It is twenty-five years since the massive year long miners' strike in Britain. Nearly 120,000 workers spent an entire year on strike from March 1984 to March 1985. Today we return to look at this strike not as an abstract academic piece of history, but as an opportunity for workers and communists to draw what lessons we can from the strike itself, and to help us understand the historic period in which we work today.

To place the miners' strike in its context, it came shortly after the major defeats that the working class had suffered in the struggles in developing from the mass strikes in Iran in 1979 and in Poland in 1980. In the UK itself there had also been a massive strike wave in the winter of 1979, which is commonly refereed to in the British media as the ‘Winter of Discontent'. Massive strikes, resulting in 29,474,000 work days being lost to strike action, spread across the entire working class in Britain as a response to the government's enforced pay rise limit of 5 percent. The limit was smashed by 17,000 workers at Ford Motors winning a 17% increase, and the rest of the working class joined in the struggle.

As rubbish piled up in the streets, bodies remained unburied, factories didn't work and hospitals only admitted patients who the workers decided were emergency cases the Labour government of James Callaghan collapsed.

In the upcoming election the right-wing Conservative Party played on the fears of the terrified middle classes and Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister. Despite her reputation as a great politician today, Thatcher's first term in office started badly. In 1981, after promising that she would destroy the power of the working class, and in particular the mineworkers who her party still hated for bringing down their government in 1974, her government was forced to make a humiliating retreat when 50,000 miners went on unofficial strike against a government plan to cut 30,000 jobs. By 1981, the country was once again in chaos, young people across the country had taken to the streets to riot in response to police brutality, and this continued all summer. At the same time Northern Ireland was in flames following the deaths of 10 hunger strikers.

Then, in 1982, came the Falklands war, and it was basically the war that saved Thatcher from losing the next election and being another failed politician. The military Junta in Argentina, with inflation running at 600% and workers about to launch a general strike, had decided to restore national pride and their falling popularity by occupying a few small islands, which were home to less than 3,000 people.

Unfortunately for the Argentine generals who were under the impression that the British wouldn't respond, a war was just what Thatcher and her party needed (and the Labour party, now in opposition, staunchly supported her in this enterprise). The flag was raised, a fleet was sent, striking nurses were condemned for being unpatriotic when ‘our boys' were fighting, and, after 74, it was time for Thatcher and the Conservative party to turn upon what she called ‘the enemy within', the working class. The state began to stockpile coal in preparation for the forthcoming strike.

The strike started in March 1984 after the National Coal Board tore up the agreement made after the 1974 strike and announced the closure of 20 pits and 20,000 job losses. Miners started to walk out on strike on 5 March. Workers spread the strike to other pits using flying pickets, and within a week the union was forced to declare the strike official, but only in one area, Yorkshire. At the same time left wing union officials appealed for the pickets to withdraw and condemned pickets for protecting themselves from the police; the leader of the miners' union, Arthur Scargill, talked about ‘taking the heat out of the situation'. Despite this by the middle of the second week about half the workforce of 196,000 had joined the strike.

As the strike continued to spread, the state used all of the weapons in its arsenal. The police were used as a paramilitary force which closed off entire areas to stop flying pickets as well as attacking picket lines and strikers' villages. The courts were brought in to declare that flying picketing was illegal. Politicians from all parties attacked the strikers, the right with their open hatred of the working class, and Labour in their condemnation of workers' violence; and as a background to all this, the media constantly whined on about how the workers were ‘undemocratic'.

Of course all of this was to be expected. What many workers didn't expect was that it would be the actions of ‘their own' unions that would lead the struggle to defeat. One of the major divisions between the mineworkers was the fact that in some regions, Nottinghamshire and North Wales, the majority of workers did not support the strike. However, in the early weeks before the National Union of Mineworkers had stopped the flying picketing, the workers themselves had been successful in bringing out their comrades in those regions. The union put a stop to this though. The practice of workers going directly to other workers to appeal for solidarity was opposed by the practice of bureaucratic union manoeuvres. An example of this was the closure of Harworth pit by 300 flying pickets acting against a massive police presence and the instructions of the union. When the flying pickets had been stopped the local union officials were then free to organise against the strike, holding their own ballot and campaigning for a no vote.

With the mineworkers divided amongst themselves it was time to isolate them from the rest of the class. Although there was widespread sympathy for the miners within the working class, and although railway workers, dock workers, and seamen took solidarity action by refusing to transport ‘scab' coal, the leaders of the Trade Union Congress not only refused to support the strike, but some actually gave the government information to help it beat the strike. As was to be expected, and concealing his own role in the strike, Scargill said "at the very point of victory we were betrayed". Yet it would have been wrong for workers to expect the unions to organise solidarity action. Even at the point that 25,000 dock workers walked out with very similar demands, the unions were trying desperately to stop the strikes linking up, and to keep workers divided.

