diplomats “pledged to continue developing Russian-Afghan cooperation.” (Asia Times Online, 1/27/09)

Furthermore, Moscow will host a conference on Afghanistan under the aegis of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization, comprised of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). Russian President Medvedev is adamant that “nothing can be resolved (regarding Afghanistan) without taking into account the collective opinion of states which have an interest in the resolution of the situation”.

Russian Imperialists Ready to Defend Their Backyard

Russia will soon approve a new national security strategy that identifies the United States as Russia’s primary rival. It singles out controlling global energy resources as the long-term source of conflict, which could develop into military confrontation. (Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 2 January 6, 2009) To this end Russian just gave Kyrgyzstan $2.4 billion to kick the U.S. out of its Manas airbase, used to supply allies’ troops in Afghanistan.

Workers, soldiers and students worldwide must realize that capitalism inevitably leads to wider wars and eventually to World War 3.  We must break with all politicians and bosses, be it Obama, Putin, Karzai or the religious holy rollers. Let’s turn their imperialist wars into a revolutionary storm to wipe out capitalism and build a communist society where we share and allocate the world’s natural resources according to our needs, not the bosses’ profits.

Mumbai Massacre Heats Up India-Pakistan Dogfight

The Mumbai terrorist attack is being played as a religious holy war between Moslem and Hindu fundamentalism. But behind that lies what is killing millions of workers worldwide today: the dogfight among the world’s imperialists and their lackeys for control of the energy resources, pipelines (see below article) and the right to super-exploit workers.

In South Asia, this deadly mixture has brought two regional nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, to the brink of another war, and exposed the weaknesses of U.S. imperialism’s policy towards Afghanistan-Pakistan. “The crisis…fallout may… [expand] to include the United States, NATO, Afghanistan and Iran,” reports the NY Times (Week In Review, 12/7)

The U.S.-NATO Afghan war has had a devastating destabilizing effect on Pakistan (see CHALLENGE, 12/10). A fractured Pakistani ruling class is so divided that it cannot help U.S. imperialism’s design for the region. “A collapsing Pakistan, and with it the loss of any real border separating India from Pakistan, is India’s worst nightmare,” says Robert Kaplan, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “Making matters worse, every time the United States launches an air attack into Pakistan from Afghanistan, it further destabilizes the Pakistani state.” NY Times, 12/8)

Any of the many factions of the Pakistani ruling class could had been behind the Mumbai massacre — which killed 192 people and injured hundreds more — as well as the recent bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Many in the ISI (Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence service) see India as the main enemy of Pakistan. Killing innocent people is business as usual for imperialism’s big bosses and their goons.

The Mumbai massacre has shaken India’s growing alliance with the U.S., enabling India’s old ally, Russia, to re-emerge. Following the Mumbai massacre, Russian president Medvedev visited India and not only made a deal to sell India 80 M1-17 helicopters but also got an extra $2.2 billion from India for an aircraft carrier.

Mumbai has not only led to Russian weapons’ sales to India but has now brought India’s bosses closer to the Russian position in Afghanistan.
During Medvedev’s visit, in a Joint Declaration, India and Russia shared their concern over the “deteriorating security situation” in Afghanistan and called for a “coherent and a united international commitment” to deal with the threats emanating from that country.

The implied criticism of the U.S.-led war is obvious as is the rejection of the U.S. strategy to retain the war as its exclusive domain. The Joint Declaration then says, “Both sides welcome Russia’s initiative to organize an international conference in the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, involving its Member states and Observers.”

Both India and Russia are derailing the U.S.-Saudi plan to make a deal with some Taliban leaders at the expense of the former’s interests in energy-rich Central Asia.

This mixture of imperialist-capitalist rivalries and their use of religious fundamentalism is deadly for the region’s workers and their allies. The urban and rural workers and youth, from Kabul to Karachi to Mumbai, have a long history of fighting capitalism and imperialism. What’s needed is a revolutionary communist outlook to unite and destroy all the bosses and their various ideologies.J

Imperialists’ Battle Over Oil Pipelines Will Widen War

The Mumbai massacre (see above) highlights the rapid, blood-letting pace of the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry for control of the Caspian region’s vast oil and gas resources and its strategic pipeline routes to world markets. This rivalry, intensified by the worldwide, deepening capitalist economic crisis, is leading eventually to World War III.

U.S. imperialism’s seven years of indescribable carnage in Afghanistan was originally intended as a quick military operation to secure pipeline routes for transporting Caspian region resources to the Indian Ocean Gwadar port in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, by-passing Russia and Iran.

