BY BRIAN WILLIAMS  
The imperialist occupation of Afghanistan has increased the armed conflict in the region and heightened the war danger between India and Pakistan. As the U.S.-led military operations pushed the Taliban and al Qaeda forces out of Afghanistan, the operations of the two groups, along with those of similar organizations, have grown in Pakistan.

In addition, U.S. imperialism has expanded its military exercises in and around the Indian subcontinent. It has warplanes and 1,000 troops stationed in Pakistan. U.S. rulers have also been stepping up their military ties with India. In mid-May hundreds of Indian and U.S. paratroopers conducted joint exercises outside the northern city of Agra, the largest-ever military exercises between the two countries.

Washington maintains a strong military presence in the waters off the coast of Pakistan, with the carrier John F. Kennedy already operating there and other warships within a few days’ travel time in the south China Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

U.S. officials have been pressing the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad to allow their forces to conduct "hot pursuit" raids across the Afghan border. The FBI and other U.S. agencies are already involved with Pakistani intelligence and military forces in the arrest of people they claim to be Taliban or al Qaeda officials.

In the view of the imperialists, these steps are needed because among the hundreds of people imprisoned by U.S. and allied forces since the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan there are few high-ranking officials of either group; nor are there others of "intelligence value" to Washington. What U.S. and other officials conclude is that most simply slipped across the border to Pakistan.

For more than 20 years the Pakistani government has been funding and training what the capitalist media describes as radical, militant Islamic groups. Islamabad has used the groups to pursue its aim of gaining greater influence over Afghanistan, as well as carrying out armed attacks and military provocations against India under the guise of backing aspirations for self-determination in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The government of India says it will not begin to draw down its troops along the border until Musharraf ends all incursions into India by forces that operate out of Pakistan. The militaries of both countries remain on high alert, with a million troops massed along the border. Both governments possess a limited number of nuclear weapons.

The biggest operation by Islamabad involved arming and training groups to fight successive Soviet-backed governments in Afghanistan. Washington also backed some of these groups, supplying them with military equipment as they organized armed attacks on Soviet forces during the 1980s.

Since the inception in 1947 of the state of Pakistan, founded as a state based upon the Muslim religion, the rulers of the country-- who for nearly half its 55-year existence have been military dictators--have attempted to portray themselves as defenders of Muslims throughout the South Asia region.

Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the dictator who ruled the country throughout most of the 1980s, for example, conferred vast patronage on the Islamic clergy, religious schools, and mosques and encouraged the adoption of Islamic law throughout the country.

The schools, which sprung up in cities throughout Pakistan, openly recruited individuals off the streets to the various jihad groups being organized. Many of those who came to lead the Taliban, which means "student," received their training at the schools in Pakistan. Some 80,000 of these fighters were originally armed under the direction of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Pakistani secret police, to fight the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. After the Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, thousands of Islamic guerrilla fighters, funded and supported by Pakistan, shifted their focus to launching assaults against Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir. Since 1947 Pakistan has occupied one-third of Kashmir. India controls two-thirds and a small section in the northeast has been under Chinese control since 1962.  
 
Intertwining with secret police
The Pakistani rulers maintained a close relationship with the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan until pressure from U.S. imperialism forced them to cut these ties in the aftermath of September 11 and the U.S. assault upon that country. Towards that end, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in October announced a shakeup in the leadership of the ISI, firing Gen. Mehmood Ahmed who was in charge of the spy agency.

However, this cosmetic move changed very little in the Pakistani government’s relationship to the jihadi groups. The "structure built up in the 1980s is very much intact and the jihadi groups are functioning the same way they always have, recruiting, training, and fund-raising," stated Arif Jamal, a Pakistani author who has studied these groups. "This government does not have the political will to crack down. The only thing new is that since December, these groups are not visible. They have changed their names, their telephone numbers and addresses, and they have moved out of Islamabad."

