The U.S. administration has pressed Pakistani military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf to crack down on the organizations targeted by the Indian government. At the same time Washington has urged India to ease off its threats of military attack while the Pakistani regime takes steps to fulfill its new "anti-terrorist" task.

The seeds of the present conflict between India and Pakistan were sown in 1947, when the departing British imperialists created Pakistan as a spearhead against the Indian revolution. Armed and backed by Washington for decades, Pakistan has remained a bulwark for imperialism against the battle by working people on the Indian subcontinent to address the unfulfilled tasks of national unification.

The Indian national struggle against British colonialism dates back to the mid-19th century. The sepoy rebellion, or "Indian mutiny," in 1847, was called by Karl Marx at the time the "first general center of resistance which the Indian people ever possessed." As the movement gained strength over the following 100 years, workers and peasants from various regional, national, and religious backgrounds began to join together in a massive liberation struggle. Shortly after the end of World War II, the labor movement played a leading role in pro-independence strikes and other actions in virtually all the major cities. When a mutiny in the Indian navy spread through Bombay, Madras, and Karachi, for example, trade unions in textile mills, the railways, and other industries, organized a massive solidarity strike.

While the British overlords were forced to accelerate the granting of independence in face of this powerful movement, they succeeded, through the division or "partition" of the subcontinent, in dealing a blow to the revolutionary struggle for a united, and secular, Indian republic. The goal was accomplished through collaboration with the Muslim League, originally an alliance of landlords and British civil servants, which at its founding in 1906 had adopted a goal of fostering "a sense of loyalty to the British government." As the postwar struggle grew, the bourgeois leadership of the Indian Congress party, fearing the widening mobilizations of the masses, agreed to the division.

Partition, accompanied by mass migrations and religious riots that took hundreds of thousands of lives, was followed closely by the first of two wars fought over Kashmir. While the people of the province were majority Muslim, they were ruled by a Hindu Maharajah, who, backed by New Delhi, resisted popular demands for a referendum, and opted to incorporate the territory into India. The fighting ended with Pakistan in control of one-third of the country, and India occupying the rest. India, which agreed to hold a referendum, later refused to allow the population to vote on the question.  
 
Partition a blow to Indian masses
Partition did not only divide the Indian subcontinent; it also helped divert the struggle against imperialism and leave working people more vulnerable to demagogic appeals by their national rulers.

Pakistan was founded as an explicitly Muslim state and until 1971 was made up of two parts, 1,000 miles apart. In addition to supplying arms to this regime, Washington included Pakistan in a 1954 military pact with Turkey, the 1954 SEATO alliance in Southeast Asia, and CENTO (the Central Treaty Organization) in 1955, which also included the regime of the Shah of Iran, a close ally of Islamabad until the Iranian revolution in 1979.

As the Pakistani rulers failed to crush a rising revolutionary struggle by the Bengali people in East Pakistan, Washington backed Islamabad in its 1971 war with India, which had given support to the independence struggle there. India's intervention helped to secure the defeat of the bloody Pakistan assault, which took tens of thousands of lives. In a victory for working people throughout the region, the new nation of Bangladesh was formed.

As in the current imperialist military offensive in Central Asia, Islamabad helped Washington arm and supply forces fighting to topple the Soviet backed government in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

In contrast to Pakistan, the Indian state is officially secular. While the majority of its people practice the Hindu religion, it incorporates 140 million Muslims, more than any other country except Indonesia, and people of other faiths. While bourgeois politicians and rightist forces have fanned communal, caste, and religious divisions to their own ends, the country's political institutions bear the mark of the independence struggle.

Although accommodating to imperialism, India's rulers have not kowtowed to Washington. Through the Cold War years they concluded trade and military deals with the Soviet Union, much to U.S. imperialism's displeasure. They also played a prominent role in the Nonaligned Movement. At the same time, the United States has consistently been India's number one trading partner, and has encouraged New Delhi to pressure and threaten the workers state of China. With the collapse of the Soviet regime at the end of 1980s, the Indian government has been forced to seek new alliances, including closer military ties with Washington.  
 
Biggest military mobilization ever
The current military mobilization is the largest in the two countries' 54-year history. For the first time since they went to war in 1971, the Indian armed forces have begun to move their Eastern Command, based near the country's borders with Burma and Bangladesh, to the opposite border with Pakistan. New Delhi plans military exercises, code-named Operation Chivalry, in mid-January, along almost the entire 1,800-mile India-Pakistan divide.