Now, with the U.S. bosses bogged down in two wars — and major ones with Iran, Russia and/or China looming — while facing one of the worst economic crises in their history, they’re desperately trying to stem their rapid decline and remain the number one imperialist power. Oil, despite its sharply lower price, is still crucial to this endeavor, as it is to Russia’s and China’s rise as rival super-powers.

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM, HAVE THEM JOIN YOU

With the Russian victory in Georgia making it unfeasible to build new U.S. trans-Caspian pipelines, Afghanistan is again (short of invading Iran) the most realistic, practical route to transport Caspian energy to market, by-passing Russia and Iran.  That’s why the “U.S. is actively considering [peace] talks with elements of the Taliban….in a major policy shift that would have been unthinkable a few months ago.” (Wall Street Journal, 10/28/08)

The objective is to “pacify and stabilize” Afghanistan enough to guarantee safe transport of these resources, while occupying the country indefinitely. At a recent NATO meeting, “the alliance visualized a long haul in Afghanistan.” (Asia Times on-Line, 10/15/08)

U.S. bosses hope to have everything in place by 2013 when Kazakhstan oil, being developed by U.S. oil companies, will start flowing. With this outlet, U.S. imperialists hope to reverse Russia’s gains in the energy-rich ex-Soviet republics.

RUSSIA, CHINA, IRAN AND THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE

These plans directly threaten the geopolitical interests of Russia, China and Iran, so they’re pushing back. This fight will only lead to wider, and eventually global war.

Russian President Medvedev criticized the U.S. for creating chaos in Afghanistan. He called for a new pan-European security pact, saying NATO can’t ensure the continent’s security. He said the “United States’ desire to consolidate its global role” is unrealizable in a multi-polar world.

Defying Russia’s warning, U.S. imperialists arrogantly think they can unilaterally expel Russia and Iran from Afghanistan. But the Northern Alliance, Afghan President Karzai’s main base of support, is very dependent economically and militarily on Russia and China.

Iran also has close ties with former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, leader of the anti-Taliban coalition (Northern Alliance) in the 1990s. Kabul is courting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a holy warrior who fought for the CIA against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. He leads the fastest-growing insurgent group in Afghanistan.

China, a major player in the region, opposes the U.S.-NATO permanent military presence in the area. Afghanistan is being courted by the SCO to become a member. The SCO is a regional organization created by Russia and China to stop U.S.-NATO expansion in the Caucuses-Caspian regions. Since 2004,

Karzai has been a guest of honor at all the SCO’s summit meetings.

U.S. bosses are also supporting the Balochistan secessionist movement, which could eventually break up Pakistan if it degenerates into a failed state or becomes too independent. This would both deny China access to alternative energy resources and transport routes, and provide U.S. bases to further encircle Russia and China militarily.

PLP condemns the terrorists behind the Mumbai attack, along with all the capitalists-imperialists and their religious fanatics terrorizing workers worldwide. Workers need the ideas in CHALLENGE to fight all the bosses and build a mass international revolutionary PLP to fight for a communist world, without any bosses and their mass terror.

Pakistan and China in U.S. Bosses’ Sights

U.S. actions in Afghanistan and the region are also aimed at preventing China from importing 80% of its oil by skirting the Strait of Malacca, a narrow passage-way which the U.S. can block in case of war.

For China, the closest and safest sources of energy are Iran and the Caspian region, by-passing the Malacca Strait. Thus, China has signed mega energy contracts with Turkmenistan and Iran, a country the U.S. strives to isolate.

China’s other alternate routes are Pakistan’s Gwadar port in Balochistan with prospective pipelines from there to China’s remote western regions; and the Myanmar’s Sittwe port from which it will build two 900-mile pipelines to its Yunnan province.

Other possible routes for China to bypass the Malacca Strait are in the Indian Ocean. Thus, the U.S., using pirates in the area as pretext, has sent warships to “patrol” it. The U.S. is also negotiating bases there to gain full control of the Indian Ocean and adjacent seas, and temporarily thwart all Chinese solutions to their Malacca dilemma.

U.S. Bombs Pakistan, Escalating U.S. Afghan War for Oil

On October 24 a reported 10,000 Afghans chanting “Death to the barbarian Taliban and Americans” protested the Taliban’s execution of 26 young men. Claiming responsibility, a Taliban spokesman said they were Afghan security-force recruits. But a witness told Agence France Presse, “They were innocent civilians who wanted jobs…on their way to Iran.”