In the middle of the summer the union decided to increase the pressure upon the government by closing down the steelworks. In fact these very steelworks had only been working because the union had given them permission to use coal in the first place. The decision to change strategy was connected to the fact that they were using more coal than the union had allowed them. On 18 June the miners arrived to picket Orgreave British Steel coking plant. In many ways this was reminiscent of an action in the 1972 strike at a coke depot near Birmingham. At that time, striking miners' succeeded in closing the depot. This time though about 6,000 workers confronted about 8,000 police, and were beaten in a pitched battle. There was a crucial difference between Orgreave in 1984 and Saltley in 1972. In the first case striking miners were joined by about 100,000 engineers and other workers from the city of Birmingham whom the miners had appealed to for solidarity. Not only were the numbers massive but also the strikes of these workers and the threat of the mass strike terrified the state.

The bourgeoisie was very clear about how it viewed the working class. Talking about the events at Orgreave, Thatcher stated that "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty." For our rulers the working class is a much more dangerous enemy than foreign states.

Even following the events of Orgreave there were still chances to extend the strike. In July and August when the dock workers came out, and in October when mining engineers were within 24 hours of walking out on strike. Thatcher later admitted that if that had happened the Government would have had to have backed down.

As the year turned to winter it became more and more obvious that the miners were going to be defeated. Support for the strike started to dwindle and thousands of workers gave up the strike and returned to work. By the start of the following March, when there was an organised return to work only 60% of the workforce were still on strike.

The years that followed saw a full scale assault upon the working class with different sectors of workers being isolated and defeated in strikes, including the dock workers, ferrymen, and a one year long strike by 6,000 printers. These defeats, but the defeat of the miners' strike in particular, dealt a significant blow to the class struggle in Britain and even internationally, as many workers had looked to the UK miners as an example of militancy and defiance. However, the wave of class struggles in the 1980s continued, with important movements among railway workers and healthworkers in France, education workers in Italy and so on. Even in Britain struggles did not simply disappear - the British Telecom workers won important concessions in a strike that showed signs of workers deliberately trying to avoid being trapped in a long isolated siege as with the miners and the printers. However, 1989 saw the collapse of the eastern bloc and the onset of massive campaigns about the ‘end of the class struggle' and the disappearance of the working class. The doomed fight of the miners, and the dismantling of the mines and other traditional industrial sectors, added further grist to the mill of these campaigns: how could there be a class struggle if the working class didn't exist anymore? The result of all this was a retreat in the class struggle which lasted for over a decade.

Since 2003, we have seen internationally a revival in workers' struggles. It is quite telling of the level of the defeats inflicted in the 1980s that the working class took so long to recover. Nevertheless after all the theorisations of pseudo-Marxist intellectuals, like André Gorz, who saw the end of the working class and wished it goodbye, the past few years have shown a revitalisation of struggles across the globe. The lessons that the UK miners' strike can teach us today about the role of the unions, the weakness of workers in isolation, and the need for workers to take matters into their own hands by going directly to other workers to extend their struggles, will be vital in the years to come.

Sabri 7/7/9.

On 4 June, in Cairo, the US president made a speech which all the main western capitals described as historic. And at first sight, Obama's words appeared to be a complete break from the aggressive, openly warlike policies of the previous president, GW Bush. For Obama, the time had come to turn a new page and put the errors of Bush and his administration under the heading of post- 9/11 trauma. Obama declared that the "clash of civilisations" so dear to the previous administration was over. In his 4 June speech, Obama went out of his way to say that the USA is not the enemy of Muslims, but a legitimate partner. He talked non-stop about the "occupation" and the "aspirations of the Palestinians for dignity, equal opportunity and an independent state"(Courier International, 16.6.09)

In short, he presented the US as a friend of the Palestinians. He called on Hamas to recognise the State of Israel but he did not describe this organisation as terrorist. Even more remarkable is that he compared the struggle of the Palestinians with that of the slaves in America or the blacks of South Africa in the time of apartheid.

Coming from a US president, such statements are unprecedented. And they come in the wake of a diplomatic opening which the US has been trying to make towards Iran - a country presented not long ago as a potential threat to world security.

Such a lot of change in so short a time. Yesterday it was so aggressive, but today the US has suddenly become an apostle of peace...

However, we have some cause to distrust this view of things. Dramatic experience has taught us not to believe in fine speeches by the bourgeoisie. History has shown that when capitalism talks of peace, it's really preparing for war.

The need to reorient American policy

Since the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989, the US has been the world's only superpower. Since that time its number one priority has been to maintain this domination at any cost. But after 2001, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have seen the USA's position actually getting weaker and weaker. Getting bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq has been the most obvious and tragic demonstration of this. All around the world, other great powers have arrived on the scene to challenge US supremacy and openly declare their own interests. This has been the case, for example, with China in Africa or Iran in the Middle East. Each nation, each clique within the bourgeoisie, has been trying to defend its own interests in a context of growing chaos and disorder. The policies of Bush and Co., which tried to assert American power alone against everyone else, have not halted this process. On the contrary, they only accelerated the USA's isolation and the weakening of its supremacy. They provoked further anti-American resentment, notably in the Muslim world, including among allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The USA's Lone Ranger policy could not be continued. A large part of the US bourgeoisie understood this and Obama's administration has for the moment overcome traditional differences between Democrats and Republicans on these matters. However, the policies orchestrated by Obama will not do away with the growing tendency of the US to become isolated. The weakening of American power and the rise of ‘every man for himself' are irreversible realities today.

