Pakistani cops are authorized to detain people for 30 days by declaring them a "threat to public order," the New York Times reported January 15. According to CNN, most of those arrested are held under a British colonial-era "maintenance of public order" law that permits jailing for up to three months.

Pervez, who dissolved Parliament and suspended the country's constitution when he took power in a military coup in 1999, had already prohibited normal functioning of political parties during his three-year reign.

Pakistan's military standoff with India and the regime's subsequent crackdown was sparked by a suicidal armed attack on the Indian parliament December 13. The five attackers were killed, as well as nine others, mainly guards. New Delhi claims the assault was organized by Kashmiri groups backed by the Pakistani government. India demanded Islamabad hand over 20 men in Pakistan who it accused of terrorist attacks.

At the heart of the conflict between the two countries is the creation of Pakistan in 1947 by British imperialism as a bulwark against the revolutionary battle by workers and peasants on the entire Indian subcontinent to address the unfulfilled tasks of national unification.

After the division of India and Pakistan and the granting of independence in face of a massive anticolonial struggle, the seeds planted by Britain bore their first fruits as the governments of both countries waged war against each other over Kashmir. The region is mostly Muslim, but it was controlled by a Hindu aristocracy that backed India. In the war, India gained control over two-thirds of the region and Pakistan took control over the rest.

India had agreed to hold a plebiscite under international monitoring to allow Kashmiris to choose which nation they wanted to join, but later reneged and prevented a vote from being organized.

The two countries went to war again in 1965 and since the mid-1990s the Pakistani regime has backed several groups fighting against Indian control of the area. Some of these groups have carried out attacks inside India. Over the past 12 years, Muslim forces have waged a guerrilla war against Indian security forces in Kashmir, taking the lives of more than 35,000 people, according to Indian government estimates.

New Delhi has seized on Washington's war in Afghanistan and the December 13 attack to cast the military confrontation with Pakistan as its "final battle" against terrorism. "There is no way that India can accept such acts of terrorism any more," said India's defense minister George Fernandes. "India has had enough and shall have no more of it."

The current military mobilization is the largest in the two countries' 54-year history. New Delhi has asserted that it will not reduce its military presence until attacks across the border of Indian-controlled Kashmir cease.

In addition to amassing hundreds of thousands of troops on the border with Pakistan, India's military announced it had fully mobilized its navy for combat. "We're ready, ships are armed, fueled and provisioned," declared Admiral Madhavendra Singh.

Faced with this pressure and a squeeze from Washington, which already has a large military presence in the country, Musharraf proclaimed Pakistan's "campaign against terrorism" in his nationally televised address. At the same time, the military ruler remarked that Islamabad would not "budge an inch from our principle stand on Kashmir," seeking to minimize the backlash over the reversal of its policy toward groups now being driven underground that were once encouraged to operate openly. Many of these organizations kept storefront offices, advertised in newspapers, and conducted fund-raising activities in mosques and on the streets.

Before the U.S. rulers' assault on Afghanistan there were no restrictions on Pakistani citizens joining such groups. In fact cops in the southern province of Sindh reported that the regime instructed them to allow militant groups in Karachi to recruit young men for guerrilla training and to raise funds for armed assaults in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

"A new underground army of 5,000 armed and trained religious extremists [could] revolt against this about-face in the government's posture," a senior Pakistan government official told the Washington Post. He noted that this could pose the "greatest threat" to stability in Pakistan in the weeks and months ahead.

The brother of Pakistan's interior minister was assassinated on December 21, which was viewed by many as a warning for the government official who has been spearheading a crackdown on militant groups inside the country.

As U.S. government officials pressed Musharraf to move against a range of organizations targeted by New Delhi, Washington has also sought to tamp down tensions between Pakistan and India. Both regimes are useful for extending U.S. imperialist domination in the region. U.S. military forces are currently operating out of four military bases in Pakistan. Washington rebuffed Islamabad's request that it vacate two of the bases in order to allow Pakistan's troops greater access in the event of a war with India.

"The last thing we want to see happen right now in South Asia is a war between these two nuclear-armed states," said U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell who arrived in Islamabad January 16 in his first stop on a five-nation trip that will also include India, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Japan.

The editors of the New York Times called the arrests of thousands in Pakistan a "momentous development" and lauded the "critical turnabout" of the regime in backing Washington's military assault on Afghanistan. They suggest that New Delhi could respond with a "reciprocal gesture" to Pakistan, "perhaps by pulling back some of its forces on the border."  
 
 
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