With artillery firing across the Line of Control between India and Pakistan in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and further military mobilizations by the government in Islamabad, the possibility of a wider conflict that could include the use of nuclear weapons is a daily subject of news reports and statements by top U.S. government officials.

The events are presented in the big-business media as an intractable conflict between hardened foes, or as a Muslim-Hindu problem inherent to the Indian subcontinent. Officials of the imperialist governments in Washington and London daily paint themselves as peacemakers, strongly urging both sides to de-escalate the war threats.

Over the past several weeks Pakistan’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has escalated the conflict by announcing that he is moving troops deployed on the border of Afghanistan to the border with India; recalling thousands of soldiers sent to Sierra Leone as part of an imperialist intervention into that country; and continuing to support groups that he claims are fighting to separate Jammu and Kashmir from India. The groups have launched armed attacks into India, such as the deadly assault that took the lives of 30 people in May. The Pakistan military test-fired three long-range surface-to-surface missiles this past week that are said to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to any city in India.

New Delhi is demanding that the Pakistani regime put an end to all attacks from its territory into India. Officials have pointed out that the question of Kashmir is simply being used as a pretext by Islamabad to continue its military threats and provocations against India.

Given the high stakes tied up in these events, it is crucial that working people around the world break through the false picture the imperialists paint of the conflict. Washington and London especially hope to cover up their responsibility for the war threat and the potentially devastating outcome it holds for workers and peasants.

The source of the conflict between India and Pakistan is rooted in developments that occurred in 1947, when the departing British imperialists created Pakistan as a spearhead against the Indian revolution. Their divide-and-rule strategy was aimed at countering the powerful movement against colonial rule, including mobilizations by the country’s industrial proletariat that were growing on the Indian subcontinent.

The struggle began to pose the revolutionary resolution of the social relations, backwardness, and divisions maintained and reinforced by the colonial and imperialist powers. Workers and peasants mobilized in the millions against colonial rule, and their struggle pointed the road forward in the battle to address the unfulfilled tasks of national unification.

Washington has for decades involved Pakistan in its military alliances and provided it with arms and training. Today Pakistan remains a bulwark for imperialism against the struggles of working people--struggles that have the potential to renew the historic course begun in the battle for national independence against Britain.

Washington’s double-talk about peace comes as it has knitted even closer ties with Musharraf. The general did his duty when directed to open up his country’s air bases to U.S. forces and offer other aid to the brutal war against Afghanistan. Washington is also expanding its military and economic ties with New Delhi, hoping to extend its domination of the region and build up a potential counterweight to China, where a historic revolution gave the boot to imperialism following World War II.

In face of the military tensions between India and Pakistan, working people in the United States, on the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere should demand the withdrawal of U.S. and allied 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 the toilers 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 on the Indian subcontinent.  
 
 
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