War on Terror

 

After NATO bombings on a building in Tripoli killed a son and three grandchildren of Muammar Gaddafi, there were revenge attacks on the cities of Benghazi and Misrata, and attacks on the British and Italian embassies, among other targets. The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by American special forces was supposedly undertaken in revenge for the 3000 9/11 murders. When the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya heard of bin Laden’s death they called for Gaddafi to face the same fate.

After 8 years in Afghanistan, the international force led by the USA is sending in more troops. Far from a blow for democracy or the ‘war on terror', this conflict is turning the region into an ever worsening hell.

The perspective here is for the war on terror to more and more become actualised in Pakistan with ever increasing dangers, both for its population and the wider region.

There is an accelerating slide into chaos in Pakistan. The US has a real fear of the consequences of a collapse of the civil administration. In particular there is the question of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. The US has belligerently asserted that it would invade to secure the bases, if it felt it served its interests.

The British government has been embarrassed by revelations that it has used ‘torture by proxy'. It was alleged that part of the UK's secret service, MI5, was involved in questioning suspects while they were being tortured by the secret services of Pakistan and the United States.

There can be no doubt about the government's determination to defend the interests of British national capital abroad. We have only to look at the UK involvement in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Britain isalways pronouncing on current conflicts, even if it is powerless to influence, as it was in Georgia, and even more now with David Milliband proposing an EU force on stand-by for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Given that the Islamabad government has no control over huge border areas, and the increasing dangerousness of everyday life, we can see the real descent into barbarism. That it has been degenerating into daily violence - bomb attacks, shootings and their subsequent reprisals - should come as no surprise. The ‘war on terror' has, in reality, meant ‘more war and more terror'.

For the past seven years the American ruling class has moved relentlessly and forcefully to use the events of 9/ll as the pretext for pushing through a tremendous reinforcement of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state. While ostensibly designed as a means to combat the “terrorist” threat from Islamist fundamentalism, the strengthening of the repressive apparatus is a means that the state will not hesitate to use against any threat to its dominance...