PB Statement on War
1. The relentless round-the-clock bombing of Afghanistan by the US and, its closest western ally, Britain since October 7 has inflicted enormous damage and devastation on Afghanistan in terms of human lives as well as natural and material resources. Village after village have been razed to the ground and urban settlements reduced to heaps of rubbles as the US-British war machine carries out its declared mission to bomb an already beleaguered and embattled Afghanistan back to the stone age, an operation which has been audaciously codenamed as “Enduring Freedom”.
Most TV channels and media reports are being cynically manipulated to prevent the world from knowing the actual extent of devastation. At the same time, attempts are on to camouflage the killing spectacle as ‘a war with a human face’ in which the Afghan people are purportedly benefiting from generous humanitarian aid and assistance from the West. All international laws and conventions have been contemptuously shelved and the United Nations thoroughly bypassed in this unilateral US-led military campaign. It is this impotence and irrelevance of the UN, which has probably been rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in the midst of this escalating imperialist aggression.
We join the forces of peace and progress the world over to denounce Bush and Blair’s imperialist war of aggression and insist on an immediate end to the war and complete withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan. Only the people of Afghanistan can decide the political future of their country and they must be left free to do so.
2. While the September 11 strikes can be said to have provided the pretext for the present war, the war is clearly dictated by far bigger strategic objectives of US imperialism. In fact, the present war can by no means be treated as a mere act of retaliation to the September 11 terrorist strikes on New York and Washington.
For students of American foreign policy and especially the history of American policy of spreading and promoting terror and insurgency to destabilise politically inconvenient regimes, September 11 was a tragic case of Washington reaping something it had assiduously sown over the years. Moreover, after the monumental failure of the US intelligence and security system in anticipating or preventing the September 11 strikes, it is difficult to accept the US claim that it has firm evidence regarding the identity of the terrorist network which masterminded the attacks. Instead of investigating this intelligence failure, Washington promptly declared Osama bin Laden as the prime suspect and went into war mode. It refused to divulge any information to the Taliban while its allies hardly needed any evidence to endorse or join the war.
From capturing Osama ‘dead or alive’, the immediate aim of the war has however already shifted to replacing the Taliban by a pliant and puppet regime in Afghanistan. Gaining effective domination over Afghanistan would provide the US with crucial strategic advantages vis-à-vis all its real or potential adversaries including a possible China-Russia axis and go a long way towards securing US hegemony in Asia and increasing American control over key resources like oil, natural gas and uranium.
3. The way the war has been generalised as a war against ‘terrorism with a global reach’, with the US extending the definition of the terrorist camp to include every country suspected to be sheltering terrorists or not siding with the US in the so-called global war against terrorism, there is every danger of its escalation beyond the borders of Afghanistan. Iraq, for instance, is being accused of bio-terrorism, and the blame for the growing incidence of anthrax infection cases in the US is being laid at its doorsteps. Washington has already dropped enough hints about the war continuing for a protracted period and spreading over a larger territory.
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US had been looking for suitable pretexts to justify its massive military budget and overarching military presence. Following September 11, Washington has discovered in terrorism its new target for the new century. It is well known that the end of the Cold War did not signal any let-up in US military preparations. Through eastward expansion of NATO and periodic military interventions beginning with the Gulf War, the US went on augmenting its military might and expanding the military-industrial complex all through the 1990s. The ground has now been cleared for much more massive doses of militarisation.
4. The history of global capitalism in the twentieth century has been punctuated by bouts of severe economic crisis and periodic wars. Once again, both these basic features of capitalism can now be seen perilously at work posing a renewed threat to peace, livelihood and welfare of the world people. The economic slowdown had already acquired disturbing proportions in most advanced capitalist countries – seldom has a slowdown been so enduring and widespread. Now the September 11 strikes have had a devastating impact on key segments of both service and manufacturing sectors, the aviation industry being perhaps the worst hit. While the war will prove to be a boon for the military-industrial complex, the rest of the US economy and the world economy in general will have a tough time absorbing this great shock.
The combination of a major economic crisis and war has also been known to produce a fertile ground for fascism. Fascist trends were already quite strong before September 11. Following September 11, the far right in general and fascist currents in particular have further consolidated their position. Racism is amplifying the echo of the war in many Western societies. Such racist offensive and fascist consolidation are only being reinforced by the rightward shift of state policies while wild theories like clashes of civilisations lend racist and religious prejudices a new acceptability and benign legitimacy.
