Driven more and more to use brute military force--as it has in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere--to try to hold together its domination over a disintegrating capitalist world order, the U.S. rulers offer nothing but war, national oppression, and economic catastrophe for working people in both the semicolonial and imperialist world.

Exploiting what may be the greatest opportunity it has gained through its assault on Afghanistan, Washington is pushing to deepen its ties with and influence over India, a major military and economic power in the region. A potential counterweight to the Chinese workers state next door, India carries growing strategic economic and military importance for the U.S. rulers.

Regardless of the specific issues behind the current war moves, the underlying sources of the conflict in the Indian subcontinent go back to the creation of Pakistan as a spearhead against the Indian revolution by the departing British imperialists in 1947. London succeeded in dividing workers and peasants, breaking away two large chunks of territory from India as the revolutionary mobilizations against colonial rule were growing on the subcontinent. Tens of millions were placed under the theocratic state of Pakistan. Successive Pakistani governments have been armed by Britain, then later the United States, and have carried out their masters' bidding ever since. Pakistan's military leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has continued this subservient course by aiding the U.S. war in Afghanistan, turning over three military bases to U.S. forces, and giving them permission to carry out military operations in the country under the guise of fighting "terrorism."

As the world social crisis continues to deepen, unresolved national struggles and battles against imperialist domination will increasingly come to the fore. The face-off on the Indian subcontinent helps lay bare the need to confront the unfinished tasks of the mighty revolutionary struggles that led to India's independence from British imperialism in 1947. But the partition of India and the formation of a pro-imperialist outpost helped block the formation of a modern, centralized nation-state. Democratic tasks remaining before the people of India include the struggle for unification of the Indian subcontinent and smashing of all fetters of colonial and pre-capitalist social organization.

The Indian bourgeoisie has seized on the recent terror attacks in New Delhi to pressure the Pakistani government to round up people called "terrorists" by Indian ministers.

While pressing India to hold off a military assault, the U.S. rulers are also taking advantage of the situation to demand that Musharraf deal blows to organizations considered a problem for imperialist domination in the region.

New Delhi and Islamabad have both used the conflict over Kashmir to prepare for war. Each welcomes the chance to whip up chauvinist and communal hatreds among their peoples to divert attention from their failure to cope with internal social and economic problems. The Pakistani regime cynically claims to support the Kashmiri peoples' aspirations, while the Indian government carries out systematic abuses against the people in that region.

The Militant supports the call, first made in 1948, for the predominantly Muslim population of Kashmir to hold a long-denied referendum to decide whether they prefer to join Pakistan instead of being forcibly united with India. The Indian rulers have consistently refused to hold such a referendum.

Workers and farmers in the United States, on the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere, should demand the withdrawal of all U.S. and other imperialist forces from Afghanistan and the surrounding countries. U.S. imperialism and its armed forces are the number one enemy of working people in the region. Uniting toilers across the subcontinent to battle the growing imperialist military presence and domination is the only road to throw off foreign domination and press forward the national unification struggle.

The Militant urges our readers to use the paper's coverage of this accelerating conflict to discuss the truth about imperialism's brutal record and the historic struggles of working people for unity. Supporters of the Militant who live in one of the many cities where immigrants from India, Pakistan, and other countries of the subcontinent have joined the ranks of the working class have a special opportunity and responsibility to offer the paper for sale, to discuss the perspectives outlined in its articles, and to exchange views and facts on the situation. We welcome reports on the results of such efforts and will publish them in upcoming issues of the paper.
 
 
Related articles:
What's behind India-Pakistan conflict?
U.S. widens Central Asia military deployments
 
 
 
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