A Belgian Marxist in Pakistan

Maarten VH, active as a Marxist student in Belgium and now collaborating with the Editorial staff of Marxist.com, went to Pakistan recently and attended the conference of the Marxists of The Struggle. Here he gives some of his impressions about the situation in Pakistan.

Maarten VH, active as a Marxist student in Belgium and now collaborating with the Editorial staff of Marxist.com, went to Pakistan recently and attended the conference of the Marxists of The Struggle. Here he gives some of his impressions about the situation in Pakistan.

Why did you visit Pakistan?

A Belgian Marxist in PakistanFirst of all I wanted to see with my own eyes what the real situation is with this notorious Muslim fundamentalism in Pakistan. In the West the media put across the message that all Pakistanis are ready to blow themselves up for their religion, but I have always seen that for what it really is, a disgusting racist whipping up of anti-Islamic phobia. In Lahore and Islamabad, the two cities that I visited, you hardly see any veiled women, and the mosques are almost empty. Quite a few Pakistanis just laugh at the mullahs. I would say that fundamentalism in Pakistan is not as strong a factor as is often portrayed in the West. Unfortunately, there was no time to visit the border with Afghanistan, where the Taliban is based, and where it is obviously much more dangerous.

Secondly, and most importantly, I went to attend the congress of The Struggle, the Pakistani section of the International Marxist Tendency. Every year they hold their congress in Lahore, and every year more and more activists attend.

Tell us something more about the Marxist organisation The Struggle. What are your impressions of these comrades?

At the congress nearly 2,200 comrades were present from all over the country: from Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh, Karachi, Kashmir to Pukhtoonkwa (the so-called North Western Frontier) and even Waziristan, the region bordering Afghanistan. That in itself is a great achievement considering the big sectarian divide in the whole country.

A Belgian Marxist in PakistanThe Struggle is now a very healthy and mature organisation and is growing year by year. It is no exaggeration to say that The Struggle has now sunk deep roots in the whole of Pakistani society. We are active in the trade unions with the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign (PTUDC), in the movement of unemployed youth (BNT), in Kashmir particularly in the Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation (JKNSF), and the comrades also work hard to involve as many women as possible and to make them politically conscious, which is not something you can take for granted in Pakistan.

Of course, some two thousand Marxists in a big country like Pakistan are still not enough to have a big influence in society, but the prospects are excellent. The regime has been enormously weakened in the recent period and stumbles from crisis to crisis. The Pakistani people are fed up with their miserable living conditions and are looking more and more for an alternative. The Struggle is the only credible group on the left that apart from doing a lot of independent work is also doing important work inside the Pakistan Peoples Party. The goal for our comrades is to reach at least 5,000 by next year so that they can have a real impact as soon as the party comes to power - a likely perspective. When this traditional mass party comes into crisis because in itself it is unable to put forward a socialist alternative, our comrades are determined to play a big role within it.

The congress was very disciplined and there was a rich debate with many interventions from the various regions. Just imagine the organisation of the whole event. 1,700 people came down to Lahore and were put up in various hotels in the city. Some comrades even had to sell personal possessions to pay for their transport and entry to the congress. As opposed to many NGOs that pay people to attend their conferences, every comrade is expected to pay for his accommodation and food. There were 15 cooks present who prepared three meals a day, a great achievement in itself.

Apparently these comrades have a serious base in Kashmir.

If you want a real concrete example of the oppression of a people, don't look any further than Kashmir. The tragedy of Kashmir is that it has always been at the mercy of the big powers. Before the independence of Pakistan and India in 1947 the Kashmiris were already exploited by British imperialism but afterwards the divide and conquer policy only became more intense. During 60 years there has been a lot of talk but little action for this region. The partition of India and Pakistan was a crime that set people against each other. Don't forget that in the years after 1947 millions of sectarian murders were committed of Muslims against Hindus and vice versa.

