The confrontation between Ukraine and Russia has grabbed the headlines recently but it can only be understood in a more global context in which we are seeing a constant sharpening of military tensions and open conflicts across a very considerable portion of the planet.

Once again, war has broken out between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Once again, the bourgeoisie has pushed workers in uniform to die and to kill each other at altitudes and climatic conditions where men may die even without war. While soldiers kill each other, populations living near the borders have been uprooted and turned into refugees. Condemned to poverty and misery even without war, they suffer in open-air camps at temperatures below zero.

This report represents an effort by the ICC's sections in Asia to come to grips with the specificities of imperialist tensions in Asia, and in particular as far as they concern the rising powers of China and India.

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.

The horrific attacks on people in Mumbai, at a hospital, in a café and hotels, at a Jewish centre, and at random bystanders in a railway station, was soon headlined "India's 9/11" across the world.This comparison had a definite significance: it contains the implicit threat that India's status as ‘victim' would be used to justify putting pressure on, or even renewing conflict with, Pakistan.

Terrorists attacked the sleeping passengers in the Smajhauta express or the ‘peace express’ in the late night hours of 18th February07. Several coaches of the express train were set on fire 100 kilometers away from the Indian capital by the incendiary devices planted by terrorists. 67 persons including many children were killed on the spot. 15 persons were injured, 12 of them very seriously. Most of the killed are reported to be Pakistani nationals.

Every sane person can not but condemn this abominable, barbarous act.

The threat of war between nuclear powers casts a terrifying shadow across the whole world. It is not an empty threat, an episode of sabre-rattling where India and Pakistan will just go to the brink before ‘seeing sense’ and coming to an agreement. “The British and American Governments are seriously contemplating a doomsday scenario in which there is an unstoppable momentum toward a nuclear war in India and Pakistan that would kill millions of people and make millions more homeless across the sub-continent” (The Times, 1/6/02). In an inferior position - Pakistan has 700,000 troops to India’s 1.2 million, 25 nuclear missiles with a lesser range than India’s 60 - “Pakistan has already made it clear that, in the face of a superior enemy, it would be prepared to initiate a nuclear confrontation” (Guardian 23/5/2). British “diplomatic and defence sources” have suggested that neither President Musharraf of Pakistan nor Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee “appeared to be taking into account the sheer scale of the disaster that would follow if nuclear weapons were used, and that they seemed incapable of visualising the disaster that would overwhelm their countries as a result” (The Times, 1/6/2). While “military sources” felt that “neither leader was thinking logically or with any common sense” (ibid), in reality it is a gruesome illustration of the insane logic of the imperialist appetites of the ruling class. Here we have the ruling classes of two countries, where poverty, disease and death stalk the majority of the population daily, setting in motion theie blame for all this with ‘religious fundamentalism’. The Indian ruling class blames Pakistan-backed Islamic fundamentalists for terrorist attacks in Kashmir and on the Indian parliament. On the other side, the Pakistan ruling class blames the fervent nationalism of the Hindu fundamentalism of the ruling BJP party in India, in particular with its brutal counter-insurgency against ‘freedom fighters’ in Kashmir. As for the ‘democratic’ and ‘civilised’ bourgeoisie in the West, they weep crocodile tears about the ‘intransigence’ of the leaders of both countries and call on them to be ‘reasonable’ and seek peace under the guidance of the leaders of the very countries, such as Britain and the US, that train and provide the weaponry for their armed forces.

The October military coup in Pakistan marked a serious intensification of instability in South Asia. The new military leader General Pervaiz Musharraf reassured the 'international community' about his peaceful intentions and the military's determination to try and rescue the collapsing economy and to fight endemic corruption. But, this was only cover for a bitter struggle within the Pakistani bourgeoisie, above all over imperialist strategy.