One aspect of this is the growing impossibility for the US to go on investing militarily in several regional wars. Not only are their military resources far from inexhaustible, notably in ‘human capital'; the world economic crisis is now confronting it with a real problem. Millions of dollars are poured each day into the American army while the country as a whole is getting poorer and poorer. Unemployment is shooting up and health cover is practically non-existent. As poverty hits a growing section of the population, how can they be made to accept endlessly increasing military expenditure?

What's more, even after increasing wages and benefits for soldiers, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find young people ready to risk their skins in wars which more and more people see as a bad idea. Thus, the new orientation of US imperialist policy has nothing to do with any humanism on Obama's part. It is a necessity imposed on the American bourgeoisie. It simply expresses the fact that the USA has to choose its targets more carefully. And this choice has fallen on the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This means for the moment calming things down a bit with regard to Iran and Palestine. For the US it has become imperative to get control of the situation in Afghanistan if it is to reassert its influence in Pakistan. Pakistan is a really central piece in the game, with Iran to the west, the Caucasus, and thus Russia, to the north, and above all towards the east with India and China. The last country has been constantly stepping up its imperialist appetites. This is the choice the US has to make and it's what lies behind what Obama was saying in Cairo.

When Washington puts pressure on Israel

For decades Israel has been the most loyal ally of the US in the Middle East. The links between the bourgeoisies of the two countries are very strong and the Israeli army is totally supported by Washington. In the days of GW Bush, the Israelis had acquired very broad latitude in carrying out their imperialist policies. Tel Aviv and Washington were entirely on the same wavelength. But this is no longer the case. The US administration is now asking the Israeli bourgeoisie to bow to its demands, to the defence of its own interests. This has immediately led to rising tension between the two capitals. The differences between Netanyahu, the head of the Israeli government, and president Obama, are perfectly clear. However, faced with mounting US pressure, Netanyahu has had to modify his language somewhat. For the first time Netanyahu has talked about a "Palestinian state" even if this is combined with a demand that it be demilitarised and it rejects any idea of Jerusalem being divided up to be the capital of the new state. This indicates the strength of US pressure on Netanyahu. He has had to gain time and this is what he has done. But let's be clear: this will change nothing essential. This is evident when we remember that Netanyahu has demanded that a central component of any deal is that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state. He made this a central precondition for opening peace talks, even when he knows that it is totally unacceptable for the Palestinian bourgeoisie.

We are definitely going to see mounting tensions between the USA and Israel. And there's no guarantee that this new US policy won't push Israel's new ruling faction towards hurling itself into a more warlike policy.

Prime Minister Netanyahu sees the Iranian nuclear programme as an unbearable threat to Israel. The war of words between Iran's president Ahmadinejad and the Israeli government is a visible expression of the growing tensions between the two countries. And there's no certainty that recent events in Iran offer any assurance to the Israeli bourgeoisie. The Israeli state may be tempted to confront the Obama administration with a fait accompli based on violent military action against Iran.

Even if such a perspective doesn't come to be, the Israeli bourgeoisie cannot avoid reacting to US pressure. War and barbarism are still very much on the agenda in this region of the world.

Tino 2/7/9      

Two recent documents coming from different parts of the anarchist movement both make attempts to address the questions of the role of the unions and how workers can struggle. The first is a document [7] that was circulated by the Brighton local of the Solidarity Federation for discussion in the period leading up to their national conference. The second is the workplace strategy [8] of the Anarchist Federation that was adopted by their national conference in April.
For us the discussion document from Brighton Solidarity Federation marks something of a break from traditional anarcho-syndicalism, though they are at pains to stress that it doesn't, and it came as no surprise to us that it was rejected by their conference. That does not mean that nothing positive can come out of this current. On the contrary, many of the ideas that have emerged from it recently express a real attempt to try to develop a workable praxis in the current period. However, we feel that this current as a whole is deeply tied to a vision of mass revolutionary organisations which belongs to a bygone period and offers no perspective for workers today.
The Brighton document though rejects this approach and states clearly that "not only are permanent mass organisations not revolutionary, but that in the final analysis they are counter-revolutionary organisations". This is something that we can heartily agree with. It also talks at length about the differences between mass organisations and minority ones and the differences between permanent and non-permanent ones. Here again there is much to agree with.
For the comrades in Brighton, "internal democracy in a mass organisation when the majority of workers are not pro-revolutionary means that the organisation has to sacrifice either internal democracy or its revolutionary principles". Certainly, outside of a revolutionary period, it is inevitable that only a minority of the working class will be actively in favour of the communist revolution. Faced with this reality, the (anarcho-) syndicalist attempt to establish ‘revolutionary' unions has ended up either creating small groups which are essentially political organisations that don't admit their own nature, or mass organisations that behave exactly like trade unions - the most obvious case being that of the CNT in the war in Spain, where it participated in the bourgeois republic at every level, just like the unions in other countries did in the 1914-18 war.

