The crisis in Pakistan is at a major crossroads. President Musharraf has sought to re-establish his authority by moving against Islamic militants operating out of Islamabad’s Red Mosque, sparking a wave of violence across Pakistan. Meanwhile, Chief Justice Chaudhry has been reinstated and cleared of all charges in a huge victory for the lawyers movement. Luke Cooper argues, despite this victory, the forces of counter-revolution are on the move.
Musharraf and the Red Mosque
Since January Islamic Radicals have used the Red Mosque as a base of operations to impose Islamic law in parts of Islamabad. For these Islamic reactionaries “law enforcement” included setting fire to shops selling music and videos and kidnapping prostitutes. For the military junta, smashing the mosque was an opportunity to demonstrate their steadfastness in the war on terror to Washington and re-establish political authority at home.
The heavy handed attack drowned the Red Mosque in blood, sending a clear message to all the regimes enemies – on the left and right.
Impoverished students of the poor Madrassa – young people and children drawn to the religious school by the lure of food and education – were trapped inside as the military put it under siege. As Tariq Farooq, of the Pakistan Labour Party, puts it, when the military moved in they did so with total disregard for civilians, operating with the policy of “kill them if they do not listen” (Tariq Farooq 2007). The military has claimed just 88 people were killed but the true number is likely to be as much as three or four times that.
Given the brutality of the attack, you would be forgiven not to realise this was a falling out between old friends – but this is precisely what the attack signifies.
The Red Mosque is a creation of Pakistan’s infamous Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI). It has been used since the 1980s to recruit Jihadists to fight its foreign wars, in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Indeed, as Tarek Fatah notes, only the most naïve observer could believe that the machine guns, rocket launchers and ammunition the militants held could be bought into the heart of Islamabad without Pakistan’s security services being well aware of it (Tarek Fatah, 12th July 2007).
At every moment since January the military has sought to negotiate with the Islamic militants – indeed, it has even semi-tolerated major provocations such as the abduction of police personnel. This was despite Pakistan’s role as a key United States ally in the “war on terrorism.”
The Red Mosque massacre marks a watershed in the military’s relationship to political Islamism in Pakistan and has global repercussions. It is the end of the clever game Musharraf has played since September 11th, whereby he launched a series of “confrontations” with the Islamists, allowing him to pose as the secular modernist, only to then concede to their demands or make concessions.
The two leading mullahs of the Red Mosque were even arrested by Musharraf in 2004 for having links to Al Qaida, but were helped in their release by the present federal Minister of religious affairs Ijaz ul Haq (incidentally, the elder son of Zia ul Haq, Pakistan’s late Islamist influenced military dictator from the 1980s) (Farooq Tariq 2007).
Clearly, Musharraf’s “game” could not be played forever. This year two factors combined to make its continuation impossible.
Firstly, the mass movement sparked by the suspension of Chief Justice Chaudhry saw huge mobilisations protest against the government. This was the biggest challenge to its authority since the 1999 coup. The movement reinvigorated the bourgeois political parties who, in addition to joining the lawyer led protests, were able to call mass strike action following the armed attacks on the movement by the pro-Musharraf, quasi-fascist Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Karachi on June 12th.
Secondly, the “war on terror” was creating huge pressure from outside, particularly from British and American imperialism. Anti-occupation militants in Afghanistan continued to use Pakistan’s tribal border areas as a base of operations. Despite waging a series of wars in these areas since September 11th 2001, Pakistan’s military had failed to defeat them, instead signing a series of ceasefire treaties with the local tribes.
In the face of mounting opposition to Musharraf in Pakistan and doubts in Washington and London about his ability or willingness to conduct a war on terror at home, the regime was forced into the confrontation with the Islamists it had always tried to avoid. For Musharraf and his regime there is now no way back, whatever was left of the unstable alliance with the mullahs is now shattered.
