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.

PLP Exposing Fake Leftists, Union ‘Leaders’ in Pakistan

This May Day gives us an audacity to fight against exploitation with full devotion, honesty, enthusiasm and bravery. The working class all over the world is very eager to get rid of capitalism but, for example in Pakistan, we’ve got to deal with the brutal living conditions that this system breeds, with union leaders who are in cahoots with the bosses and with fake-left leadership who lead us down the dead-end of state capitalism. None of these leaders want to change the world of capitalist oppression because they are puppets dancing in the hands of bosses by getting money and other personal advantages. They are created by the capitalists to keep poor workers away from their revolutionary struggle against exploitation, poverty, illiteracy and profit. We, as PL’ers, fight against all of these anti-working-class forces and struggle to bring true communist ideas to the masses of Pakistani workers.

Capitalist bosses have recruited gangsters and called them union leaders. Almost every so-called union leader is enjoying a luxurious life style: homes in posh areas, dinners at best restaurants, costly car, etc. Many ruling class parties have their own union bosses to protect their political interests and to keep the workers quiet against their policies. Trade unions in Pakistan Railways, Steel mill, PIA, Wapda, PTCL, Pakistan Hydro Electrical Board and many others are led by the bosses’ lieutenants.

While the union bosses get fat, the Pakistani working class faces miserable circumstances: high prices, low wages, poor working conditions, no job security, and many other social problems. This situation creates the conditions where workers are ready to get rid of this rotten system but they can’t find a way out because of puppet leadership!

The super-exploitation of Christians, women and children illustrates the genocidal situation that has been created for workers in Pakistan. Christians are common as sanitary workers who face some of the worst working and living conditions. Women workers are subject to rape by local bosses or landlords. Resistance means that the women can be accused of having an illicit relationship and subject to the barbaric sentence of stoning. The children of the working class face particularly terrible conditions. Most families cannot afford to send them to school so many send them to madrassas (free religious education providers) to get religious education, food and shelter. In many schools, the clerics feed the children the anti-working-class ideology of political Islam and convince them to protect local bosses’ interests by becoming “terrorists.” Child labor is also very common. Many children work in restaurants, hotels and factories where they face low wages, sexual abuse and torture.

In response to these horrible conditions, fake-leftist parties, chanting the slogan of state capitalism (socialism), are working to maintain capitalist oppression. No party is functioning for the working class — they prefer to get sympathies of “intellectuals” from upper class and hold conferences in five-star hotels with capitalist guests. They are encouraged to keep good relations with bosses in the better interest of their families; “after all it is due to these bosses they are getting something to keep their families alive.”
You cannot find people from the working class in their meetings — they don’t like to meet workers with torn clothes or dirty hands. They argue for national and people’s democratic revolution, socialism, international socialism, Trotskyism, nationalism, but not for communism! Nobody can hear a single world about communism from these fake leaders because they are afraid of it.

It exposes their purpose to work for capitalism by these fake -isms. But we understand their intention: to keep the working class away from any real revolutionary movement. They are here to spread the illusion that communism is dead and to protect the interests of bosses. Workers are fed up with these fake -isms that all lead back to capitalism. They need communist ideas to change their lives.

PLP’s voice is very loud and clear, its line is based on truth, honesty and experiences of great revolutionaries. It has strong power to attract sincere people and it gives courage to workers for changing the world of exploitation into equality, justice and prosperity. Communism is a truth that penetrates the hearts of the working class.

It is alive and still bringing workers under one red flag of PLP to make international communist revolution. When we greet workers with the line of our Party they are happy to join us and get rid of the fake-leftist trade unionists. We believe we will win millions of workers, students, soldiers and other oppressed and exploited people to get rid of imperialist wars, terrorism and exploitation.

PLP Growth in Pakistan New Hope for Working Class

PAKISTAN, April 15 — New elections have changed the face of the ruling class, now a coalition of landowning capitalists (PPP), industrialists and financiers (PMLN), nationalists (ANP and BNP), racists (MQM) and fundamentalists (JUIF). They claim to be forming a government of national consensus. Their one major goal in common: exploit the working class more effectively. The pioneer of this consensus is the husband of slain Benazir Bhutto, famous for his corruption, money laundering and kickbacks.

Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani has a landowner, spiritual background and uses God to justify exploiting workers. He spent five years in jail on corruption charges. After taking office, he announced a wage increase for laborers as a ploy to earn their support; restored the right to form unions; and made many other promises which cannot be realized under capitalism. They are attempts to ward off any potential unrest.

Asif ali Zardari (chairperson of the ruling coalition) claims they are “changing the system,” but his “change” would substitute a civil regime for the current military regime to better serve imperialism. The alliance of these various parties cannot last long — their internal rivalries will destabilize Pakistan.

PPP is helping President Musharaf by continuing his policies regarding the “war on terror” and relations with the U.S. Presently U.S. officials are actively seeking support from the new government for the war on terrorism, but workers know the CIA engineered this terrorism against Afghanistan’s workers and farmers in the name of the war against “communists.”

Back then U.S. imperialism protected the Muslims in a “sacred” war to make Afghanistan an Islamic country. They trained Muslim youth from throughout the world for terrorism, equipped them with the latest weapons, new cars and funds and provided them full protection for an illegitimate war against the Afghan people in order to counteract the Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden was on the CIA payroll in the training sites established in northwest Pakistan.

The capitalists’ thirst for profit and resources to run their war machines drives this terrorism. It helps maintain the super-exploitation of the working class. Strategically northwest Pakistan is very important for carrying out imperialist wars, so the U.S. has created, or curries favor with, these fundamentalist factions to establish its influence.

Workers need communist leadership to fight the poverty and exploitation that are vital to capitalism. Poor workers here cannot afford their daily bread. Young children pick small pieces of food from garbage. They have little clothing, no shelter, no medication if they fall ill and no job opportunities. They are living to enrich the capitalists.

Fake leftists are playing imperialism’s game, using the word “socialism,” but PLP’s ideas give hope to the working class that this murderous system can be destroyed. PLP is growing despite our limited resources. We don’t advocate socialism, nationalism, “national democracy” or “people’s democracy.” We are true to the working class, trying to move workers towards communist revolution in exposing inter-capitalist rivalry.

Poverty, racism, inequality, unemployment and homelessness are all inevitable products of this murderous system. We must intensify the class struggle towards the goal of eliminating the cause of these evils. We in PLP have a rich history of fighting capitalism, equipped with revolutionary communist ideas. We must win workers to join us and wage an international struggle for communist revolution.

Pakistani Bosses’ Election Won’t Solve Workers’ Problems

  Those Pakistanis who did vote in the country’s recent national assembly elections registered their disgust with current president and military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, soundly rejecting his ruling party, (the Pakistani Muslim League, PML-Q). An even greater disbelief in the ability of elections to solve the problems faced by Pakistan’s working class was mirrored in the great majority who didn’t vote. In a country where workers struggle with double-digit inflation and face daily shortages of basic necessities like wheat flour and sugar, barely 20 million — of a possible 100 million+ eligible voters — went to the polls.

  The entire electoral system is thoroughly corrupt, a condition endemic to capitalism. Although winners included the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP), led by Asif Ali Zardari, husband of the recently-assassinated Benazir Bhutto, and ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League–N, the low vote could easily reflect a protest against the big spending of the candidates. They criss-crossed the country in private jets, helicopters, bullet-proof 4-wheelers, protected by heavily-armed private security guards and poured money into extravagant TV and print ads. This campaign blitz cost 200 billion rupees, according to the Times of India. (1,000 rupees roughly equals $16.)

  For many months Pakistani army officers have been moving away from Musharraf as their front-man. His overly-obvious bowing to U.S. orders, plus personal power-grabbing, made it more difficult for the army to control the Pakistani masses. The appearance of a “fair” election was necessary to downgrade the increasingly unpopular general. But “choosing” between the same small group of elites who, using elections, coups or assassinations, have bounced in and out of power for the past 40 years, reflects the “choices” under capitalism where all parties represent the ruling class.

  It was also the most expensive election in the country’s history, completely controlled by those who financed the campaigns, with money mostly coming from wealthy industrialists, stock brokers and real estate businessmen whose “investments” will require pay-offs. This means the same old corrupt government, run on contracts, kickbacks and patronage.