One point which we think could have perhaps been made a bit clearer is the section which talks about 'industrial networks' set up to create links between militant workers with the aim of exchanging experience and acting together in moments of class struggle. The text states that "Of course a level of theoretical and tactical agreement is required - networks are not apolitical - but we do not see this as being as high as for propaganda groups", which begs the question of exactly how high it should be. If the comrades don't see these groups as ones that would lobby to elect union bosses and don't see them as groups trying to democratise the existing unions, that is good. But their conceptions are not entirely clear on this.
Finally we would like to raise the question of whether workers should limit their attempts to form these sort of groups along sectoral lines. For us, if the workers' struggle in general needs to break through boundaries between sectors and enterprises, then the most militant workers need to follow the same logic when they form discussion groups or groups to agitate within the class struggle.

Nevertheless, the document is a serious contribution to what is an essential discussion for revolutionaries today and in that we welcome it and urge our readers and sympathisers to read it and take part in this debate.
The AF document on the other hand seems to us to be much more confused. Indeed much of the introduction seems to be taken up by apologizing for its own existence. There seems to be a distinct uneasiness about actually putting forward political ideas as well as what seems to be nearly a fear of prioritising workers' struggles.

The AF write "simply because we're writing about the workplace here does not mean that we believe that fighting in the workplace is more important than fighting else where". In our opinion workplace struggles are at the core of the working class struggle. Of course there can be struggles in the 'community' that are class struggles it is also much easier for these sorts of movements to end up being confused cross class movements. The workplace is where the working class is concentrated as a class, and also where it has the potential to use its power. Of course, the class struggle has to go beyond the individual workplace and come out onto the streets, incorporate the unemployed, take up housing and other issues, and so on, but the action of the employed workers as workers will always be of central importance in this process.

In fact there are times when the document seems confused about what class action actually is. At one point it talks of a range of workers' groups extending to "loose and informal groups of friends who support each other in small acts of theft and sabotage". While most of us have probably stolen something from work at some point, and we don't want to moralise about this, it should be clear that taking home a few printer cartridges or taking home some work boots for a friend is in no way a collective act of class struggle.

When they finally come to writing about the role of the unions the AF, despite recognising that unions "cannot become vehicles for the revolutionary transformation of society" that they "divide the working class", even that they "must police unofficial action", ends up saying that unions provide "important material advantages that workers' simply cannot afford to ignore (e.g. better pay and conditions, better health and safety, some legal protection for industrial action and so on)".

To us it seems quite amazing that such organisations as previously described can manage to win all of these gains for their members. The question is whether the relationship between the two is causal. Do workers have comparatively good working conditions because they are members of a union, or because in the past they have been militant and fought for good working conditions? Very often this fight would have been conducted in spite of or even against the role of the trade unions in their workplace - and very often the union is there precisely because these are militant workers, and in this situation the more intelligent bosses see the union as being essential for the maintenance of ‘good industrial relations' (i.e. labour discipline).

When they go on to discuss whether militants take posts in the union, they seem to recognise the dangers involved, but also inform us that "AF members sometimes take positions as reps or shop stewards". And that "this is a judgment that individual members have to make in particular circumstances". Of course 'particular circumstances' are governed by the level of class struggle. When the working class isn't struggling, union reps are not forced to play a role against that struggle if only for the reason that it doesn't exist. However, when the class does come into struggle, reps are forced into what the AF calls a 'contradictory position', for example being obliged to condemn wildcat stoppages.

When it comes to the question of syndicalist unions, the AF seems even more confused and unclear than the anarcho-syndicalists. While recognizing that "syndicalist unions run the same risks as ordinary unions", they seem to see some difference in that they are "more likely to remain under the control of their membership". It may be that that tiny syndicalist 'unions', such as the IWW in the UK, are under the control of there membership now, but this has more to do with the fact that they don't operate as unions than with any superior organisational model. When syndicalist unions take on the function of unions they are also forced to act in the same way as the 'yellow' unions. In some of the few places where the IWW actually manages to operate as a union in the US, it has already signed no strike deals.

Despite our criticisms of these texts, we are convinced that they can play a role in contributing to a vital discussion. We would also encourage readers to look at our series on anarcho-syndicalism [9]. [9]

Sabri 7/7/9.

A few days before President Zardari of Pakistan was to meet President Obama, Taliban are said to have taken over Buner. Immediately a scare was set: Taliban are coming to Islamabad; they are just 60 kilometer away; they may take over Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal. As Zardari took the flight for the US on 5th May, the Pakistani army asked people in Swat and elsewhere to quit their homes and go into refugee camps. Before plane of Zardari could land, the Pakistani army has started bombing Buner and other areas of Pakistan from helicopter gunships, fighter jets, tanks and artillery. Soon its own population, 3 million of them, was running away from their homes to save their lives from the war between the army and Pakistani Taliban. By the time Zardari landed and met Obama on 6th May 2009, Pakistan could claim to have killed 38 Taliban fighters. Of course Zardari got a pat on the back from Obama.

There is no great pretence from the Pakistani state that US coerced it to take action against Taliban. But the reason given is Taliban take over of Buner. The truth is far from it and it may not be shocking if, some day, it is discovered that Taliban were encouraged to come to Buner by Pakistani or US secret services so that this war could begin. Frenzied propaganda about the march of Taliban to Islamabad allowed Pakistani bourgeoisie to mobilise its population behind itself for this war. It allowed Americans to tell the world that they are pushing Pakistan into this war for ‘their own good'.

