Pakistan

Help the refugees! Oppose both Taliban and army!

This is an appeal by the Labour Relief Campaign launched by the Labour Party Pakistan. The purpose of the appeal to provide immediate help to some of the more than 1.5 million internally displaced people from the Malakand Division of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan. , The Taliban have taken over parts of Pakistan. They have threatened to occupy other parts as well. To pacify them, the government went into an accord with the Taliban in April 2009, imposing a so-called Nizam Adl (system of justice) in Malakanad. The Taliban then imposed medieval laws in the areas under their...

Pakistan: “Unite those opposing both Taliban and military”

The Swat situation is complicated. Both sides, the religious fanatics and the government are trying different tactics and are not sure which one will work. The prices for their blunders is paid by ordinary people of the area. The Taliban settled in Swat long ago and were integrated in the area. Between 1994-95, there was a religious movement of Tehreek-e Nafaz-e Shariat-e-Mohammdi (TNSM), led by Maulana Sufi Mohammed for the implementation of “Islam”. But the government and the Sufi Mohammed compromised. When the US attacked Afghanistan over 15,000 fundamentalists and followers of Sufi...

Support Pakistan’s labour movement against both Taliban and army!

More than 800,000 people have now fled fighting in the Swat district of Pakistan. They join a total of around 1.3 million refugees who have fled recent fighting in other parts of the North-West Frontier Province, fleeing, on the one hand threats of violence from the Taliban against people who do not join their “jihad”, and on the other the gunship helicopters of Pakistan’s army. Since the end of the US’s 2001 war in Afghanistan, the North West Frontier Province, along with Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, have become a base for a resurgent Taliban. This in turn has created a...

Pakistani socialists calls for working class to organise against both Taliban and Pakistani government

In its May Day message, the Labour Party of Pakistan says: "On May Day 2009, the Pakistani working class has an additional but most vital issue of the growth of religious fundamentalism. "This trend is dividing the working class on religious lines and weaking the labour movement in some part of Pakistan. The answer of the Pakistani state is repression of the whole population living in the areas dominated by religious fanatics - or making deals with fanatics. American imperialism wants a military solution and is bombing the areas. "We condemn both. We must build a people's movement against...

Who boosted the Taliban?

The Taliban’s take-over of the scenic Swat valley in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province is a damning indictment of over six decades of military and “civilian” bourgeois rule in Pakistan. Pakistan’s “revolving door” of government, with military dictators and corrupt politicians taking turns at creaming off central resources and accumulating wealth, has left a vast proportion of the country mired in poverty, illiteracy and without access to basic amenities like sanitation, clean water and electricity. Where the state has abjectly failed, various shades of Islamist fundamentalists like the...

Pakistan cricket massacre: Why police were “too busy”

Farooq Tariq, General Secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, comments on the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team on 3 March. The religious fanatics have targeted sports such as soccer and cricket, terming these evil sports smuggled in from the West. “It is promoting Western cultural norms, it must not be allowed”, was the justification of the Taliban to ban these sports when it governed Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The agenda of the “jihadi” terrorists is clearly not just to enforce what they consider to be an Islamic system, but to overrun and destabilise the state itself. Pakistanis...

Pakistan under the PPP

Faryal Velmi visted Karachi, Pakistan in December 2008. In the first of two articles about Pakistan’s politics and history she describes the events leading up to the change of government in Pakistan and her conversations with Pakistani socialists about the prospects for political change under the new Pakistan People’s Party government. Driving from the airport through the streets of Karachi, the first thing that catches your eye are huge billboards depicting the assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto; a garish reminder of another bloody chapter in the country’s short history. Bhutto...

No to war on Pakistan!

Mainstream politicians in India have been claiming that it's basically Pakistan behind it. There’s an escalation of tension, very much in line with the usual thing — whenever there's anything like this, the blame is focused on Pakistan as the main enemy. Congress has been trying to outdo the BJP in this. Although the BJP has led the way, Congress always tries to be as anti-Pakistan and as communalist as the BJP, particularly now with elections soon. In September there were the bombings in Malegaon, in Maharashtra. Recent investigation had revealed the role of Hindu communalists in those...

India: history, politics, terror

India has a population of 1.1 billion, reckoned to be 80% Hindu, 14% Muslim, and the rest Christian, Sikh, and others. Since independence from Britain in 1947, Indian politics has mostly been dominated by the avowedly secular Congress party, now in government; but the last decade or more has seen the rise of the Hindu-chauvinist BJP, based mainly on upper-caste Hindus, and linked to openly-fascistic Hindu militias. The BJP led governments in 1996 and 1998-2004. Both BJP and Congress, since the early 1990s, have been pushing policies of deregulation, privatisation, and engagement in world...

Pakistan: A dictator gone, but not his policies

As General Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation — in an unscheduled nationally televised speech of one hour — private television channels showed an instant response of jubilation, welcoming the decision, in all four provinces. Musharraf resigned as president of Pakistan as he was facing an impeachment move by the Pakistan Peoples Party-led ruling alliance of four parties. For the first time, not a single political party defended General Musharraf. Even Mutihida Qaumi Party (MQM) was not ready to defend him publicly, this, a party that he was associated with for long time. There have been...

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