On November 5, U.S. warplanes, allegedly targeting Taliban, bombed an Afghan wedding party, killing 37 (including 23 children). A day later 30 more civilians died in another U.S. air attack.

The unprecedented size of the anti-Taliban rally reflects Afghans’ anger at the barbarity of both sides in a war in which they are increasingly the victims. A survey by The International Council on Security and Development found that six of ten Afghans want foreign troops out. Yet president-elect Barack Obama pledges to send 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

For Afghans, seven years of U.S.-NATO occupation has meant more deaths, and worsening economic conditions. In some areas, 80% live below the poverty line. One in five children dies before the age of five. Millions face famine the winter. Food prices have skyrocketed.

Afghanistan now produces 93% of the world’s heroin. Addiction is rising, even among women and children. Cheap and readily available heroin replaces costly medicine and is used as an antidote against despair. Tent cities ring the capital next to mansions built from narco-trafficking. Billions in foreign aid go to profiteers, not the needy.

In 2001, the U.S. returned Northern Alliance Fundamentalists to power — warlords and former jihadists who view women as domestic slaves and procreators. They’re now an 80% majority in parliament in the world’s most dangerous country for women. Gang rape, murder, abduction of girls and women go unpunished, as do killings of female teachers, activists and professionals. Women trying to escape violent husbands and families are jailed.

The Taliban’s growing military strength, its deployment of suicide bombers and roadside explosives, is leading to an increasingly dangerous battlefield for occupying forces, especially in southern and eastern Afghanistan where the Taliban fighting force swells when necessary with locals willing to fight for cash.

The Taliban are also fighting for political and economic power, challenging the U.S.-installed, puppet president, Hamid Karzai, and the warlords and drug czars in government positions whose access to international funds and resources has made them extremely wealthy.

A coalition of Karzai’s parliamentary rivals — the United National Front — want an international effort to settle the civil war. But the U.S. opposes this and, aided by the Saudis, is quietly working to include “moderate” Taliban in the Karzai government. Recently the heads of the CIA and ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency) met in Washington. They discussed isolating Pakistan’s “moderate” Taliban from the militants and Al Qaeda who are engaged in a brutal war with the Pakistani army in the tribal region that has left many dead and more than 300,000 homeless.

While talking “reconciliation,” the U.S. has been widening the war: 300 U.S. military advisors now train Pakistani counter-insurgency troops on U.S.-purchased land near Pakistan’s capital. Since July the U.S. military has bombed Pakistani locations where it claims Afghan Taliban have safe havens. Despite Pakistani government protests, the attacks continue, killing many civilians, escalating the conflict on both sides of the border and foreshadowing a break-up of the region into ethnic enclaves.

The U.S. calls its escalation a continuation of “the war on terror” but it’s really a dogfight with imperialist rivals, primarily Russia, but also China and Iran, for control of Central Asia’s oil and gas fields as well as enhancing the profits of its multi-national corporations.

Former Pakistan Army Chief, General Mirza Aslam Beg, suspects the U.S. wants to end Pakistani control of the tribal areas and Balouchistan, a Pakistani province bordering Iran and Afghanistan where the U.S. is secretly training Balouchistan separatists. The Taliban might then be offered a deal: an independent state carved from both sides of the Afghan/Pakistan border. Balouchistan would become a U.S client state and the U.S. would build a long-anticipated pipeline from Central Asia through a stabilized Afghanistan and Balouchistan to the Arabian Sea.

In the 1970s, there were country-wide uprisings by peasants and strikes by workers in government printing shops, textile mills, cement plants, mines, transportation and on construction sites. Many fought against the ruling class which used religion to oppress workers and peasants. Women were particularly exploited, virtual slaves to their husbands and families; they worked at home, on the land, and produced handicrafts for additional family income.

We in PLP are trying to learn from the achievements and mistakes of the old communist movement, in order to advance the struggle against all the imperialists and their cohorts (be they Jihadists, state-capitalists or free marketers). We call on the workers and peasants of Afghanistan, who had fought and still fight against the fundamentalists, drug warlords and various imperialist puppets like President Karzai, to join with us in rebuilding an international communist movement to smash capitalism in all its forms.

Will U.S. Invade Pakistan?

PAKISTAN –– On September 14, Pakistan troops fired shots into the air to stop U.S. troops crossing into the South Waziristan region of Pakistan. A couple of weeks before, twenty Pakistani villagers, including women and children, were killed when the U.S. troops crossed the border from Afghanistan to supposedly attack Taliban insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry immediately condemned it as “a grave provocation.” Seven days later Bush announced U.S intentions to continue the raids — with or without the approval of the Pakistani government — and to send additional troops to Afghanistan (Obama and McCain  agree on expanding the war in this region.)   