For its part, the Pakistan military has emptied the country's largest air base at Sargodha, west of Lahore, of troops and equipment. Some 50,000 troops are being transported from the border with Afghanistan to the India-Pakistan border. The move severely weakens the 60,000-strong force deployed at Washington's urging to intercept al Qaeda and Taliban forces fleeing U.S. bombing raids in Afghanistan.

The two armies are stepping up the militarization of the border, evacuating farmers and other residents as they lay mines, dig trenches, and disrupt the system of irrigation canals.

The army, navy, and air force of India, a country of more than 1 billion people, comprise more than 1.2 million recruits--twice as many as Pakistan, which is home to 145 million people. India can deploy almost 5,300 armored vehicles, including tanks, compared with Pakistan's 3,450. New Delhi can also call on 869 combat aircraft, more than double the Pakistani force, and almost 4,500 artillery weapons, compared with Pakistan's 1,750. Both countries have nuclear weapons.

The two powers' military standoff involves daily exchanges of artillery and rifle fire at the border's most volatile section in Kashmir. Civilian casualties already amount to several dozen people dead and hundreds wounded. Tens of thousands of people have fled the area.

As the buildup proceeds, New Delhi has to date brushed aside calls for government-to-government negotiations, and has stepped up pressure on Islamabad to meet demands for a crackdown on Kashmiri leaders and other figures who have previously received Pakistani support. If Islamabad "should fail" in this task, said Indian defense minister George Fernandes on January 2, "then we are left with only the option that the United States exercised to deal with terrorism," he said, alluding to Washington's assault on Afghanistan.

As of January 7, the Pakistan government had arrested several hundred figures in the organizations targeted by New Delhi. More than 100 members of the Kashmiri groups that face Indian accusations of involvement in the December 13 attack have been rounded up. Domestic opponents have also been swept up in the net.

Controversy is simmering over the Indian government's demand that Islamabad hand over 20 individuals accused of terrorism who have allegedly found refuge inside Pakistan. The list includes Kashmiri figures, and leaders of Sikh organizations.

So far, Pakistani officials have refused to comply with India's demand for extradition, saying that evidence provided on the crimes of these "terrorists'" is inadequate.

"I don't believe the situation is defused yet," said U.S. president George Bush January 7, "but I do believe there is a way to do so, and we are working hard to convince both the Indians and the Pakis there's a way to deal with their problems without going to war."

After a discussion with Indian leader Atal Behari Vajpayee--one of the "daily calls" made by White House officials to both sides, according to administration spokespeople--Bush said that while he "understood" the prime minister's anger, he should "give us all a chance to work with President Musharraf to bring the terrorists to justice.... The fact that the Pakistani president is after terrorists is a good sign."

British prime minister Anthony Blair said on January 3 in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka that "what we want is, on the Pakistan side, action against terrorism, and on the Indian side, to try to de-escalate the tension as much as possible."

During a visit by Musharraf to Beijing, which has long-standing military and political ties with Pakistan, Chinese prime minister Zhu Rongji expressed similar concern about the volatile situation, advising the two governments to "keep maximum restraint and safeguard peace and stability in the South Asia region."

In expressing frustration with the U.S. stance on January 2, Defense Minister Fernandes drew the same parallel between the U.S. assault on Afghanistan and India's battle with Pakistani-based Kashmiri rebels that New Delhi has repeatedly used in its war propaganda. "I do not know how many people have been bombed in Afghanistan, and still the bombing continues, [but] when it happens to us, we are supposedly not giving chances to others," he said.

While pushing to extend its ties with India, Washington also aims to safeguard its alliance with Pakistan. Musharraf's government has provided vital assistance to the U.S. war effort in Central Asia, since Pakistan shares an important border with Afghanistan. Along with the use of ground bases, the general has handed U.S. warplanes control of one-third of Pakistan's airspace.

At the same time, the White House, following the policy of the Clinton administration, has continued to develop ties with the Indian government. In a sign of deepening military collaboration, joint military exercises, described as "unprecedented" by the Wall Street Journal, were planned in December, until the attack on the Indian parliament led to a postponement of the maneuvers.
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. widens Central Asia military deployments
The battle against imperialism  
 
 
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