In reality this war has nothing to do with defeating Osama bin Laden or Islamic terrorism. It is well known that US engendered Osama bin Laden and Islamic Mujahadeen to further its imperialist interests against the Soviets. Both Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist hordes that swarm Pakistan today were nurtured by Pakistani state as tools of its imperialist policy and social control. True the genie has now turned on the master, but this war is more than that.

Since the collapse of the eastern bloc and with it of the western bloc, US have been battling to maintain and impose is global domination. Over the last two decades its power has weakened but its resolve to remain the number one global imperialist gangster has not. US started the war in Iraq to deter its rivals and to implant itself in an area of great strategic importance. Its attack on Afghanistan in 2001 and the war since then is meant to establish its domination over South and Central Asia and to thwart its rivals China and Russia. By turning Pakistan into a theatre of War US not only strengthen its position in Afghanistan. It also strongly limits Chinese influence in Pakistan and further strengthens American domination in this whole area including against imperialist dreams of the Indian bourgeoisie. It is with these aims that US have been preparing to push Pakistan into this war since more than a year.

The latest war in Pakistan turns the entire region from South Asia to Middle East into vast theatre of war. It also set the stage of future wars. As a petty imperialism caught in the path of a global gangster, Pakistan has been forced to fall in line, but even in this extremely perilous situation, it does not stop forwarding its imperialist interests.

History of Imperialist Policy of Pakistan

In the Maoist and Stalinist legends imperialism is the hallmark of only America or other Western countries. According to them ruling gangs in third world countries like Pakistan and India, when they engage in bloody military adventures against each other, they are only playing the role of ‘compradors' or lackeys of one or the other great power without imperialist aspirations of their own.

The world is of course littered with countless examples debunking the leftist myth and showing that bourgeoisies of every nation, howsoever poor and wretched, are driven by the same imperialist appetites as ‘great powers'. A couple of months ago Sri Lanka set a ruthless and bloody example of a petty capitalist gang engaging in a near genocide of Tamils to ensure their continuing subjugation.

History of Pakistan is a ringing example of its tenacious, if reckless, defence of its imperialist interests even in the face of hostility of the global powers. It has never been deterred by ‘small' facts that its population lives in misery and medieval darkness, its economy teeters on the brink and its political apparatus is always in tatters where ‘elected' governments are regularly followed by juntas who use the ‘civil constitutions' merely as toilet paper. In fact the shambles of its own state and society turns Pakistani bourgeoisie only more reckless which is expressed in its genocide of Bangladeshis, in nuclear black market, in its thinly veiled terrorist campaigns against its rival India or by frenzied nurturing of the fundamentalist gangs who are now confronting it.

End of ‘Golden' Years of Pakistani Imperialist Policy  

For imperialist policy of Pakistan, the years of anti soviet war in Afghanistan and its aftermath were the golden years so far. Although the main conflict was between USSR and US, it fitted well with imperialist aspirations of Pakistan. The Afghan Mujahadeen and later Taliban were set up and armed by the US but their direct control was in the hands of Pakistani army and secret services, the ISI. When soviets left and, some years later, when Taliban took over in Kabul, it was a great victory for Pakistan. It now had a client state in Afghanistan, it could dream of extending its influence toward Central Asia and its army could boast of gaining strategic depth against its enemy India. In addition it was able to push its rival India to the wall with separatist violence in Kashmir reaching its zenith.

But when US attacked Afghanistan in its ‘war against terror' and the Taliban power fell in Kabul in November 2001, it was a great setback for Pakistan. All its gains of more than two decades were gone. While Pakistan lost all influence in Afghanistan, its enemy India was gaining a foothold there. Worse, America forced it to sacrifice its own interests in Afghanistan and advance US interests.

But like any other imperialism, Pakistan could not stop defending its imperialist interests. Even as the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul and Taliban were routed, Pakistan tried to save its ‘strategic assets' - the entire Taliban leadership moved into Pakistan and got sanctuary with the ISI in Baluchistan. Since then, despite its ‘alliance' with US, Pakistan has zealously protected the Taliban leadership based in Quetta.

In the years following Nov 2001, US got mired in war in Iraq, its power weakened and Taliban power once again saw resurgence in Afghanistan in which Pakistan played no small role. Up to its ears in trouble in Iraq, US imperialism "studiously ignored the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership gathering in the tribal areas of Pakistan ..." and Pakistani state used this situation "as a free pass to re-engage the Taliban as a Pakistani proxy force .... Until this year, Pakistan appeared to be winning the game", Ahmed Rashid, Yale Global, 18 Sept 2008.

But as Taliban got stronger and threatened American control over Afghanistan, starting mid 2008 the US Army began to respond to the Afghan Taliban presence in tribal areas in Pakistan.  Since August 2008, US have carried out regular drone attacks on Afghan Taliban sanctuaries in FATA in Pakistan. In Sept 2008, US soldiers crossed over into FATA sending out a clear message to Pakistani state to fall in line with imperialist interests of the USA. Since then US bourgeoisie have continuously threatened Pakistan ‘either deal with Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan or we will deal with them.'

This policy, named Af-Pak now, only accelerated after Obama came to power. The crux of this policy is that for US to win in Afghanistan it must compel Pakistan to wage war against Afghan, and Pakistani, Taliban in Pakistan. But it is not only about winning in Afghanistan.

