Washington's war spreads to Pakistan
By
Deirdre Griswold
Published Jul 26, 2007 9:44 PM
Pressures from the Bush administration on the regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf
of Pakistan are pushing that country into an acute social crisis.
Pakistan-USA Freedom Forum meeting in Brooklyn, N.Y., calls for end to Musharraf dictatorship.
WW photo: Deirdre Griswold
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Frustrated in their efforts to conquer Iraq or even poverty-stricken
Afghanistan, yet reluctant to deploy their own frazzled troops in even more
combat zones, the U.S. imperialist leaders have been leaning heavily on
Musharraf to attack Afghan insurgents and any Pakistanis in the border region
who might be sympathetic to them.
A Reuters story filed from Miranshah, Pakistan, on July 25 reported that
“Several thousand villagers fled a Pakistani tribal region on Wednesday,
where an army offensive was expected any day following pressure on Pakistan
from the United States to act against al Qaeda cells.”
With antiwar sentiment in the U.S. shaking up the political scene and George W.
Bush’s popularity still in the cellar, the U.S. president is desperately
playing the Qaeda card in all his public pronouncements, using the “fear
factor” generated by 9/11 to justify his continued colonial occupation of
Iraq and Afghanistan.
It remains a fact, however, that the aggressive thrust of the U.S. military
into this oil- and gas-rich area of the world has outraged the peoples who live
there and is what has inspired many to fight against the foreign invaders.
Those fitting this description are not al Qaeda but the U.S. and its partner
Britain, the former colonial master in much of the Middle East and South
Asia.
In Pakistan, the opposition to Musharraf comes not only from militant Islamic
groups—like the Lal Masjid mosque in Islamabad that was brutally attacked
by the Pakistan Army on July 10 on orders from Washington, causing hundreds of
casualties—but from secular, democratic forces and also from the Marxist
left, which in the past was often the main target of government oppression.
Musharraf came to power in 1999 through a military coup but then managed to get
himself named president. This year, according to Pakistan’s constitution,
he must be reelected or stand down. He precipitated a constitutional crisis
when, in March, he dismissed Chief Justice Muhammad Chaudhry. Huge
demonstrations supporting Chaudhry erupted all over the country.
On July 20 the Pakistan Supreme Court reinstated the chief justice, ruling that
Musharraf’s dismissal of Chaudhry had been illegal. Pakistanis at home
and in the diaspora joyfully celebrated this rebuke to the regime.
However, Musharraf has the army and the backing of Washington. He has 80,000
troops in the northwest areas of Pakistan, where opposition to his rule has
been most militant. And, should he falter in carrying out Washington’s
wishes, the U.S. has already threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the
Stone Age,” according to Musharraf himself in an interview with “60
Minutes” last Sept. 24.
One way or the other, the war for empire begun in Iraq is surely coming to
Pakistan. This rapidly deteriorating situation is just another reason why all
who struggle for peace and justice should be preparing now to make the Sept.
22-29 anti-war actions in Washington a powerful effort to pull back the
imperialists as they throw more troops and money into a war for global
domination that even Bush admits is “endless.”
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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