More than half a century after formal independence, we can ask ourselves the question: what has independence on a capitalist basis really solved? The fact is that India and Pakistan, and with them the Kashmir region, are more than ever dependent on imperialism. In the current epoch this only means a new form of colonialism and slavery for ordinary people in Kashmir, who live in absolute poverty and misery. After the 2005 earthquake the state failed to provide adequate relief for the victims. The Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign therefore launched an international campaign that raised a lot of money that went straight to the relief effort.

It is clear that the Kashmiris cannot expect anything from either the Pakistani or the Indian ruling class, but neither from the so-called democracies in Europe and America - the last 60 years are sufficient proof of this. Their only allies are the millions of workers and peasants in Pakistan and India. Their enemies but also their interests are the same.

What was your experience of the Musharraf regime?

You definitely see everywhere the presence of an enormous bureaucracy in the state apparatus and you can almost smell the corruption and nepotism. A little anecdote: I was queuing in the airport - which took hours and hours - when all of a sudden a businessman in a nice suit starts overtaking everybody. He was waving some 500 rupees and was all of a sudden transferred to the beginning of the queue! And yet it is about more than money alone. As in every rotten regime you only get somewhere with connections.

As far as Musharraf is concerned, in the West he is often described as a great "democrat", even if in 1999 he came to power through a coup and afterwards he was never properly elected. Ironically, those same media describe President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela as an "authoritarian populist from a military background", even if he has been re-elected several times and is involving the whole of the people in politics in his country.

It is important to realise that the Musharraf regime is neither a classical bourgeois democracy nor a brutal military dictatorship. I would rather describe the regime as a very weak bourgeois dictatorship full of contradictions. The regime is clearly in crisis, as the whole question of the lawyers has made very clear. Musharraf feels isolated and vulnerable but he wants to remain in power. Elements in the state apparatus that oppose him have to go. He wants to remain President but also to wear his military uniform because he doesn't want to be sued or end up in prison. That is why he has suspended and replaced Chaudry, the prominent chief judge who has been all over the news lately. This led to mass protests of lawyers all over the country.

The regime is weak because it is strongly divided into different factions. A part of the Pakistani ruling class supports their dictator uncritically, but more and more elements do not want to see him rule through the army and police any more and are calling for "democracy", which in reality is a call for everyone to remain calm as they realise the situation can get out of hand very quickly.

Pakistan is in the frontline of American imperialism and its so-called war on terrorism. What did you see of this?

The Americans exercise enormous pressure on Musharraf. For them he is the most important ally in their war on terror. Despite having received several reprimands over the last few years, Musharraf remains the most important pawn of the Americans in the region. But it also works the other way round: Musharraf's very existence depends on the support of US imperialism, which every year pumps billions of dollars into the Pakistani economy because otherwise their puppet would have fallen long ago. That is precisely Musharraf's main problem in his country, as the population doesn't want any American interference. But also within the government and the infamous ISI (the Pakistani intelligence service), where fundamentalists are present, not everybody is happy with this open support of the Americans. The Pakistani army has been sent to what has become known as "Talibanistan", the region on the border with Afghanistan, but has already lost some 800 soldiers in a bloody war. There is growing criticism of the whole operation, both within the state apparatus and the army itself. This only generates growing contradictions at the top of Pakistani society, and the current constitutional crisis is only an expression of that.

Musharraf is under fire now from all sides. Instead of being grateful to him for his slavish obedience, the Americans are now complaining that he is not doing enough, even though they know all too well that his regime is hanging by a thread. Dick Cheney, the American vice president, was in Islamabad recently and gave Musharraf a lecture. A few days later Cheney was almost blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan. You could say that only underlines how "explosive" the situation is.

American imperialism is putting a lot of pressure on the Musharraf regime, but by doing so it risks breaking it. The Pakistan working class will move at some point in a big way and that will transform the whole situation. Our comrades of the Marxist Tendency gathered around The Struggle are destined to play a key role.

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