  No party won an outright majority. Power-sharing deals involve U.S.-backed dictator Musharraf, who retains the presidency illegally; PPP leader, Asif Ali Zardari, unable to assume office because of his criminal past, having served eight years in prison on embezzlement charges; and Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistani Muslim League-N,  also barred from office because of past convictions for hijacking, terrorism and attempted murder.

  These two parties engineered a coalition government that excludes Musharraf, who remains president, for now. Meanwhile, the lawyers, journalists, NGO’s, human rights activists and students of the “Democracy Movement“ are pressuring the coalition for a place in the new government.

  One young activist lawyer was skeptical of the movement’s call for “democracy” — as if the state was neutral, above class interests, instead of being an instrument for the ruling class to exploit the working class. Doubtful of producing any lasting changes through a capitalist government, he said, “Nevertheless we’re in this movement, fighting the anti-working class labor laws. As capitalists fight with each other, and show their many weaknesses, we have an opportunity to build a mass party for revolutionary change.” 

  But the U.S. is the main player pulling the strings in Pakistani politics. Shortly after the elections, the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad summoned the PPP’s Asif Ali Zardari to the U.S. embassy. The PPP now says the new government won’t seek Musharraf’s immediate impeachment. The U.S. indicates it will continue working with Musharraf.

  Pakistan, a center of competition among world powers, occupies a position of great geo-strategic importance, bordered by Iran, Afghanistan, China, India and the Arabian Sea. It is crucial to strengthening the U.S. hold on the Middle East. Already the U.S. has four army bases in Pakistan, and launches Predator missile attacks on insurgents from a secret base in Pakistan.

Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the UN, says, “We will look back 10 years from now and say that Af/Pak was even more important to our national security than Iraq.” Both Obama and Clinton favor expanding the “war on terror” in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The search for Al Qaeda and Bin Laden will be used to justify keeping the U.S in the area for a long time. U.S, Pakistani and Afghan workers and youth will be dragged into fighting more wars. Therefore, the most important task is to build a revolutionary party to lead the working class out of the endless horrors of capitalism. This is PLP’s aim in Pakistan and worldwide. Fight for Communism.

Good Riddance to an Anti-Communist Mass Murderer

Suharto, Indonesia’s former military dictator, finally kicked the bucket after a long illness. Unfortunately, he died in bed and not at the hands of the working class, to whom he brought so much suffering.

Suharto was the leader of the 1965 military coup that ousted the nationalist regime of Sukarno. “Throughout the country, members, supporters and suspected sympathisers of the Parti Kommunist Indonesia [PKI] were massacred; it was estimated that up to one million were killed, while many more were imprisoned or detained without trial.” (The London Independent, 1/28) It was one of the bloodiest massacres in recent history, and the CIA helped the death squads all the way, supplying them with the names of communists and sympathizers.

More than a decade later, the Suharto regime committed more mass murder, this time against 200,000 in East Timor, which was occupied by Indonesia after it had became independent from Portugal. The Indonesian army also massacred many thousands in West Papua and oil-rich Aceh (where Exxon-Mobil has huge investments).

Suharto served in the Dutch colonial army (Indonesia had been a Dutch colony). Then, during World War II, he won promotion in the puppet army controlled by the Japanese fascists. After the war, he joined the anti-Dutch struggle until Indonesia became independent in 1950.

His regime lasted from 1965 until May 1998, when, after a mass rebellion, Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, suggested he step down to avoid more turmoil.

Corruption was rampant in his regime. It’s estimated that his family and cronies stole anywhere up to $35 billion, using their control of state power. But justice wasn’t served and Suharto was able to live out a quiet life within his fortified villa. The new rulers refused to try him or his crooked sons for corruption.

Indonesia’s communist movement was one of the world’s biggest. The PKI was a mass-based party, but it made a fatal error: it tried to unite with Sukarno who they saw as the “progressive bourgeoisie,” actually joining his government — only to be massacred when Suharto seized power in 1965, leaving Sukarno in a figurehead role. The PKI had no strategy for a real revolutionary struggle to smash capitalism and imperialism. Its ill-fated faith in “lesser-evil” capitalists was paid in blood.

The communist movement in Indonesia has not recovered from that mistake. This led to Suharto and his cronies never paying for their crimes against the working class. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.