Vol. 74/No. 39      October 18, 2010

Washington conducts its drone campaign in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan and home to many deeply impacted by years of war in which U.S. imperialism has played a major role.

Today, people of the FATA find themselves caught between the Taliban, on the one hand, and the U.S. and Pakistani armed forces on the other. As a tribal elder from North Waziristan told the Washington Post, “Everyone in our area is living and moving in a state of fear that we might be hit by a missile from the drones hovering around our region.”

Over the last several years, Washington has tested and perfected these deadly robots in the FATA for future use wherever the U.S. rulers’ interests are threatened. The Barack Obama administration has ramped up use and production of aerial drones to an unprecedented rate. This past month Washington launched almost twice as many bombing attacks on Pakistani villagers as the previous monthly record.

The policy carried out by the Pakistani rulers, like the British colonial master that preceded them, is to maintain the economic and cultural backwardness of Pakistan’s tribal areas. As under the British, the region continues to be ruled with an iron fist and all political organization is banned.

The capitalist Pakistani government has and continues to use armed Islamist groups in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan to supplement its armed forces, prop up its weak state, and keep working people in line. The video recently posted on the Internet of Pakistani soldiers executing blindfolded men in civilian clothing in nearby Swat District gives a picture of life in the Pakistani countryside.

Like all of U.S. imperialism’s wars, it’s military campaign in Pakistan is aimed at maintaining the U.S. rulers’ class dominance on a world scale, as they attack the living standards and rights of workers at home.

Working people should oppose Washington’s drone attacks and solidarize with the toilers in northwest Pakistan, who are killed, maimed, and displaced by these pilotless murder machines.
 
 
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Washington accelerates drone strikes in Pakistan  
 
 
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