National Students Movement (NSM) Seminar at Research and Publication Centre (RPC)

National Students Movement (NSM) invites you to two seminars on May 18, 2024, 3:00 pm at the Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom):

I. "True Federalism: Challenges and Way Forward".

Panelists:

1. Syed Muzammil, Journalist.

2. Afrasyab Khattak, former Senator.

3. Rashed Rahman, Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR), Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC).

4. Bushra Gohar, National Democratic Movement (NDM).

5. Haider Butt, Lawyer.

6. Sabahat Rizvi, Lawyer.

Moderator:

Abubakar Mehsud.

II. "From Bullets to Ballots: The Struggle for Peaceful Political Expression in Pakistan".

Panelists:

1. Mohsin Dawar, National Democratic Movement (NDM) Chairman.

2. Nouman Wazir, National Students Movement (NSM) Central President.

3. Muzammil Kakar, HKP General Secretary.

4. Khushal Kakar, PNAP Chairman.

5. Jan Muhammad, Senator.

Moderator:

Abubakar Mehsud.

Venue:

Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom).

Date and Time:

Saturday, May 18, 2024, 3:00 pm.

Tea will be served after the seminar/s.

For further information contact Hamza Gull, cell no: 0335 5962288, or below:

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook).

Cells: 0302 8482737, 0333 4216335.

The May 2024 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out

The May 2024 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com

Contents:

1. Vijay Prashad: How Africa's National Liberation Struggles brought democracy to Europe.

2. Robert P Hager: The Cold War and Third World Revolutions.

3. Berch Berberoglu: Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Class Struggle: A critical analysis of Mainstream and Marxist Theories of Nationalism and National Movements.

4. Saulat Nagi: Pakistan: The Politico-Economic Pandora's box.

5. Fawzia Afzal-Khan: Censoring the anti-Zionist Professor.

6. Fayyaz Baqir: My Life and Struggle – III: NSO launches itself.

7. Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur: The Rise of Baloch Nationalism and Resistance – IX: Disappeared persons and Baloch response.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook).

Impasse

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Anniversaries can be of different kinds, some mere rituals, others more than a mere remembrance of things past. May 9 has already passed into the category of the latter. A year ago, the happenings on May 9, 2023 have been detailed in a report by the caretaker government. It makes, to put it mildly, startling reading. What it says seems to nullify Imran Khan and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf’s (PTI’s) lately found narrative of them being victims of a ‘false flag’ operation. What it omits, or does not say, is even more mind boggling.

The report names dozens of PTI leaders who it says were responsible for instigating their party followers to attack military installations, etc., on that fateful day after the arrest of Imran Khan. It lists 300 places where such violent protests were mounted after PTI leaders took to social media following the arrest of Imran Khan to spread lies and calumnies about the conditions in which Imran Khan was being held (i.e. torture in custody) and that he was likely to be killed. Naturally this had the intended effect of angering the PTI followers who went berserk in their attacks on various military sites. Since the violent reaction took hardly minutes to ensue, the unanswered question remains, were the targets pre-chosen? If so, there was obviously a preconceived plan or strategy. Let us examine the details in the report of what transpired in the major cities of the country that day.

Protests in Lahore began on May 9, 2023 around 1500 hours when PTI supporters started gathering at Liberty Chowk. At around 1600 hours, Dr Yasmin Rashid reached Liberty Chowk and the protestors started moving towards the Corps Commander’s residence (Jinnah House) in Cantt. As an aside, let me add that when I went home that night in Cantt over the Sherpao Bridge, I was surprised to find that the military check post after the bridge showed signs as though a hurricane had hit it. The soldiers/guards’ cabin at the start lay shattered, all the lights were out, the lane markers (red and white) all lay flattened like a storm-hit wheat field. Not a single soldier was present. My surmise then was that the military had opted not to accost the protestors as this could have led to bloodshed (the soldiers deployed at such check posts are armed). This could be likened to a strategic retreat, but whether that qualifies as a ‘false flag’ operation begs the question: is it not a fact that the protestors were so charged up that they demolished this check post (as I witnessed)? The report says by 1800 hours the protestors entered Jinnah House, ransacked it and set it on fire. Urban legend has it that the Corps Commander and his family fled by breaking a back boundary wall into a neighbouring house and escaping in the neighbours’ car. No attempt seems to have been made by the military’s security detail to prevent all this, which normally does not allow even parking anywhere near the Corps Commander’s house, let alone entering and destroying it. Not content with this ‘victory’, the protestors ransacked the nearby Military Engineering Services (MES) office and CSD. By 2200 hours, the mob had reached Main Boulevard, Gulberg, where it set alight Askari Tower and Askari Bank. Another group of protestors attacked the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Secretariat at 180-H, Model Town. There were continual clashes between the protestors and the law enforcing agencies (LEAs) (basically the police) across the city. LEA estimates speak of a total of around 2,000 protestors.