The Af-Pak policy also brings Pakistan under tighter and more direct control of US so that it can confront its rivals China and Russia at their doorsteps. Also, this policy puts the Indian bourgeoisie on tenterhooks who now don't know which way to turn.

If to achieve this US have to push Pakistani state, like its neighbour Afghanistan, into civil war and chaos, so be it.

Taliban - A Monster Born Out of Imperialist Wars and Decomposition

NWFP, FATA and Northern Territories in Pakistan, home to more than 30 million Pashtuns, are perhaps the most impoverished areas of an impoverished country. In areas like FATA, with population of 5.6 million, only 3% of the population is urban and literacy rate is 17%. Big landed aristocracy, coming from feudal times, continues to exist and plunder an impoverished peasantry. The pattern of administration - the agency system - is the one that was instituted by the British in 19th century to keep the Pashtuns down. Till a few years ago populations of these areas could not vote for national parliament and could not join political parties. Also, this impoverished area had often seethed with ethnic unrest with Pashtuns battling the Pakistani state. In 1960's and 1970's, these areas saw a major Pashtun separatist movement supported by India and Afghanistan in the time of Zahir Shah.

 

This movement was crushed, but hostility of Pashtun population to Punjabi dominated Pakistani state did not go away. The state was able to co-opt this hostility only during anti-soviet war in Afghanistan. During this period millions of refugees from Afghanistan, mostly Pashtuns, took shelters in camps in NWFP and FATA. As US and Pakistan started recruiting and building Islamic Mujahadeen and later Taliban armies for Afghanistan, they nurtured Islamic fundamentalist forces as supporting infrastructure. For some years Pakistani state was able to kill two birds with one stone - as it built Mujahadeen and Taliban armies to further US and its own imperialist interests in Afghanistan, it co-opted and mobilised its own Pashtun population for supporting these armies. Influence of Islamic fundamentalism and Taliban developed in these areas.

But it was not limited to North West of Pakistan. Emboldened by a sense of its own ‘indispensability' to US in Afghanistan, Pakistani state nurtured fundamentalist organizations in other parts of Pakistan too. These served as tools of social cohesion in a decomposing society and as recruiting centers for Afghan Taliban and for escalating Kashmiri separatist movement in India that was at its bloodiest at this time. Fundamentalist and Jehadi ideology penetrated the Pakistani state and above all its armed forces and secret services so that it became difficult to distinguish the ‘handlers' from the ‘handled'.

This policy worked till Taliban were in power in Kabul. But the game became dangerous when Taliban power fell in 2001. Since then the Pakistani state has been forced to play a double game both with the Americans and with Islamist forces in its own country. With US, in the open it fell in line. At the same it continued to host ousted Afghan Taliban leadership and provided them fertile ground, in the local Islamist gangs in NWFP, FATA, to re-nurture themselves. On the other hand, under American threats, drone attacks and incursions, it has to act against local Islamists and Taliban from time to time.

Unity that had earlier existed between the Islamist forces and vast echelons of the Pakistani state tended to fall apart with Islamists and Pakistani Taliban starting to fight against Pakistani state. But till the last moment, till a few weeks before 5th May 2009, the Pakistani state was loath to start a war against Taliban in Pakistan for it saw a much bigger abyss in front of it. If latest events are any indications, even after falling into the abyss the Pakistani state has not stopped pushing Mullah Omar and other Afghan Taliban as a bargaining chip with the Americans.

For the Exploited Population - Unfolding of a Human Tragedy

As the Pakistani army started bombing its own towns and villages from 6th May 2009, the call to leave their homes, originally limited to Buner and Swat, was extended to several districts of NWFP and FATA. Those who did not heed the call to leave were compelled to flee as "helicopters, jet fighters and artillery pounded ... the troubled region" (the Dawn, 8th May 2009) and as civilians were used as human shields both by the Taliban and army that stationed tanks in narrow, populated streets. Roads were blocked either by the Taliban or the Army. "Phone networks, water and electricity have all been cut (by administration) in the town (Mingora)", BBC, 9th May 2009. 

Soon the number of ‘internally displaced people', people who have to flee their homes in the face of war between two bourgeois gangs, the army and the Taliban, jumped to nearly 3 millions. In some of the districts like Buner 90% of the population have to flee their homes. In other districts like Swat, Bajaur and Mohmand up to 50% of the population have to abandon their homes and are now refugees. Towns like Mingora, home to half a million people, were turned into ghost towns with tanks stationed in its streets. While the Pakistani army, that answers to no one but itself, and the war-lords of Taliban, both expressing the decomposition of Pakistani state, settle it out between themselves,  three million impoverished people are living in tents or just on the roads.

Some of the fleeing people "died on the roads ... no one was willing to offer us any help - neither the army nor the Taliban. They are both committing atrocities and cruelty against the ordinary people", Al Jazeera, 11 May 2009, quoting a fleeing civilian.

