This is the editorial of the latest issue of the quarterly journal, Asian Marxist Review.
The arc of crisis from Israel to India looks a lot more turbulent now than it did when the champagne bottles were opened after the retreat of the Taliban.
Five months into the military campaign in Afghanistan the “brute force bereft of reason”, in Horace’s words is far from winning the war in Afghanistan. Perhaps even further than when they had embarked upon this heinous adventure. The $1.2 billion (each) B-2s and 15,000-pound “daisy cutters” have not been able to finish the job for the Americans. There may be no technology that will completely neutralise people who are desperate to fight. Especially those of the CIA’s own creation, acquainted with its technology and tactics. With the first delivery of the body bags of US servicemen, the imperialists had to draw American troops back from the Gardez front.
A battlefield where several eras of human history seem to coexist further frustrates the high-tech warfare. The writ of the Karzai government does not cover even the whole of Kabul. This imperialist stooge, Karzai, finds it easier to fly around the world than around Afghanistan. The warlords like Ismail and Dostum with their private fiefdoms, do not even take this clown seriously. He is asking for more foreign troops to run his regime and the imperialists are terrified to commit any more of their troops. The ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) has a presence in Kabul. Yet ISAF was unable to save the country’s aviation minister from assassination at Kabul Airport.
The reconstruction of Afghanistan will remain a pipedream so long as the country is shackled in primitiveness compounded by the imposition of capitalist policies. The bragging and roaring of America’s much-vaunted success in this war cannot conceal its hollowness and deception.
The long-drawn and sulky faces of Arab “leaders” at the Cairo Summit exposes the fear of these rotten regimes of the inferno raging in Palestine. They stand mute sentinels at the gates of the spiralling bloodshed and violence in the Middle East. The Palestinian youth have to a large extent conquered the fear of death. This is dangerous not only for the Israeli Zionists, but also the reactionary Arab rulers and world imperialism. A US attack on Iraq seems to be more and more imminent. Even the thought of such a scenario sends chills down the spines of the Arab and European rulers. The present insanity prevailing in Washington is rapidly driving the US towards this disastrous misadventure.
India’s Gujarat holocaust and the Ayodhya imbroglio unleashed by demons of its own creation, spell disaster for the BJP. The government is hanging on a hook and India is on the brink.
Across Asia, every event cries out of the human woes being inflicted by a decaying capitalist system. The ferocity of these horrendous events exploding all around, has shocked the masses. There is a temporary lull. But the burgeoning capitalist onslaught on the lives of common people cannot be tolerated forever. The response and retaliation to this monstrous orgy unleashed by capitalist exploitation is bound to erupt. History is witness to the fact that out of the depths of despair has arisen new hope.
The valiant resistance put up by the Palestinian masses, the 27-day long strike of the state workers in Kerala, the valour of the youth and workers in Korea are the initial tunes of the music of the future.
The more ruthless, aggressive, and blatant the exploitation, the greater will be the revolt against it – more forceful, more widespread and more revolutionary in character. A new epoch is dawning. It will be an epoch of unprecedented upheavals of revolution and counter-revolution.
A new wave of class struggle is beginning to unfold under the obnoxious roar of imperialist propaganda. This class struggle must culminate in a Socialist Revolution. That is its only destiny – that will begin to emancipate the human race once and forever.
