PL joins Pakistan martial law protesters

11/5/07 -- About 50 protesters showed up in front of the Pakistan embassy in New York City today, including two members of Progressive Labor Party who have been working closely with Pakistani students at Columbia University. The police moved the protesters into a pen on nearby 5th Ave, after falsely claiming they were "blocking sidewalk traffic." Nevertheless, the protest continued and garnered a significant amount of media attention. One PL member was even interviewed for New Delhi TV, holding a sign that read "From Jena to Pakistan, Smash Fascist Terror!" and was photographed by a BBC reporter. The crowd maintained a high degree of enthusiasm for around an hour, chanting in Urdu and English. The content of the event was contradictory. Much of the protest was of a highly nationalist character. However, instead of writing off the event in a sectarian manner, the two PL members present advanced an internationalist line to the greatest extent possible, and will continue to provide logistical support to our Pakistani comrades at Columbia. We recognize that this means helping draw the connection that workers from the U.S. to Pakistan will only really be free when they abandon the poison of nationalism for the weapon of revolutionary working-class internationalism. Then we can get rid of the world's Bushes and Musharrafs for good! Until then, what is happening in Pakistan is just a taste of what is bound to happen in the U.S. too, as rising inter-imperialist conflicts and an increasingly volatile global economy build inevitably towards a new world war and growing fascism.

No surprise here: oil lurks behind the current crisis in Pakistan

What makes the case of Musharraf's negative press [following the declaration of martial law in Pakistan] so interesting is precisely how universal it has been. The liberal wing of the ruling class here and in Pakistan is hopping mad that Musharraf has jumped the gun in imposing fascist repression--in other words, the present elements of bourgeois democracy were working just fine for the vast majority of the Pakistani ruling class, as well as the U.S. The Bush gang of conservative bosses could not care less about even bourgeois democracy in Pakistan, but they are outraged that this situation is hampering their broader imperial efforts and taking time, money, and attention away from prosecuting their "war on terror." Basically, they think Mush's current move has been more trouble than it's worth. This is especially the case while they were already having to juggle the additional ball of Turkey, another U.S. "ally" whose ruling class is overstepping its bounds by placing its own "national interest" in combating the Kurds over the U.S.'s interests of a more smoothly prosecuting a highly unpopular series of wars. This convergence of Rockefeller-liberal and conservative ruling class interests is actually pretty stunning--not the fact that there is one, per se, but rather its degree.

The Bush regime will likely continue to push openly and behind the scenes for a return to Pakistan's pre-militarized state, but cutting funding or weapons shipments will be an absolute last resort. In fact, given the U.S.'s traditional track record, there is a significantly higher likelihood that, if Musharraf fails to fall into line, the CIA will simply fund or directly stage a coup to depose him.

The U.S. bosses already have enough of a contradiction to deal with in Pakistan. It is a highly valuable asset to them because of its strategic geopolitical location, its endorsement of the "war on terror" garbage, etc. However, an unstable nuclear power is considerably dangerous to them, and they are thoroughly unhappy about Pakistan's increasingly threatening business relationship with China--one of the U.S.'s primary enemies in the war for control of oil. China is being allowed to develop a seaport there at Gwadar, is developing a massive railway network to refine, transport, and distribute petrol over land (thus circumventing US-controlled sea choke-points, control, and tariffs), and is also being allowed to set up a naval base in the area for its "blue water" navy. This is a HUGE threat to U.S. imperialists, especially given their current quagmire in Iraq. They went in to gain increasing control over a massive portion of the world's oil reserves (over imperialist rivals like Germany, France, Russia, and China) but have not been able to really even keep the oil flowing. The military occupation needed to keep this control is failing miserably and costing enormous amounts of money. This is not to mention the spiraling chaos in Afghanistan, the other "forgotten" U.S. occupation. For U.S. rulers, conservative or liberal, Musharraf is ruining their plans. In the end it may cost them big--and they'll be damned if some tin-pot dictator is going to get in their way, no matter how valuable he is--or may once have been.