Militarisation and fascist consolidation can be seen happening in the Indian subcontinent as well. With Washington’s blessings, the military regime of General Musharraf has entrenched itself in Pakistan while in India, the Sangh Pariah has discovered a new opportunity after September 11 to advance its own agenda of transforming India into a fascist Hindu Rashtra. Even while shamelessly appealing for US intervention in Kashmir in the name of extending the ‘war against terrorism’ there, the Vajpayee Government, by capitalising on the precarious position of Musharraf regime, is pushing the country to a dangerous brinkmanship and possible war with the neighbour. Escalating tension along the LoC due to cross-border shelling and incursions by the Indian Army goes side by side with sabre-rattling in the name of ‘hot pursuit’ and ‘strikes on terrorist camps inside Pakistan’. Meanwhile, on the home front, new black laws are being promulgated in the name of curbing terrorism while Muslims are being systematically harassed and targeted by the state and the army of Sangh outfits.
5. Viewed in terms of the fundamental contradictions inherent in the international situation, the war has reaffirmed the primacy of the contradiction between imperialism and the third world. The official voice of the third world may be subdued because of the openly subservient role being played by India and the overly cautious and pragmatic position adopted so far by China, not to mention the fact that most third world regimes still remain dependent on imperialism. The popular mood in almost all third world countries however remains fiercely opposed to the war and the dichotomy between popular opposition to imperialism and official support to the war campaign is only getting sharper.
Within the imperialist camp, there is still no sign of sharp inter-imperialist rivalry even though except for Britain, all other Western powers seem to be maintaining a subtle distance while generally endorsing the war. We however strongly believe that it will be wrong to interpret the currently subdued nature of inter-imperialist rivalry as proof of some kind of an ultra-imperialist consolidation in which the interests of non-US imperialist powers have become compatible with the requirements of US hegemony. We should understand that the low-key nature of inter-imperialist rivalry today is characteristic of a transition from the formerly bipolar arrangement through a unipolar framework to a new order of multipolarity, a transition which has been defined as a uni-multipolar world by the noted American political scientist and foreign policy analyst Samuel P Huntington.
6. Worldwide, the war has evoked powerful protests. For the whole range of forces fighting against corporate globalisation, the war has served to highlight the inherent imperialist content in all its repulsive brutality. It has now become crystal clear that globalisation is not just about free trade, high technology and fast finance, that every separate aspect of globalisation remains soaked in the imperialist essence and that imperialism continues to mean war.
While the war has paved the way for a rapid transition of anti-globalisation protests to a new phase of vigorous and overt anti-imperialist anti-racist activism, it has also emphasised the demarcation between conservative and radical opponents of globalisation, between dyed-in-the-wool social-democrats who cannot cross the limits of chauvinism and communist internationalists and other progressive forces who dare to hold high the banner of proletarian internationalism in such trying times.
We should also keep in mind the demarcation between terrorism and revolutionary anti-imperialism. Marxism has always held that terrorism is counterproductive to the people’s organized political struggle against their class enemies, both domestic and international. As subsequent events have shown, the highly condemnable act of terrorism on September 11 has only served to greatly strengthen the US imperialism. Moreover, this new breed of terrorism – inspired by the so-called jihadi ideology, which is reactionary to the core, and backed by certain reactionary ruling circles in the Arab and Muslim world – has nothing to do with genuine anti-imperialism. We should fight the influence of this ideology among Muslim masses, especially the youth and intelligentsia.
7. As we confront the first major war of the new century, a terrifyingly open-ended war that has all the destructive potential of a world war, we must do all we can to stop the war and resist the imperialist offensive. Now is the time to extend and energise the anti-imperialist unity of the working people and other peace-loving sections of the society, nationally as well as internationally. To this end, we welcome every effort to raise the voice of peace and progress against the predatory imperialist war. We stand for developing active ties of anti-imperialist solidarity at all possible levels.
If fascist forces and the far right are trying to manipulate the present situation to serve their reactionary ends, revolutionary communists and all other progressive forces must not limit themselves to merely opposing the war, but go all out to convert the current crisis into a decisive moment of people’s advance against imperialism.
Polit Bureau
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
19 October, 2001