Recently the Pakistani rulers closed their borders with Afghanistan, though there are still some 2 million Afghan refugees living in camps in northwest Pakistan. Another 2 million Afghan refugees live in Iran, where the government has also sealed its border with Afghanistan. The United Nations describes the Afghan refugees as the world's largest refugee population.

Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan, Iran, India, China, and the Arabian Sea, is a nation of 144 million people--the seventh largest population in the world--with the vast majority living in dire poverty. In fact, according to official government statistics, 40 percent of the population lives below the government-declared poverty line. The country's main exports are textiles, rice, and other agricultural products, with 24 percent of its exports going to the United States. Pakistan is saddled with a $38 billion debt owed primarily to banks in the imperialist countries. Making interest payments on this debt totals nearly 50 percent of government expenditures.

The current ruler of the country, General Musharraf, took power in a military coup in October 1999. One of his first moves was to dissolve Parliament. Seven months later, Pakistan's Supreme Court legally sanctioned the coup and granted Musharraf executive and legislative authority through October 2002. This past June, Musharraf, following the pattern of three of Pakistan's previous military rulers, appointed himself president and formal head of state. The country has been ruled by military dictators for nearly half of its 54-year existence.

The nation of Pakistan came into existence in August 1947 as a result of the British rulers' divide-and-rule policies as they scrambled to keep imperialist domination of the Indian subcontinent in place in the face of a massive rise of the anticolonial struggles that broke out in Asia and Africa following the end of World War II.

As part of a widening battle for independence from British colonial rule, a strike wave spread across India in 1946 and '47. A May 1946 article in the Fourth International magazine by Robert Birchman titled, "Revolutionary Developments in India," described these momentous events. "The termination of hostilities in the Pacific marked a stormy resurgence of the working-class movement in India," he wrote. "This vast subcontinent has witnessed strikes in virtually all the major cities--Bombay, Calcutta, Allahabad, Delhi, Madras, etc. At the beginning of this year this strike wave assumed a highly political character. The Indian working class swept to the forefront as the decisive force in the struggle of the Indian people for independence from the British yoke."

Facing strikes, demonstrations, and even a mutiny of the Indian navy, the British rulers decided they had to move towards some form of nominal political independence for India. In seeking to maintain as much as possible of their imperialist economic, military, and social domination of the subcontinent, the British ruling class began to divide up colonial India into two countries along religious lines. A Muslim state of Pakistan was created--separated into east and west sections 1,000 miles apart--and a largely Hindu state of India.

A June 14, 1947, article in the Militant titled "British Capitalists Hail Deal to Chop Up India," by Joseph Hansen describes in further detail the British imperialists' decision. The plan provided for splintering up India into a gerrymandered Hindu state (Hindustan), two segments of a Muslim state (Pakistan), and some 563 "princely states," that were developed as British military bases, explained Hansen.

The British rulers "deem haste now to be of the utmost necessity--not to give India her freedom--but to still the rumblings of revolt that have been shaking the entire subcontinent of India the past year and more," wrote Hansen. "It is precisely their fear that the young Indian working class under militant leadership, can lead all of India in a socialist revolution that drove the Indian capitalists to accept the position of junior partnership with the British imperialists in ruling India. By partitioning India, they hope to divide and separate and split up the people, thus breaking the bonds of unity now being forged among the Indian masses."

In implementing this partition scheme the British imperialists sought to fan the flame of religious divisions even further, since some 50 million Muslims were still living in India and 10 million Hindus in Pakistan. Following the 1947 partition, London's criminal policy sparked vast migrations and religious riots, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and the creation of millions of refugees.

Fighting was especially fierce in Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim state ruled by a Hindu aristocracy. Kashmir remains partitioned to this day with Indian government troops occupying two-thirds of the territory and troops from Pakistan the rest. The regimes in India and Pakistan have fought two further fierce battles over the province in 1965 and 1990.

Following in the footsteps of the British imperialists, the U.S. rulers in February 1954 began sending military aid to Pakistan, which was aimed at fortifying the capitalist regime there, for future conflicts with the workers state of China. In 1962, when the first frontier incidents broke out between India and China, Washington likewise sent arms to India for the same purpose.

In 1971 the conflict between India and Pakistan exploded into a full-scale war as the struggle of the people of East Bengal (East Pakistan)--who since 1947 had been part of the Pakistani state--began to make advances toward winning independence for what became the nation of Bangladesh.

Ever since the 1947 partition, East Bengal was politically and economically subjugated by Pakistan virtually as a colony. The development of this eastern state was stunted so that it would remain a supplier of raw materials--especially jute--and foreign exchange to enrich the Pakistani capitalists.

India announced its recognition of the government of Bangladesh in hopes of further weakening Pakistan and extending its own political influence in the area. In this dispute Washington sided with Pakistan, which was led by Yahya Khan, then the dictator of the country. The capitalist rulers in all three states were opposed to the struggle against national oppression and for self-determination of the people of East Bengal.
 
 
Related articles:
Protests against U.S. war held in Pakistan, Indonesia
Washington waives sanctions imposed on India, Pakistan
Imperialists have sought for decades to rule Afghanistan
 
 
 
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