Pakistan and Afghanistan share a 1,500-mile border, that 19th century British imperialists arbitrarily cut through mountainous land inhabited by Pashtuns. U.S. insistence that the Pakistan military crack down on the Taliban has caused a backlash against the army by Pakistani fundamentalists (often Pashtuns) and al Qaeda (foreign jihadists). The fierce confrontations have killed many civilians and left thousands homeless. In Afghanistan, the seven-year U.S.-NATO occupation has worsened conditions for the majority of Afghans. More than 1,000 civilians have been killed this year.  

The U.S. and its ally, India, claim that Pakistan is the center and cause of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, accusing members of the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of helping the Taliban. This is the excuse for the recent U.S. invasion of Pakistani territory. The U.S. wants to replace its decades-long  indirect domination of Pakistan with direct military control. 
A 2005 report by the U.S. National Intelligence Council and the CIA, forecast a “Yugoslav-like fate.” for Pakistan. A former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK predicted that, “The central government’s control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi, by 2015.” (Times of India 13 Feb 2005). 
Breaking up Pakistan would facilitate U.S. exploitation of the vast energy reserves of the Caspian Sea region to the north. Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of Barak Obama’s foreign policy advisors wrote in 1990,  “The Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.”   U.S. oil companies plan to build pipelines to transport that oil and gas from the region through Afghanistan and Balochistan — a Pakistan province — to the Arabian Sea and so to markets in Europe and Asia. If the U.S. is unable to secure this pipeline, Russia — and China — may monopolize the Caspian oil fields.  The survival of the U.S. as a leading imperialist power depends on the  control of the world’s energy sources — a point emphasized this week as oil baron Cheney shuttled around the Caspian States meeting local rulers and representatives of Chevron and BP. As Brzezinski noted, “whoever controls Eurasia controls the world.”

The U. S. is now sponsoring India’s membership in NATO, which will add one more powerful U.S. ally to the growing circle around Russia. When the Indian army took part in NATO exercises in Arizona in August, Russia retaliated by announcing that its strategic bombers would patrol the Indian Ocean. The U.S. and India signed a nuclear arms agreement that, according to Administration officials, “seals a long-term strategic alliance between the two countries, which had tense relations during the Cold War.”  With a rapidly expanding capitalist economy, seeking new markets, trading partners and oil, India also has interests in the Caspian Sea reserves and has its own plans for pipelines from Iran, through Balochistan to India.  

Nationalism and religion are constantly being used by the ruling classes to divide workers and their allies. In Pakistan, India has joined with the U.S and Britain to covertly support and arm the separatist Balochistan Liberation Movement. In Indian-controlled Kashmir tension is growing between Muslim and Hindu, fundamentalists and secularists, and spreading to the border with Pakistan in the east.

The former Yugoslavia was broken up in part with the promotion of nationalism and the organization of separatist militias. For Yugoslavia’s working class the result was fascist/racist terror, bloody civil wars and atrocities. Revolutionary communists must show the Afghan, Pakistan, and Indian working class and its allies — Pashtuns, Balochis, Sindhis, Punjabis, Kashmiris, Hindus  — that nationalism is not the answer to their problems. That is the goal of the PLP in the region. Join us!

Pakistan’s Workers Fight Havoc Wreaked by U.S./Local Rulers’ Attacks

After only five months, Pakistan’s new coalition government has sunk into a seemingly unstoppable political and economic crisis: rapidly-rising inflation, increasing challenges from Islamic extremists and U.S.-India condemnation of Pakistan as a very serious threat to capitalist world security.

On August 18, the latest in a long line of U.S.-backed military strong men, President Pervez Musharraf, stepped down rather than face impeachment. While commentators predict his resignation heralds a new era, the chaos continues: a suicide bombing kills 30; another leaves 70 dead; one coalition partner resigns from government; thousands flee their homes during the biggest battle of the “war on terror” between the Pakistani army and the Taliban; president-to-be Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP), declares, “The world is losing the war on terror.”

Meanwhile, working-class anger at the rising cost of living — wheat flour, a staple, increased 26% in one month and transportation 14%, following last year’s jump in consumer prices of almost 20% — government corruption and general insecurity led to nation-wide protests. In Karachi, Pakistan’s Telecommunication Company workers struck in May, taking over the company’s headquarters until July 28 when they won higher wages.