On the first day of fighting 35 civilians were killed. Since then the military have stopped counting the civilian deaths although it claims to have killed 1600 Taliban fighters. For Mr. Gilani, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, death of civilians at the hand of army is merely ‘collateral damage'.  For 3 million refugees and for those poor villagers who could not flee, the whole thing is a vast human tragedy. To them the role of both the Taliban and the army is repugnant. Amid tears a young refugee girl is said to have told the Pakistani paper, the Dawn on 8th May: "We are frightened of the Taliban and the army... If they want to fight, they should kill each other, they should not take refuge in our homes."

No End to Wars and Barbarism within Capitalism

Afghanistan has been ravaged by civil wars and chaos since more than three decades. Unable to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan despite their eight years of presence, the Americans have now pushed Pakistan into civil war and chaos. Also the stage is getting set for more wars in the future. In the process the entire region from Pakistan to Afghanistan to Iraq has been turned into a theatre of wars, barbarism and human misery.

The army in Pakistan may claim to have secured a quick victory against Taliban in Swat but there is no quick end to this war within its boundaries. As per a report of New York Times - "Taliban mostly melted away without a major fight, possibly to return when the military withdraws or to fight elsewhere", 27 June 2009. While taking the war to South Waziristan and other areas of Pakistan, the Pakistani Army has to stay put in ‘conquered areas' to fight other battles. Not only that, there are already signs that this war between Pakistani Taliban and Pakistani state could mutate into a war between the Pashtuns and Pakistani state. Giving a hint of things to come, a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan and a Pashtun, Rustam Shah Mohmand called army action "Pashtun genocide," Al Jazeera, 12th May.

Even American experts see this danger. "The Pakistani army is ... mostly ...Punjabis. The Taliban is entirely Pashtun. For centuries, Pashtuns ... have fought to keep out invading Punjabi plainsmen. Sending Punjabi soldiers into Pashtun territory to fight jihadists pushes the country ever closer to an ethnically defined civil war...," Selig S. Harrison, Washington Post, 11h May 2009.

All this does not point to the coming of peace but toward further spread of war between competing bourgeois gangs and toward the spread of barbarism and human misery for the working class and exploited populations.

Caught in the global decomposition of its system and faced with greatest crises of its history, the bourgeoisie have nothing to offer the working and exploited classes but wars and barbarism. It will be a great setback for the working class and a victory for the bourgeoisie if it succeeds in mobilising the working classes behind Pakistani state or behind factions of the ethnic bourgeoisie (Pashtuns, Baluch or Sindhi).  

Only way forward for the working class and exploited populations is to develop its class struggle and forge class unity across ethnicities and national boundaries. Only by doing this, working class can develop the means to overthrow the decomposing capitalist system and can stop the spread of barbarism.

AM, 5 July 2009.

On Monday 2 July, following news of the deaths of at least 2 Uighur workers in Guangdong in fighting a couple of weeks earlier, Uighur protestors in the capital of Xinjiang, Urumqi, demonstrated and marched, peacefully at first, to protest against the deaths. It appears that the security forces responded and then Uighur young men went on the rampage, killing and wounding many Han and Hui Chinese that make up half the population of the town.

This blind hatred and killing spree provoked a response from the Chinese and local security forces, seeing a further unspecified number killed, wounded and imprisoned and also provoked, in this deadly and toxic atmosphere, which had been brewing up for some time, Han and Hui men and women to arm themselves and seek revenge. They smashed up Uighur shops, properties and residential areas and, it's almost certain, engaged in a killing spree themselves. The local authorities were slow to react and eventually, under the impulsion of the higher authorities of the CP, local armed police began to take control, the mobile phone network was suspended and road blocks set up. But further intervention from the centre was needed to control the situation and, following President Hu's embarrassing return from the G8, massive numbers of troops were sent in.

At the moment, Chinese forces in the capital of Xinjiang province, Urumqi at least, appear to have the situation under control. Official figures of around 150 killed are likely to be an underestimation and it appears that thousands have been wounded, mostly men but also women and children. Soldiers and riot squads have been active, mass arrests have taken place and curfews are in place. There's little news from other towns in the region.

Despite the Chinese leaders and the Uighur state officials of the CCP blaming ‘foreign interference', ‘foreign forces' and ‘terrorists' (a la Iran) this doesn't appear to have been a separatist protest. The original protest, against the deaths of at least two Uighur workers in a disturbance two weeks earlier in Guangdong province, was led by Uighurs carrying a Chinese flag, with more being carried in the crowd, and asking for justice. What happened next is unclear. But there's very little history of protest by the Uighur population in this region, the last being a violent demonstration resulting in the overturning of buses in 1992.
There have, however, been several reported attacks by separatist elements in 2008 attacking Chinese targets, causing explosions and killing security forces, actions motivated by imperialist considerations for an ‘independent East Turkestan' that only brought down repression on the heads of the majority who have nothing to do with or gain from such claims. It would seem that Rebiya Kadeer, one time Uighur capitalist and CCP pin-up, now exiled in the United States and heading two Uighur exile groups, is a nationalist proponent of a Turkic-speaking Uighur homeland and, in this rivalry that only puts Uighur workers and the masses in the front line, has now been condemned by the CCP for the current troubles.

