Daily Times

In the recent visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry to Pakistan, the hypocrisy of bourgeois diplomacy, the weak and pathetic condition of the Pakistani elite and their state, and the impotence of US imperialism were awkwardly exposed. The greedy, deceitful and corrupt Pakistani rulers were trying to extract more ‘aid’ and Kerry was instructing them to ‘do more’, knowing full well that they cannot do any more. The imperialists were trying to coerce them regarding Indian ‘demands’, whose much larger markets are too enticing for imperialist corporations, forcing the Pakistani rulership into even more slavish subservience. These mutually devious ‘partners’ in the war against terrorism have failed to end this terrorist scourge ever since the US invasion of Afghanistan. The vicious cycle of state and individual terror continues unabated. Rather, it has metastasized and aggravated since this treacherous operation began.

If the Pakistani security forces have failed to wipe out this horror due to internal dissent and complicity, the US has been a greater failure. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and company wasted no time in launching an invasion of Afghanistan. Mighty US imperialism seemed overwhelming to many. The miseries suffered by the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot be quantified or qualified. Hundreds of thousands were killed and maimed, and millions displaced. However, the end result was an unmitigated disaster for US imperialism. If their mission was to bankrupt the national treasury, nearly break the back of the US’s military and open new areas of the region to Islamic fundamentalism, they certainly accomplished it.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost an estimated five trillion dollars in borrowed money, a debt burden that amounts to $16,000 per US citizen. Over 2.5 million different US citizens were deployed in these two countries, some of them multiple times. Over 57,000 of them have been killed and wounded so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than during the US Revolutionary War. However, far from peace and harmony, any semblance of stability from the Levant to Pakistan has been upended. The Taliban now control wide swathes of Afghanistan. US military commanders and Obama say that the war against these thugs will last years, not months, and have openly admitted that the world’s mightiest military may ultimately be impotent in the face of an irregular army of gangsters. Former US military intelligence officer Jim Gourley wrote, “At this point, it is incontrovertibly evident that the US military failed to achieve any of its strategic goals…the wars ended in utter defeat for our forces.”

The US war in Afghanistan now ranks as the longest in US history, nearly four times as long as the US’s direct participation in World War II. Now, after 13 years and 2,200 US deaths, Obama has the audacity to declare that the war has been “concluded responsibly”. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel stated that the US invasion and occupation gave “Afghanistan the opportunity to chart a secure, democratic and prosperous future”, that the Afghan state “can defend Kabul”– conveniently leaving out the rest of the country — but neglected to mention that in this now “democratic and prosperous country” drone strikes and the deployment of over 10,000 US troops would continue indefinitely. These wars have deeply shaken the US military’s effectiveness as a tool for imposing the imperialists’ domination.

To complete the abject failure in Afghanistan, the US has had to negotiate with various factions of the loosely defined Taliban to draw down its troops and avoid an all-out civil war at this stage. According to the BBC, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in a desperate effort to cobble together a government, had to offer the Taliban several government posts: “The three men whom President Ghani had hoped to draw into his government were Mullah Zareef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Wakil Muttawakil, the former Taliban foreign minister, and Ghairat Baheer, a close relative of Gulbadin Hikmatyar.” There were also negotiations to appoint Taliban governors to three southern provinces — Nimruz, Kandahar and Helmand — some of the areas most bloodily contested by rank-and-file US troops. So much for “we do not negotiate with terrorists”!

In the end, the Taliban refused the offer. They can surely see the limited shelf life of the Ghani regime and have their eyes on even broader control and authority in the not-too-distant future. The BBC reported: “It is not even clear that the involvement of the Taliban in government would have ended the insurgency, as some commanders remain opposed to any deals”. Islamic fundamentalism and imperialism are two forms of capitalist reaction and are deeply intertwined. They both manipulate the fears and alienation of the masses. At the dawn of the 21st century, you cannot have one without the other. The madness of state and fundamentalist terror will not end until the capitalist system that spawns them is ended.

The craving Pakistani rulers want more aid along with their plundering of the state and leeching off of society. US imperialism, with its economic and financial catastrophes, cannot dole out aid as it did in the post war period. The elite, with more loans, is relentlessly burdening the toiling masses with excruciating conditions from imperialist institutions. Successive Pakistani regimes are simultaneously vying to get as much aid as possible from the Chinese, Saudis and any other regional powers by cheaply renting out Pakistan’s strategic geography, human capital and military forces for their hegemonic imperialist designs. They have used the war on terror for the same evil purposes.

Pakistani and Afghan workers, peasants and the youth are the real victims of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and imperialist aggression. The present temporary lull in the movement is being abused by the ruling classes to squeeze the masses and pile up their wealth with unforeseen levels of corruption and extortion. But the working classes will not tolerate this tyranny infinitely. The have their own wars to fight and win. They are facing brutalising economic terrorism, repression of the state to perpetuate capitalist coercion, obscurantist social despotism, cultural suffocation, moral squalor, agonising alienation and the black reaction of bestial Islamic fundamentalists. The national, gender, religious and, above all, class oppression are pulverising the region. All these forces of capitalist aggression have to be fought back for the survival and emancipation of the teeming millions suffering in pain and agony. All sections of the ruling class have no sympathy or mercy for the oppressed masses. They revile and fear the toiling classes. Their animosity and dread are well founded. Sooner rather than later, the collective consciousness of the workers and the poor shall rise to comprehend the class nature of this vile exploitation and violence being inflicted upon them. Such a qualitative change in society will convulse the masses into a movement and towards class unity. This class war can and shall defeat all these terrorisms from economic onslaught to fundamentalist bloodshed. Only a socialist victory can put to end this looming barbarity.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com