With its January 25 test of a new ballistic missile, the Indian government demonstrated that there will be no short-term letup in its military pressure on Pakistan. The missile's 400-mile capacity will place Pakistan's cities within range of India's nuclear warheads.

"Coming at a moment like this, it is indicative of India's resolve to keep the threat to Pakistan going," said the retired director general of India's military operations, Lt. Gen. V.R. Raghavan. The government of Pakistan, which reportedly has similar missile technology, condemned the test as provocative and destabilizing.  
 
India–Pakistan conflict
Since mid-December, India has mobilized some 500,000 troops, and Pakistan some 300,000, along the two countries' common border. In response to New Delhi's demands that the Pakistani regime crack down on Kashmiri fighters or face a war, Islamabad has banned five organizations and detained more than 2,000 people.

The conflict has unfolded as Washington, while maintaining its long-term alliance with the pro-imperialist Pakistani regime, has sought to build closer military and economic relations with New Delhi. The long-standing conflict between Pakistan and India has its roots in the founding of Pakistan in 1947 as a spearhead against the struggle for national unification on the Indian subcontinent. British imperialism, retreating under the blows of a massive anticolonial rebellion, organized to partition the subcontinent, establish a pro-imperialist bulwark in Pakistan, and fan the flames of religious conflicts to divert the revolutionary struggles of working people.

Over past decades the Stalinist regime in China has also helped to arm and support the Pakistani regime as a lever against Moscow, which had close ties with New Delhi. But with the moves by U.S. imperialism toward India, the Chinese government has begun promoting increased trade and diplomatic ties with India, its neighbor to the south.

In the latest of several visits to India by top Chinese government leaders, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji said he wanted bilateral trade to reach $10 billion in the coming years. While the present level of $2.29 billion is less than 1 percent of China's global trade, this represents an increase of 30 percent over 2000–2001.  
 
Israeli regime intensifies offensive
The Israeli regime of Ariel Sharon, which has seized on Washington's "war against terror" rhetoric to justify stepped-up assaults on Palestinians, this past week dismissed a protest by 60 army reservists who refused to continue serving in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Calling the combat veterans a "marginal phenomenon," Sharon's spokesperson, Raanan Gissin, said that "you can't have a government in which people can decide they'll...bomb this target, but not that target."

The reservists have begun circulating a petition they hope to have 500 others sign. The petition declares, in part: "We will no longer fight beyond the Green Line for the purpose of occupying, deporting, destroying, blockading, killing, starving, and humiliating an entire people."

The Israeli army general staff issued a statement that military service is obligatory under the law and that "there is no place for reserve soldiers to choose what jobs they want and what jobs they don't want."

While the collective character of the latest protest was unusual, more than 500 Israelis have refused to serve in the Israeli-occupied territories since Palestinian struggles and Israeli repression accelerated in September 2000. Some 40 have been sentenced to prison terms. The number of dead in the 16-month period of heightened conflict stands at 1,000, around three-quarters of whom are Palestinians.

In the wake of the U.S. war, Afghanistan has no functioning central government. Local governors, based on tribal ties and ethnic groupings, have divided the country into five unofficial military zones--the north, the west, the east, south of Kabul, and Kandahar province.

"In all aspects we will need the continued support of the United States," said Abdullah, the foreign minister of the interim administration, installed by an imperialist-dominated conference in Germany in December. During a January 28 visit to the White House by Afghan prime minister Hamid Karzai, Bush said that Washington would assist in the construction of an Afghan army and police force.  
 
Offensives by U.S. forces
U.S. armed forces continue to carry out offensive actions inside the country. On January 24 U.S. Special Forces, backed by helicopters and an AC-130 gunship, killed 21 men in a raid on two compounds in Oruzgan, central Afghanistan, and captured 27 others. Faced with a storm of protest from local residents and survivors, who explained that the men were virtually unarmed, the Pentagon said that the attack was aimed at Taliban and al Qaeda fighters and a weapons store. The governor, Jan Muhammad Khan, said the men were in his employ, and that they had collected the weapons as part of a disarmament drive ordered by the Kabul government.

Special Operations forces also directed the January 28 assault on a Kandahar hospital where pro-Taliban fighters had stayed after receiving treatment for wounds. Other Special Forces acted as snipers during the assault. The local Afghan troops who stormed the hospital used explosives and automatic rifles, killing six. U.S. forces had previously opened fire on the hospital as they waited to arrest pro-Taliban fighters during discharge or attempts to escape.

