The [Pakistani] generals' contingent opposition to Indian expansionism does not mean they are an anti-fascist or anti-imperialist force. The key armed opposition to Hindutva fascism in South Asia is currently being surrounded by Indian security forces in Operation Kagaar, and Indian mass movements prior to 2024 weakened the onward march of the BJP. To be sure, progressive forces and movements remain weak and fractured. And the pathetic warmongering display of India's own "left nationalists" -- the CPI(M) -- is a betrayal not only to anything resembling left internationalism but to the Indian masses. It will be marked in history, and it follows on their historic denial of the self-determination of Kashmiris and their open embrace of revisionism. Don't be them. Pakistan's generals' remains beholden to imperialist and sub-imperialist powers, while seeking to assert their own interests (and, indeed, existence as the key fulcrum of Pakistan's ruling class) regionally. The concrete consequences of this semi-colonial dependence have rarely been more evident for the broad masses of Pakistan's people: Painful austerity and contraction of people's livelihoods and social services; reinventing corporate agriculture and attendant inequitable ecologies of land-water use for commerical/export-oriented extraction against food sovereignty; the imprisonment and repression of the one political force that (for better or for worse) represents wide frustration; the broad repression and subordination of Baloch masses for extraction for Western and Chinese interests, and the imprisonment and repression of the social representatives of the Baloch masses; the continuing use of the "war on terror" to violate Pakthun and Afghan lives and livelihoods. The list goes on. It is one thing to acknowledge that the Pakistan military appears to have developed since the 2000s some of the capacity needed to finally competently do literally the one job it is supposed to be doing. It is quite another to paint it as the force against fascism (and imperialism?) in the subcontinent. This line of argumentation is not only wrong, it serves to reinforce the generals' fraying hegemony (i.e., mechanisms of securing active consent), and that, too, at a time when the broad masses understand India's aggression as a gift to the generals -- the excuse that lets them put fuel in their tanks. What we need, in both India and Pakistan, and more broadly, is an anti-revisionist analysis of the problem -- one that takes seriously both the problems of (1) tailing the standard lines of "nationalism"/"bourgeois-led development" and (2) of imperialism and sub-imperialism. This analysis has to be undergirded and develop in line with a serious orientation to and systematic groundwork with working classes and oppressed nationalities. This isn't about abstract liberal pacifism. It is not being against war for the sake of being against war. This is about identifying the conditions in which political agents have to collect the social and other force necessary to combat comprador bourgeoisies and liberate our peoples from the heavy burden of imperialism. That means not being the left wing cheerleaders of Pakistan's military.
Dr Noaman Ali