In retaliation to the Red Mosque massacre Islamic militants have unleashed a wave of violence. On the 15th July forty-four people were killed in a series of bomb attacks; on the 18th July seventeen soldiers were killed in North Waziristan; on the same day, a suicide bomber killed seven in an attack on a police station in northwest Pakistan; on the 19th July in north west Pakistan, a series of bomb attacks in the towns of Kohat and Hagu left over forty dead.
Bush’s “war on terror” had truly arrived in Pakistan. Such a death toll – in just four days – reminds us of the bloody conflicts waging in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On the 18th July, the British defence minister, Des Browne, on BBC’s Today Programme repeatedly attempted to insist that British forces were making progress in Afghanistan. However, when presenter John Humphrey’s put it to him that the “nightmare scenario of full scale war spilling over from Afghanistan into Pakistan was close”, even Browne was forced to concede it was a possibility.
The Red Mosque and the Lawyers Movement
Musharraf is nothing if not a ruthless political operator. With his back up against the wall, facing the mass popular mobilisations, he was under unprecedented pressure. His decision to attack the Red Mosque and, thus, present himself as a champion of a secular, modern bourgeois Pakistan, was a clear attempt to win over the movement’s most bourgeois forces.
For Pakistan’s liberal bourgeoisie, whose interests are expressed politically in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), they may dislike the Musharraf regime, but this is nothing compared to their fear of Islamic radicalism. Indeed, the PPP say to the United States, with some justification, that they are the pro-western, modern liberal force in Pakistan and it is the military that has the historic linkages with political Islam.
For this reason the PPP and much of the movement in Pakistan gave support to the Red Mosque massacre. For the PPP this was not the first time they had supported the actions of Musharraf, with the justification ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ We should remember they foolishly supported Musharraf’s 1999 coup, such was their hostility to the democratically elected Nawaz Sharif.
For Marxists it is anathema to give support to the attack on the Red Mosque – whatever the claims of those supporting it that they do so “critically.” After all, this would mean supporting the very same military forces that will be harnessed to defend the regime from the democracy movement. We argue for the movement to protest in the strongest possible terms against the massacre. However, equally, the workers, lawyers and democracy activists cannot “defend” the Red Mosque, but must mobilise their own forces to shut it down and defend the people of Islamabad from its reactionary attacks.
In short, the only progressive struggle against political Islamism is that waged by the working class and its organisations. Since the massacres in Karachi the formation of a workers defence guard – a militia to defend the popular movement against state, fascist or Islamist attack – is an increasingly urgent necessity. Only such workers defence squads can legitimately put a stop to the attacks on women and shop keepers that have been carried out by the militant Islamic thugs.
Indeed, it is not simply the state that has been the target of the violent backlash waged by Islamic militants. On the 18th July at another rally of the lawyers movement the PPP assembly point was attacked by a suicide bomber, leaving fifteen people dead. In response, the Pakistan Bar Association held another day of strike action.
The victory for the lawyers movement
On the 21st July the Supreme Judicial Council came to its decision on the Chaudhry case. In a major defeat for Musharraf it agreed, by a vote of ten to three, not only to clear Chaudhry of all the charges but to declare his suspension by Musharraf as an illegal violation of Pakistan’s constitution.
In response, a spokesman for Musharraf insisted that ‘the president respects the decision of the Supreme Court’ and that the case against Chaudhry had no political motive. Outside the court house there were jubilant scenes, as lawyers celebrated the decision and chanted “go, Musharraf, go!” Undoubtedly this was a tremendous victory and testament to the huge pressure the mass strikes and demonstrations had put on the state.
Equally, the decision reiterates a feature of the political situation in Pakistan that has been present since the very beginning of the lawyers protests: the military regime is isolated, not only from the impoverished masses, but also significant and growing sections of the bourgeoisie and its state forces.
It is clear that Musharraf has few friends left in the judiciary. This fact has a tremendous historical significance because Pakistan’s military dictators of days gone by had their constitutionality ticked off by these people. At the same time, Musharraf must have known before hand they would come to this decision.