In Rawalpindi, protestors gathered at Liaquat Bagh by 1700 hours. For the next hour, a number of audio clips of PTI leaders emerged on social media urging the protestors to move towards General Headquarters (GHQ). The crowd now reached GHQ, turned violent, breaking a statue outside GHQ and the glass door of the reception area. Unthinkable that the military high command’s GHQ could so easily be approached and attacked, except if the military itself ‘retreated’ and left it to the LEAs to thwart any further damage, which they eventually managed by repelling the attackers. Again, ‘false flag’ or restraint? Whatever the case, it did not deter the protestors from ransacking the military history museum and the Army Signals Mess. Several vehicles were also set ablaze. The Hamza Camp and the Army Welfare Trust Plaza were attacked and the latter’s entrance was set on fire, all this while clashes between the protestors and the LEAs continued for several hours.

Gujranwala Cantt was besieged by about 100 protestors around 1940 hours but were pushed back by the LEAs. However, they continued to attack and eventually succeeded in destroying the Rahwali Gate and the main reception area. In Mianwali around 1700 hours, a crowd of about 1,000 ‘insurgents’ attacked the M M Alam Airbase. They damaged the boundary wall, broke the main entrance gate and set ablaze a jet model. Repelled by the LEAs, the same mob then attacked and damaged the Police Khidmet Centre, judicial complex and the National Bank, Punjab Bank and the General Post Office. A number of shops were looted and vehicles set ablaze. The next day, a smaller contingent blocked the Mianwali-Bannu Road, attacked several vehicles and then damaged Police Station (PS) Kamar Mashani. In Islamabad around 1500 hours, a crowd of PTI workers from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of around 1,000 attacked the SP Office Industrial Area and set it alight. They then attacked the Ramna PS. The mob damaged several vehicles. In Multan at around 1800 hours, PTI workers gathered at CMH Chowk, where their strength had grown to about a thousand in the next hour. The mob attacked and damaged the Army Recruiting Centre, Army check post and neighbouring buildings, including another National Bank branch.

Does this outline of the May 9, 2023 PTI attacks smack of a ‘false flag’ operation? More likely, it suggests that the PTI felt emboldened by getting away with its 2014 attacks on Parliament and PTV Islamabad, having suffered no adverse consequences. However, what PTI forgot was that at that point it was the ‘darling’ of the military establishment, which was preparing its entry into power four years later. In 2023, that support had reversed into rejection and animosity. Urban legend again has it that the ‘insurgency’ was pre-planned and hoped for a mutiny within the military in favour of PTI. The authors of this foolish, quixotic adventure are reportedly some pro-PTI retired military officers. They would have served their party better by keeping their ‘brilliant’ counsel to themselves.

Given the above facts as adumbrated in the report, no surprise at the DG ISPR’s rejection in a press conference the other day of any suggestion of talks with PTI unless Imran Khan and the party offer an unconditional apology for their unprecedented attacks on military installations and, if urban legend is to be believed, even contemplating a breakdown of the military’s internal unity and discipline, leading to a mutiny against COAS General Asim Munir. Since Imran Khan has responded by ruling out any apology, instead demanding an apology, we are in a classic impasse, with no way out in sight.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Column May 7, 2024

Wheat, wheat everywhere…

 

Rashed Rahman

 

The wheat crisis has thrown up a host of troubling questions that revolve around the persistent wisdom that in our governance system, the left hand seldom knows what the right hand is doing. Or, alternatively, one hand is engaging in manipulation undetected by the other.

