Pakistan: Boisterous stagnation

We are publishing here a comment by Lal Khan – that first appeared in the Pakistan Daily Times – on the recent events taking place in Islamabad, where Imran Khan’s PTI in collaboration with Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, an Islamic scholar turned politician, have attempted to portray themselves as leaders of a mass anti-government protest. In reality they are nothing of the kind and have very little to say to the toiling masses of Pakistan.

As the regime in Pakistan has been almost paralysed and in despair and the long marches to overthrow it have entered into a sort of blind alley, the masses in general have been bewildered and apathetic to the circuses being staged in Islamabad, and the government ministers raving and jostling like tragic clowns.

The television shows have become even more boring and repulsive, but they are constantly trying to build up suspense and anxiety within the public. And now Zardari, that wily ringmaster of this circus of political maneuverings, intrigues, and gimmickry, has jumped into the arena. Meanwhile ordinary people are suffering in these conditions of “boisterous stagnation” where there is so much din and conflagration, and yet society hardly moves forward.

Sharif's delusions about his mandate and historic grandeur as an iconic leader of Pakistan have now been shattered. The negotiation process has been in a start-stop cycle, botched just as they are about to begin, then almost-but-not-quite begun yet again. The imperialists are worried about their so-called nuclear ally, ravaged by fundamentalist terror, unraveling out of control by the incessant chaos and anarchy, which is furiously intensifying in an already turbulent and unstable country.

Imran Khan and Qadri have at least superficially been refusing to budge on their main demand for the prime minister's immediate resignation, and the ruling PML(N) is in a state of shock at how its mandate and huge mass support have vanished despite a “landslide electoral victory” in last year's general elections. The other opposition parties in parliament are as confused as the regime, but are supporting the status quo in a desperate attempt to keep their stakes in this political setup, which gives them avenues to perks and plunder. But the parliamentary resolutions have lost their potency and their pleas are not just falling on deaf ears, but are a target of scorn and ridicule by the suffering population. In society they don't really matter much, as they had long ago lost any credibility amongst the oppressed masses. The sham of this rotten bourgeois democracy stands exposed and battered.

Sharif's overtures to assert himself as an independent and politically powerful prime minister have been spurned by the army, which has always called the real shots in Pakistan's not very long, but very chequered history. A recent Reuters report was quite revealing. It concluded, citing anonymous sources: “The military does not intend to carry out a coup but... if the government wants to get through its many problems and the four remaining years of its term, it has to share space with the army.”

“Sharing space” is a familiar euphemism for civilian governments focusing narrowly on domestic political affairs, and leaving security and strategic policy to the army. The fact that the military is back in the driving seat will make it harder for Nawaz to deliver the rapprochement with India that he promised when he won the election last year. “Thinking that Imran could be a game-changer, Nawaz has conceded the maximum to the army,” a Nawaz aide said. “From a Czar-like prime minister, they (the army) have reduced him to a deputy commissioner-type character who will deal with the day-to-day running of the country while they take care of the important stuff like Afghanistan and India.”

Looking at the history of Pakistani politics and the state there is nothing surprising about these revelations. However, in the last few decades, the control of the state and its agencies over the media, politics and various religious outfits, even where it has been bolstered, has in fact been corroded due to the metastasis of the malignant tumour of the black economy, corruption and the severe crisis of capitalism into its structures. Where the so-called non-state actors, in the form of Islamic terrorist groups, have turned into Frankenstein’s monsters for the imperialist and national spy masters, the political and some of the media non-state barons often get out of control and end up as adversaries. This seems to be the situation at the present moment. Imran Khan and Qadri, who are supposedly sponsored and engineered by the state, have gone so far that it looks as though the bosses are at pains to get them back under control or puncture their inflated egos.

The other important factor in the situation is the economic fallout and the haste with which the military wants to bolster its policy of strategic depth into Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, when the newest Great Game will be far more intense, and the contending regional and imperialist players will be in full swing in this orgy of plunder, bloodshed and devastation of the region. The operation in the North Waziristan Agency on the Afghanistan frontier and the reining in of a recalcitrant Nawaz Sharif, who has delusions of grandeur, are designed to fortify that policy of strategic depth on the Western Front.

The events that led to the breakdown of the composite dialogue with India seem also to be part of the game plan. With the reactionary regime of the bigoted BJP, things are made easier for the adversary establishments and fundamentalists, both Hindu and Muslim, to reinforce and facilitate each other's exploitation and oppression of the masses.

These manoeuvres and policies, however, can lead to catastrophic consequences for the South Asian Subcontinent, which was a single country spanning from Kabul to Rangoon in 1577, at the peak of ‘The Great Mughal’, Akbar’s rule. It was a relatively prosperous country as compared to the rest of the world, with a massive trade surplus with Europe. It was not without reason that India was called, “a land flowing with milk and honey” in the west. This richness of the country and the fertility of the land led to the innumerable invasions in the last two millennia. The European imperialists ventured into the colonialisation of the subcontinent to plunder its wealth. But after the Balkanisation, partition and the so-called independence from direct imperialist rule the local bourgeois leaders have proved to be corrupt, reactionary, and slavish. Who amongst them cares when hard cash is stuffing their coffers through these policies of hatred and malice?

Whatever happens, the PML (N) has been hit hard, even if it is not a fatal blow in the end. It has exposed itself with such lightning speed that within 15 months, even the trader and petit bourgeois classes have faced a severe financial crunch and their illusions in these right-wing demagogues have evaporated.

However, the PTI of Imran Khan, with its freedom march, has nothing in its kitty for those whose freedom it flaunts. Qadri’s “revolution” doesn’t even have a name, never mind a programme, a perspective or a strategy. Both totally fail to call for even the most basic of human needs, i.e. free health and education for the deprived.

The PTI leadership is actually a reunion of the old Aitchisonians [those who have studied at Aitchison College Lahore]. None of them would ever call for the nationalisation of their mother institution, which was built by the British imperialists to create and educate a class for the perpetuation of their colonial rule. Even Bhutto couldn’t do that. How could the oppressed and downtrodden children of the toiling classes ever enter the majestic corridors of such a historic and prestigious institution, that reflects the grandeur of a colonial and post-colonial, semi-capitalist, semi-feudal elite, disgustingly slavish to the imperialist bosses and religious bigots?

Private health and education are the most profitable businesses in Pakistan at present, except for the drug trade and ransom. Neither of the “radical” forces that have been clowning around in Islamabad can touch these and other corporate lucrative enterprises. Their support and finances get the biggest chunk from these very entrepreneurs and imperialist monopolies. They cannot dare to even call for the nationalisation of the vultures of corporate Independent Power Producers that are fleecing the state exchequer. Without their expropriation, however, there is no way to end the excruciating load shedding or power outages making life a misery for the ordinary people. For that matter, all political parties of the present bourgeois political order are representatives of these different black and grey crony capitalist and feudal classes. These so-called “freedom” and “revolution” marches are in fact primitive putsches aimed at derailing and subverting the real flood of a revolutionary tide that can erupt from below. The serious strategists of capital can feel the heat of the discontent and revolt seething below the surface. And they are terrified! Once that class struggle begins to move under a Marxist leadership, it will be unstoppable, and the state and the politicos will be swept aside. It will break this boisterous stagnation and society will surge ahead towards a socialist victory.

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