Clearly, the move against the Islamists was made in the knowledge he was likely to lose the Chaudhry case. Musharraf surely hopes to create a situation in which the bourgeoisie and its forces in the democracy movement, particularly the PPP, feel compelled to block with Musharraf in an alliance against radical Islamism. This is the outcome London and Washington have been hoping for from the outset.
It is a clear change of position by Musharraf from that which he adopted between the 12th and 15th of May, when he set the MQM thugs on the movement in Karachi. It is not only Washington and Pakistan’s own bourgeoisie that would force such a retreat, the heroic resistance of the masses to the Karachi massacres – including mass strike action and armed resistance to the MQM – will have equally terrified this tyrant.
At the time of the Karachi massacre, Musharraf defiantly asserted he would stand for a further presidential term, remain “in uniform”, i.e. leader of the armed forces, and have the existing provisional and local assemblies, who are pro-Musharraf, re-elect him without new elections. Others in his regime even went as far as to threaten a state of emergency.
There was the possibility then that he would use force of arms to smash the movement in a counter-revolutionary putsch. Now it seems, in contrast to this, that Musharraf will look to make a compromise with the PPP, perhaps in the form of an anti-Islamist alliance, possibly with a “transitional” (but no doubt undemocratic) civilian government.
In the past, we have speculated that given the blood Musharraf had on his hands after the Karachi massacres, the PPP would be committing political suicide were they to strike such a deal. The fact that they continue to move ineluctably towards it, illustrates their complete political subordination to Washington and (equally) their own political outlook. As bourgeois politicians they fight for the formation of a liberal state; such a state has only the vestiges of democracy, as true power will continue to lie with its permanent, unelected elements: the police, judiciary and, critically in this case, the armed forces.
This outlook has led to the PPP leaving the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (the coalition of bourgeois parties opposed to the regime) and refusing to join its successor the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM). The PPP made this move, because of i) the participation of the Islamist Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) in the APDM and, although they are less open about this, ii) their eagerness for a deal with Musharraf.
The two forms of counter revolution in Pakistan
Pakistan is at a major crossroads. The struggle of lawyers began as an entirely progressive struggle for judicial independence from the military regime, and quickly spiralled into a movement for democracy. No doubt the most bourgeois members of the movement, possibly even Chaudhry himself (who never made explicitly anti-government remarks) will consider that this is it – they have won and its over.
But for the base of the movement, it will be seen as victory at one battle in the general war for democratic change. These forces will be emboldened to struggle on. However, the situation in which that struggle takes place has changed radically from two months ago. In May, following the Karachi massacre, there was a major polarisation, between a defiant and violent regime threatening a state of emergency, and a movement demanding an independent judiciary, Musharraf out and democratic change.
Now the situation is become far more complex. Firstly, the crisis of leadership within the movement itself is deepening. We have said from the outset the bourgeois parties offer no alternative to the current regime, but a return to the corrupt, slavishly pro-American “democratic” regimes of the 1990s. Such is the fear the PPP have for the mobilisation of the masses, and their desire to serve the interests of the Americans, that they are moving increasingly towards compromise and conciliation with Musharraf.
The decision of the Supreme Judicial Council and Musharraf’s acceptance of it makes such a compromise all the more likely. This would be a great betrayal of the movement. It could disorientate it, create confusion amongst the PPP’s base and drive further forces into the hands of the Islamists, allowing them to pose as the only consistent, anti-American alternative. If the PPP were successful in demobilising the mass movement around such a compromise, it would mark a major counter-revolutionary defeat, opening the way for a new round of economic and political attacks on the workers, poor and peasants.
The second counter-revolutionary force are the Islamists. It would be foolish not to realise and warn against, the growing threat of an “Islamic revolution” – obviously one with a Sunni not an Iranian Shi’ite character. For all their demagogic anti-imperialism, the Islamist forces offer no alternative to the global-capitalist system. Rather they will continue the same economic system and add to this, a religious dictatorship over the people and a ruthless patriarchal system (in this sense, it would have many of the features of post-1979 Iran).