The wheat crisis stems from two irreducible facts. One, the caretaker government headed by Anwaarul Haq Kakar was responsible for importing 3.5 million tonnes of wheat through the private sector costing Rs 370 billion between August 2023 and March 2024 although all the prognoses pointed to a bumper wheat crop this spring. Of this 3.5 million tonnes imported wheat, 1.3 million tonnes was found to be fungus-infested and therefore not fit for human consumption. The rest was packed away in government godowns till they were literally bursting at the seams. What this meant was that when the bumper wheat crop of 28-29 million tonnes this season arrived, the government simply did not have any place to store it, nor, arguably, the finances to purchase it at the officially declared support price of Rs 3,900 per 40 kilograms. Hence the foot dragging by the provincial government of Punjab (the largest producer) in procuring the wheat from farmers. The result? Poor farmers are being forced to sell their harvested wheat at Rs 2,800-3,000 per 40 kilograms in the market.

The crisis in the wheat sector has drawn the wrath of peasant organisations. The Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI) President Khalid Mahmood Khokhar has accused a mafia of having profited from the unnecessary wheat import. Farmers have suffered a Rs 400 billion loss as a result and with no viable option left, have geared up to take to the streets with their tractor trolleys and cattle on May 10, 2024 (shades of the farmers’ protests in India!). Mr Khokhar also perceptibly pointed out that unless the crisis was resolved, the farmers will not be able to cultivate cotton and rice and future wheat output could not escape being affected. Pakistan Kisan Rabita Committee (PKRC) general secretary Farooq Tariq has placed the blame squarely on the caretaker government and demanded the arrest of former caretaker Prime Minister (PM) Anwaarul Haq Kakar, the bureaucrats and importers involved in the wheat scandal, while pressing the present government to compensate the growers badly hit by the import policy.

Responding to what could prove to be a crisis that could blow up in its face, the government of PM Shahbaz Sharif has set up an inquiry committee headed by the Cabinet Division Secretary to probe the wheat import scandal. The committee’s report is still awaited at the time of writing these lines but such inquiry committees headed by bureaucrats enjoy little credibility given their track record of obfuscation and sheltering the guilty. The issue is touchy given that Anwaarul Haq Kakar is considered the blue-eyed boy of the establishment, which has rewarded him for services rendered by having a Senate seat allotted to him. According to some commentators, bigger things were meant to be in store for Mr Kakar but matters have not panned out in the desired way. One set of speculations argues that Ishaq Dar’s inexplicable appointment as Deputy PM was a pre-emptive gambit since the position was one desired for Mr Kakar by his establishment backers. When confronted with awkward questions about the wheat import debacle on his watch, Mr Kakar has dumped the whole blame in the basket of the provincial governments and their rendered information about the wheat stocks situation, which projected an alarming shortage, hence the ‘hurried’ import. Mr Kakar’s mea culpa beggars the imagination. Does the federal government have no information about the wheat stocks in the country? Is it incapable of checking and double checking the data of the provincial governments? Are no records of all this available for perusal by the apex office of the federal government?

Nawaz Sharif, embarked on reactivating his role in the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and thereby the government he bestowed on younger brother Shahbaz Sharif, wants the government to take action without anyone responsible being able to get away scot-free, whatever their strong political clout, and to refer the matter to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) or Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to probe the scam. However, the Shahbaz government seems reluctant to take strong action against those responsible, probably another indicator of his government’s reluctance to lock horns with the all-powerful establishment by putting their satrap Mr Kakar and others in the dock. Here again emerges the difference in approach of the two brothers, Nawaz bold, Shahbaz collaborationist. They may well reconcile these ‘differences’ once again as they have been doing since 2022, but it does speak volumes for the not-so-hidden tussle inside the PML-N vis-à-vis the approach towards the establishment.

Whatever the outcome of the inquiry committee report, and there are grave doubts it will amount to much, the totally ridiculous and unnecessary import of wheat by the caretaker government smacks of malafide corruption and vested interest that has robbed the farmers, particularly small landholders, of the fruits of their hard labour. Is there no justice to be had in this Mad Hatter’s Tea Party system in our benighted country?

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

The May 2024 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out

The May 2024 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com

Contents:

1. Vijay Prashad: How Africa's National Liberation Struggles brought democracy to Europe.

2. Robert P Hager: The Cold War and Third World Revolutions.

3. Berch Berberoglu: Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Class Struggle: A critical analysis of Mainstream and Marxist Theories of Nationalism and National Movements.

