Daily Times

Quetta is being pulverised by gruesome terror strikes almost recurrently. While the country’s strong man is proclaiming of eliminating terrorists, they strike back with a vengeance and a tacit impunity. Terrorist outfits make a mockery of security checkpoints, and the wizardry of advance electronic devices worth billions installed to control these heinous attacks. But the state’s repressive measures make the lives of ordinary people a continuous agony.

Quetta is cherished by many for the grandeur of its surrounding geological wonders of rugged mountains and rocky ridges. This garrison town was a pleasant resort inhabited by multitudes of nationalities, religions and races living in a unique harmony. Quetta today wears the bleak look of a sprawling shantytown with intense pollution, crowded roads and an incessant fear of brutalities of state’s violent repression and reactionary terror. The city is faced with a complex existential struggle with burgeoning fear of social breakdown.

Responsibility of Monday’s grotesque attack was proclaimed by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). The sectarian terrorist outfit takes its name from the late Deobandi Cleric Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, who 30 years ago under the patronage of General Zia-ul-Haq founded the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) to carry out a sectarian slaughter of the Shias. However, there is a plethora of sects that call themselves Sunnis but are at each other’s throats for control of drugs, arms, ransom, land, urban properties and black capital businesses. It also goes for various sects under the Shia guise although these are less in numbers. The Saudi doctrine is based on Wahabism that is neither Shia nor Sunni but a different and stroppy Islamic sect altogether.

The women vigilantes of Jamia Hafza and the Red Mosque terrorist brigade in the heart of Pakistan’s capital are overtly supporting and linking up with the Daesh, more commonly known as ISIS. The boss of Red Mosque, Abdul Aziz is one of the most protected and pampered assets of the deep state. General Zia’s sinister legacies still thrive in the echelons of the state power and the political elites of this tragic land. Sectarian and ethnic conflicts were propped up to drive a wedge in the unity of the working class but now are tearing apart the social fabric of the country.

The LeJ split off from the SSP under the leadership of Riaz Basra. The Taliban and the LeJ both were products of the same orthodox, puritanical Deobandi tradition of Islam. The Taliban provided LeJ safe havens in Afghanistan. Two decades later this heinous terrorist outfit has training camps in Afghanistan. More importantly, these camps are safe havens for Pakistani criminals and mafia barons. In May 2002, Riaz Basra was killed, pushing LeJ to link up with the al-Qaeda. Lately, there have been rumours of it linking up with ISIS. Some of the most notorious and heinous acts of terror by this outfit include the kidnapping and beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl, and an attack on French engineers in Karachi.

The key question is what is the real motive of the onslaught of terrorist calamities? And whom does it benefit? The regime and its ministers along with military’s communiqués and tweets have the same monotonous excuse: Indian involvement. It is partially true that the belligerent Indian state, BJP’s reactionary regime and RAW are also involved in several proxy insurgencies including the one in Balochistan. But Americans, Chinese, Iranians, Europeans and others with imperialist designs have their proxies and involvement to plunder this strategic region. Apart from the direct action of Pakistan’s state forces they also have their non-state actors. With a history of several armed conflicts between the state and nationalists’ armed struggle in Balochistan, there has never been any real peace, stability or development that could have benefitted the ordinary people of Balochistan.

The puppet Afghan regime with its meagre writ in Afghanistan has its own evil designs. But it’s not much of a state or an army despite massive imperialist aid and training. It is a hotchpotch under imperialist impulsions with no sovereignty or integrity. Most states in the region at present are in no condition to launch direct national military conflicts mainly due to eroding cohesion, economic crisis and imperialist pressures that they cannot refute.

The new strategy of proxy wars launched by these states has now started to ricochet. The crumbling economies have led to states’ military and diplomatic fiascos. These very proxies, once loyal and subservient, turn into rouge forces and Frankenstein’s monsters for their client states. These forces of black reaction nurtured for specific rationale are now wrecking havoc on the very states that created them. This is happening here and in many parts of the world where states have crumbled due to the uncontrollable backlash of these vile forces nurtured by nation states and imperialists for specific purposes. It was US imperialists who are now facing the retribution of history for the sabotage of revolutions and crushing movements of workers and peasants in this region, particularly Afghanistan.

It is the common people that suffer the most. States, frustrated and demoralised, are acting in desperation. Their capacity and will to eliminate this monster of religious terror, created by them in the first place, is waning fast. These institutions are losing the resolve to defeat terror. The relentless setbacks and obstinate acts of terror can lead to their fragmentation. Iraq, Libya and Yemen are the dreadful examples of states collapsing due to such conflagrations. Such a scenario though not imminent but cannot be ruled out from taking place in Pakistan faced with a state convulsed with internecine conflicts. The toiling masses have suffered and are the main victims of this so-called war of terror. Once these working classes enter the arena of history in a class struggle a new beacon of hope and salvation shall glow to light the revolutionary classes across the planet.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at lalkhan1956@gmail.com