Only the working class can offer an alternative to these forces. The betrayal of the PPP represents a tremendous opportunity to break its working class support from it and towards the formation of a new party won to a programme of revolutionary struggle, against the military junta and the capitalist system they serve.
Thus the working class, and any party which claims to be its revolutionary vanguard, must take up consistent and thoroughgoing democratic demands – those that the bourgeois forces in the movement, like the PPP, are already in retreat from. We must fight for the immediate resignation not only of Musharraf but the entire military regime. There must be immediate, fully democratic elections to a sovereign constituent Assembly – under the control of the workers and democracy movement itself.
But while fighting for the highest form of bourgeois democracy, the constituent assembly, is critical, this must be done alongside building up an alternative power base, in the form of a peasants and workers committees to the bourgeois state. In any consituent assembly Marxists fight for the formation of a workers and peasants government, based on these organs of workers power.
In this process the working class forces must not only fight for the workers rights and interests but also give a lead to the rural and urban poor demanding that the Assembly addresses their economic and social demands, i.e. an end to the big landowners rural dictatorship and land to those who work on it; the right to self-determination for all nationalities; full and equal democratic rights for women and young people.
A critical question, not least because of the urgent need to tackle the false, demagogic, “anti-imperialism” of the Islamists, the working class must fight for a complete break with US imperialism and its so-called “war on terrorism.” In the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the Pakistani military acts as the proxy of the United States, the working class must defend all forces on which it wages war.
As we go forward in the current crisis, two equally catastrophic errors could be made. The working class and democracy movements, accepting the leadership of the PPP, could foolishly believe that the military could defend it against Islamic or fascist attack – or at least is in some way a “lesser evil” to such forces. Equally, we cannot play down the threat of an Islamic revolution, as the second counter-revolutionary force on the march in Pakistan.
Thus, we advance an independent, working class policy and programme, a critical part of which is the immediate formation of a workers defence squads – a workers militia. If the working class makes itself the champion of democratic rights and the struggle against imperialism, it can assemble a powerful alliance capable of disintegrating the social support of the bourgeois parties, the Islamists and the military dictatorship.
Following the massacres in Karachi and the heoric workers resistance that followed we argued it was possible to speak of a pre-revolutionary situation in Pakistan. The situation has manifestly advanced further on from this now. The movement of the counter-revolution, in its two distinct and equally dangerous forms; the continued mobilisation of the democracy movement emboldened by its victory; the wave of political violence, the splits in the ruling class and the bourgeois state; indicate a situation, in its totality, that is revolutionary: where the overthrow of the military regime is an immediate question.
However, as demonstrated by the growth of counter-revolutionary forces, a progressive, i.e. revolutionary, outcome will not follow automatically from the current crisis. Unless a revolutionary party is formed, that seeks to turn the democratic struggle into a struggle for workers and peasants power, then the huge opportunities in the current situation will be lost.
References
Tariq Farooq, ‘The Red Mosque Saga’, International Viewpoint[/I], July-August 2007
Tareq Fatah, ‘Behind the Red Mosque’, 12th July 2007, countercurrents.org, http://www.countercurrents.org/fatah120707.htm
More from fifthinternational.org on Pakistan:
Luke Cooper, ‘Pakistan on the verge of Revolution , [i]Fifth International, vol. 2, no. 3, Summer 2007
Luke Cooper, ‘Pakistan: the programme of permanent revolution’ Fifth International, vol. 2, no. 3, Summer 2007
Protest against mass arrests in Pakistan, 14th June 2007
Pakistan: founding meeting of the RSM, 30th May 2007
Luke Cooper, ‘Pakistan: killings in Karachi spark mass workers resistance- forward to revolution and working class power’ , 15th May 2007