This region, one of the most heavily policed in China, contains 8 million Uighurs, around half the population. It, like other regions around the Silk Road, has long been prey to inter-imperialist rivalries. It declared its independence as East Turkistan in 1933, but was quickly re-absorbed into China and in 1944 a second republic was created but became part of China again in 1949. Xinjiang means ‘New Frontier' and this region has been integrated into the needs of Chinese imperialism, not just for its natural resources but also as a buffer zone towards south Russia and, with Tibet (and also with the recent increase of Chinese interests in Sri Lanka and Pakistan) as part of its western expansion, particularly threatening India as well as other regions. Under the guise of the Stalinist-speak ‘Harmonious Society', China has used re-settlements of Han and Hui Chinese for its imperialist interests and for greater control. It did the same in Tibet and attempted the same in the vacuum left in Vladivostok in the 90s left by a collapsing Russia but came unstuck in the latter. The pogrom atmosphere resulting from these imposed state divisions, and encouraged by the local Uighur CP structures, demonstrates the anti-working class nature of such enforced settlements and divisions and this is further exacerbated by the economic crisis and the way it has hit China. While these events in Xinjiang have undoubtedly caused problems for the Chinese bourgeoisie, witness President Hu Jintao's hasty return from the G8 in Italy, there is no advantage here whatsoever for the working class.

From the original incident that appeared to spark this protest in Guangdong in southern China, we can see that there is the danger of worker turning on worker (‘Chinese jobs for Chinese workers' if you like). Within the framework of the deepening economic crisis the state has been forced to encourage this, legislating strongly for indigenous workers to keep their jobs (stockpiling their production in a doomed attempt to replace the recession-hit world market with the domestic Chinese market) and making the withholding of wages illegal. Migrant workers meanwhile are cast to the wind.

From and beyond this, there are signs that the Chinese bourgeoisie are seeing the need for more elastic unions: "Rural migrants - if you have problems, go to the union!" "Workers - if you have problems, go to the unions!" says the Vice-chair of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, quoted in the China Labour Bulletin Research Report reproduced on the Libcom.org website. The deepening of the class struggle is the only way out of this impasse for the workers and masses of the whole region. Underlying this, what the CCP calls ‘incidents' doubled to 87,000 in 2005 and now the Public Security Ministry has stopped publishing figures. The Report above talks of the need for "democratically elected, grassroots unions", for "workers' rights", the "right to strike" and an end to the subordination of the ACFTU to the Party. This move to the left, towards rank and filism is itself perfectly within the framework of the bourgeoisie in order to confront the class struggle. The struggle itself has to deepen throughout, involving more workers, more of the masses whatever their ethnic origin or religion, fighting for their own interests against the bourgeoisie.

Baboon. 8/7/9

The deaths, within a few days of each other, of the last surviving First World War veterans in Britain, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, have generated the most enthusiastic tributes from the high and mighty: the Queen, Prince Charles, Gordon Brown, and all the rest of them. In addition to massive media coverage, we will soon be treated to a spectacular service at Westminster Abbey to remember the ‘sacrifice of a generation', who, we are told, laid down their lives in the cause of freedom. And all this pomp and ceremony will be deliberately linked to images of the present generation of servicemen and women who are experiencing the dangers of war in Afghanistan.

Of course veterans like Allingham and Patch - even though for years they refused to talk about the horrible experiences they had been through in the slaughter of 1914-18 - have been caught up in these parades and used as symbols of loyalty and devotion to Queen and country. But Patch actually thought that it was necessary to "free Remembrance services from the bureaucrats" as they had become "just showbusiness". And if you look at what these men said about the First World War, it sheds a very bright light on the disgusting hypocrisy of our rulers and their tame media.

Harry Patch, the last British survivor from the trenches of the Western Front, said that the First World War was "organised murder". He said that "it was not worth it. It was not worth one, let alone all the millions"

How does this square with what the politicians and the royals have said about these men, this generation, sacrificing themselves for our freedom? If it was organised murder, then it was organised precisely by the same institutions who also organise the solemn parades and national services of commemoration - the army, the church, the governments. And if it was sacrifice, it was sacrifice in their interests, the interests of the decrepit capitalist order that they defend. The same order that is sending young people to die in Iraq or Afghanistan today.

Harry Patch also said "remember the Germans. They put up with the same conditions as we did". He said "I met someone from the German side and we both shared the same opinion: we fought, we finished and we were friends. It wasn't worth it."

How does this square with all the waving of national flags, the almost exclusive focus on ‘our' war dead? Harry Patch is giving voice to the fundamental internationalism of the working class, which stands in stark opposition to nationalism of all kinds. The workers in uniform had the same interests, and these were diametrically opposed to the interests of governments and military in both camps. It was this internationalist spirit which gave rise to the Christmas Day fraternisations in 1914, hastily brought to an end by the ‘top brass' of both armies; and later on, it gave rise the revolutionary fraternisations and mutinies which, along with the mass strikes uprisings by the workers on the home fronts in Russia, Germany and elsewhere, compelled the ruling class to put an end to the butchery in 1918.

Henry Allingham expressed this same instinctive internationalism when he was quoted as saying that there will be no end to war until the whole world is one single nation.

The veterans of the First World War, like the veterans of all the other imperialist wars that have littered capitalism's bloody history, do not belong to the nation, that false idol. They belong to the world working class.  

Amos 27/7/09