On-the-job actions erupt in textile factories, the cement industry, among teachers, hospital and other government departments as more workers demand wage increases to offset increased living costs. Critically affecting the government’s military plans, 3,000 Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (Defense Ministry) workers, paid on a daily basis, are demanding pay increases and permanent jobs, now given to relatives and friends of army officials.

The PPP-led government blames Musharraf’s nine-year dictatorship for worsening conditions, claiming he left a “mutilated” economy with a large trade deficit and a government budget deficit up 75%. But their “poor people’s budget” follows Musharraf’s policies that blatantly benefit Pakistan’s ruling class and the U.S., which is insisting on the deregulation of Pakistan’s economy. More privatization of public resources is planned, tax breaks on stock-market profits are extended two years and large tracts of land are reserved for foreign investors to develop agribusiness. Subsides for food, fuel oil, electricity and fertilizer are slashed over 25%.

With a nod to the painful poverty of its 168 million people — 70% exist on less than $2/day, 60 million are “food insecure” (according to a UN report) — the government trumpets its $507 million program to provide $15 per month, medical insurance and job training for 3.3 million desperately-poor families. This contrasts starkly with a military budget of $4.7 billion.

Since 2002 the army has also received $10 billion from the U.S. to fund Pakistan’s military participation in the “war on terror” against the Taliban in the tribal belt along the Afghan/Pakistani border. But despite these billions, the insurgency has grown and the U.S. believes that the funding — paid in cash — is going elsewhere. In Pakistan it’s no secret that it lines the pockets of top military officials, who use the war as a cash cow and want to keep it alive.

The root of Pakistan’s current problems is U.S. bosses’ need to use it as part of their goal of world domination. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, (now an Obama foreign policy advisor) devised the “Bear Trap,” a plot to defeat the U.S.’s main imperialist rival, the then Soviet Union, by drawing it into a war between the Afghan pro-Moscow government in Kabul and the wealthy landowners and religious zealots opposing it. The plan (in Brzezinski’s words, “to give the Soviet Union its Vietnam”), involved the creation, funding and training of an Afghan mujahaddin army in Pakistan.

This led to a 12-year jihad that became the U.S.’s largest covert action, (estimated cost, $40 billion (The Nation, 2/15/99) the bulk coming from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia). It inflicted religious intolerance on the secular societies of Pakistan and Afghanistan, perpetrated some of the most brutal acts of terrorism and became the breeding ground for the Taliban and the al Qaeda terrorist networks now operating in 80 countries.

Today the U.S. claims factions in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence are aiding the Taliban’s resurgence. But the latter’s strength is also growing because the Pakistani army is weakening. Soldiers see the officers’ corruption and plunder and are demoralized. Desertions are rising. Many rank-and-file soldiers are reluctant to fight in a war overwhelmingly targeting civilians. Bloody confrontations, like the recent one killing many civilians and making 300,000 homeless, strengthen the Taliban’s position.

“Why is our government bombing us from the air,” shouted one refugee. U.S. air strikes from over the border in Afghanistan or from secret CIA bases in Pakistan that kill more villagers than terrorists intensify the anger.

Caught between the army and the insurgents, people in the tribal areas are either coerced or voluntarily join with the Taliban. They do have an alternative: join with other workers in building PLP which is fighting the cause of all this misery, capitalism. J

(Next, Part II: India, the U.S. and inter-imperialist rivalry over Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan and the projected “balkanization” of Pakistan.)

Afghanistan: Tables Turning on U.S. Aggressors

The “victory” claims of U.S. rulers when they invaded Afghanistan in 2001 have turned around. Not only is Osama bin Laden still at large, but the Taliban and its allies are now launching coordinated assaults on U.S. Army bases and an attack that killed ten elite French paratroopers. No wonder Obama and McCain are advocating troop increases in Afghanistan. At stake is a proposed oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.

The seven-year occupation has devastated Afghans. Thousands of civilians have died from U.S./NATO air attacks, bombs, missiles and police fire, intensifying hatred of the imperialists. Poppy cultivation and corruption have soared. Poverty, homelessness, skyrocketing food prices, 75% illiteracy — this and worse is the lot of the average Afghan, the result of U.S. “liberation.” With over 80% of women affected by domestic violence, Afghanistan has become the most dangerous place in the world for women.
All this has become fertile ground for Taliban and al Qaeda recruitment.

In the face of this devastation, Afghans have protested. Hundreds demonstrated against rising food prices; at a teachers’ rally for wage hikes, students set 45 vehicles ablaze and attacked the cops. Angry street demonstrations protested the U.S.-puppet agreement to maintain permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan.
All this is linked to the instability in bordering Pakistan, a Taliban base.