In a January 24 New York Times column entitled, "That Dog Won't Bark," conservative commentator William Safire addressed the overwhelming military capacity of the U.S. rulers in the world today. The United States, he wrote, "bold, but not arrogant, newly armed with the will to assert its interests and values" has created a situation in which "our adversaries, growing familiar with our new way, have learned to hold back the barking"--or vocal opposition to Washington's conduct in the world.

While recognizing U.S. domination of the situation, various imperialist countries, as well as Russia, are seeking ways to gain influence with groups in the country. The actions of the government of semicolonial Iran have most irritated Washington, which considers itself the be the first and last word on what happens in the country.  
 
Iran told to stop 'mischief'
U.S. officials have accused Tehran of infiltrating the area around the northwestern city of Herat, undermining U.S. influence. "Iran is trying to stir up mischief. So far, we haven't taken any action, but we're keeping a very close eye on it," said one military officer. U.S. spy agencies also claim that al Qaeda members have found shelter inside Iran, a charge denied by Tehran.

Leading up to and during the bombing of Afghanistan, the Iranian government agreed to rescue U.S. troops in distress in its territory and to provide a port for U.S. wheat shipments into the war zone. "There are some things we're working in parallel with the Iranians, and some things they're going at in a different direction. We don't have identical goals in Afghanistan," said a State Department official.

In his January 29 State of the Union speech, Bush claimed that Iran "exports terror" and pursues "weapons of mass destruction." With Iraq, north Korea, and unnamed other countries, Iran forms an "axis of evil," he said.  
 
Strife among Afghan governors
Washington has expressed concern about Tehran's military backing for Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat and the ruler in the south and west of Afghanistan. Iran has also reportedly sent civil engineers, aid, and investment to the area. Khan has been targeted for threats by the U.S.-backed Gul Agha Shirzai, the ruler of the southern region of Kandahar province. Claiming that traders have come under attack by Tajik "bandits" loyal to Khan, Shirzai posted troops along the roads, and moved a total of up to 2,500 soldiers north toward Herat.

Other tensions and conflicts include reported reprisals by soldiers loyal to Abdul Rashid Dostum, the northern ruler, against Pashtun villagers on the grounds that Pashtuns dominated the Taliban. Such divisions have their roots in Afghanistan's crippling legacy of colonial and imperialist domination and wars of conquest, of which the U.S. assault is the latest example. Tied to this is the lack of a bourgeois democratic revolution, leaving nation-building tasks, including the dismantling of tribal and semifeudal conditions and social relations, uncompleted.

Muted criticism of Washington has surfaced from the imperialist powers in Europe, including the governments of France and Germany, prompted by U.S. restrictions on the scale and character of their military intervention in Afghanistan. The latest example concerns the imperialist-dominated "security force" stationed in Kabul. The armed forces of the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Italy, among others, are providing troops to the 4,500-strong force, whose officers are subordinate to the U.S. command.

Retiring UN official Francesc Vendrell spoke on January 24 in favor of a sevenfold increase in the force to 35,000 troops, and recommended that their deployment be extended outside Kabul. "The call today by Mr. Vendrell...came close to challenging the position of the United States, which has opposed a major buildup of the international force," reported the New York Times.  
 
Guantánamo prisoners
European politicians have continued to snipe at the harsh conditions imposed on U.S. prisoners of war at Guantánamo base in Cuba. The Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues stated that the incarceration could turn into a "mere parody of justice." UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, the former president of the Republic of Ireland, said that Washington is risking "the values that we fought to preserve." Government officials in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have also protested the prisoners' treatment. Several governments are seeking the return of their citizens who are being held at Guantánamo.

U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell, while agreeing with Bush's refusal to view the detainees as prisoners of war, has argued for changes in the administration's stance on the issue. In Powell's view, reported an approving New York Times editorial, "Claims of prisoner of war status could not be decided by Pentagon fiat, but must be resolved by the kind of legal hearing" stipulated in the Geneva Convention. The editorial also pointed to "concerns expressed by...top military commanders" that the White House position "potentially endangered future American troops who may fall into enemy hands."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on the other hand, insisted that "there is no ambiguity.... They are not POWs." Vice President Richard Cheney said that circumventing the restrictions of the Geneva POW convention allows "flexibility in interrogation," according to the Times. "We need to be able to interrogate them and extract from them whatever information they have," he said.  
 
 
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