With the defeat of Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, many of the leaders of these groups have returned to Pakistan, some of whom are now being deployed by the Pakistani military and intelligence services to launch attacks against Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir. Some of these groups, like Lashkar-e-Jhangyi and Sipah-e-Sahaba, have long-standing ties with Pakistan’s military rulers.

Prior to seizing political power in a coup two years ago, General Musharaff, as head of the Pakistani Army, directed an incursion into the Kargil region on the Indian side of Kashmir that brought the two countries close to war. In October of that year Musharaff ousted the then-head of state Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a military coup and in June 2000 appointed himself president.

There has been a succession of armed attacks on Indians since last year. In October, Pakistani-backed militants attacked the state legislature in the Kashmiri capital of Srinagar, killing 38 people. In December, they assaulted the national parliament in New Delhi, killing 14 people, including the attackers. The Indian government accused the Pakistani-backed Lashakr-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad groups of carrying out the raid and demanded that the Pakistani government crack down on the cross-border incursions. Musharaff, under pressure from Washington to comply with this demand, announced in January the arrest of 2,000 individuals involved in these jihad groups. But they were freed a few weeks later.

On May 14 three Pakistani-backed guerrillas disguised in army fatigues opened fire on an Indian army camp in Kashmir, killing 30 people, mostly soldiers’ wives and children, and wounded another 48.

The military mobilization has continued. In May the Pakistani government conducted three tests of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to most major Indian cities. Pakistan’s rulers have refused to rule out a first-strike use of nuclear weapons. "We have not said we will not use nuclear weapons," stated Munir Akram, Pakistan’s ambassador to the European Union and the United Nations. "India has a larger army. We do not wish to expand our limited resources on building up a conventional defense.... We will not neutralize the deterrence of any doctrine of no first use." The Indian rulers, on the other hand, have reiterated their policy of not using nuclear weapons except in response to a nuclear attack.

Musharaff also began shifting tens of thousands of Pakistani troops from the Afghanistan border, where they were participating in patrols along with U.S. troops in the search for al Qaeda forces, to the border with India. "In all, Pakistan plans to withdraw about half of its 80,000 troops from their support role alongside U.S. forces," reported the Wall Street Journal on May 31.

In a speech broadcast on Pakistani television May 29, Musharaff asserted, "If Indian forces cross a single inch on the Line of Control, the Pakistan army will respond with full force, and we will take the fight to the Indian territory." He added, "We don’t just have a defensive strategy. We also have offensive plans."  
Divide and rule strategy
The conflict on the Indian subcontinent is rooted in the character of the Pakistani state, carved out of India in 1947 by the British imperialists as a Muslim state, in order to pursue a divide-and-rule strategy aimed at derailing the powerful revolution in India unfolding in the 1940s against colonial rule. The driving force of these massive protests were mobilizations and strike actions by the working class in virtually all the major cities--Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, etc., that were assuming a highly political character.

The imperialists have utilized the state of Pakistan as a spearhead against the fight for national unification on the Indian subcontinent. In contrast to Pakistan, India is a secular state. While the majority of its people practice the Hindu religion, it incorporates 140 million Muslims, more than any other country except Indonesia, along with people of other faiths.

From its inception, Washington has supplied arms to the Pakistani government and has included it in a number of key U.S. military pacts in the region, including the 1954 SEATO alliance in Southeast Asia and CENTO (Central Treaty Organization) in 1955, which also included the regime of the Shah of Iran. During Washington’s recent assault on Afghanistan, U.S. military forces took over the use of three of Pakistan’s key air bases with the agreement of the Musharaff dictatorship. Some 1,000 U.S. army and air force troops are currently still stationed there.

Washington has been pressing Pakistan’s rulers to clamp down on the border crossings into Indian territory, attempting to cast itself as peacemaker while maintaining close ties with the Musharaff regime. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to visit India and Pakistan in early June, shortly after U.S. deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage pays a visit to the region, and Japan’s deputy foreign minister has scheduled stops in both capitals.  
 
 
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