4. Saulat Nagi: Pakistan: The Politico-Economic Pandora's box.

5. Fawzia Afzal-Khan: Censoring the anti-Zionist Professor.

6. Fayyaz Baqir: My Life and Struggle – III: NSO launches itself.

7. Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur: The Rise of Baloch Nationalism and Resistance – IX: Disappeared persons and Baloch response.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook).

Business Recorder Column April 30, 2024

Rent a party

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Of late, the chorus of voices demanding ‘dialogue’ has grown to a virtual crescendo. This is understandable at one level given the serious political, economic and social crises Pakistan is confronted with. However, what is adding to the already existing massive confusion is the disparate and often contradictory meanings such voices attach to the demand for a dialogue. Take for example, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI), whose cult hero Imran Khan languishes in jail. Different leaders and spokesmen of the party have taken to issuing statements morning, noon and night on ‘dialogue’, but in such contradictory fashion as to leave not just the general public, but arguably even their own ranks reeling in confusion. One position of PTI leaders/spokespeople is that the party is not willing to talk to its rival political parties in power, only to the establishment, i.e. the military and Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Another leaves open the possibility of talking to the political parties in power, but only after Imran Khan is released and the PTI’s stolen mandate in the February 8, 2024 elections is restored to it. Contradictory as the PTI voices are (and I have refrained from boring readers with all the nuances expressed), the authors of these weighty statements seem to have forgotten the old adage: it takes two hands to clap. The establishment has retained a pregnant silence on the issue, interpreted by and large as a message that it is not interested in engaging with the PTI or Imran Khan. The government from time to time, in order not to appear obdurate in its triumph with the help of the establishment, pays lip service to dialogue as the necessary foundation for steering the country out of the woods, but given its perch on top of the power pyramid, and the attitude of the establishment described above, not to mention the PTI and Imran Khan’s inability to resist the mantra of ‘no talks with thieves and robbers’, leaves it at that.

There is no doubt that the country’s troubles, particularly the economy, desperately need some modicum of civilised debate to present to the world at large as well as the IMF and other international financial institutions crucial to our habitual temporary bailout the picture not of a polarised, divided country steeped in uncertainty, but a functioning system (whether democratic or not) with which business can be conducted. The present scenario is the precise opposite of this critical requirement.

The game in motion is not new. Since the very dawn of Pakistan, political manipulation by vested interests, powerful state institutions (particularly the military and bureaucracy) and their satraps has defined the country’s political trajectory. Unwilling to accede to the Bengali majority in a united Pakistan, the military landed itself and us in a quagmire ending in the loss of half the country with a majority of the population. Not content with that trauma, the military-bureaucratic oligarchy bequeathed to us by British colonialism continued merrily to manoeuvre the polity in favour of its hold on power, whether direct or indirect. The latter by now has been honed to a fine craft, defined by a political culture of collaboration by the political class with the establishment. This ‘rent a party’ paradigm works in circular fashion, with today’s favourite party tomorrow’s pariah and vice versa.

Currently, this description can be applied unhesitatingly and without bias to the existing mainstream political class without exception. The flavour of the month may be the apex of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government that came to power in 2022 by unseating Imran Khan through a no-confidence motion, but it too has been on the receiving end of the establishment’s will and preferences. Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) has been ‘dumped’. Incensed by this treatment of the former head of the PDM, the Maulana at first flirted with the opposition headed by the PTI, but soon got miffed at the treatment the latter offered him publicly. Today, he is breathing fire to topple a government from which he has been excluded through the manipulation of the elections.

The Maulana is in good company. Balochistan’s two main nationalist parties, Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) and the National Party (NP) have been marginalised even in their traditional strongholds just like the Maulana. It should not then have come as a surprise if the leaders of these two parties, Akhtar Mengal and Dr Abdul Malik, railed against the treatment meted out to them by the real powers that be at the Asma Jahangir Conference in Lahore the other day.

The PTI’s strategy post-May 9, 2023 has been marked by even more confusion than usual. Some sceptics rely on this to assert that the party is unlikely to be let off the hook. However, in politics, nothing can be ruled out. First and foremost, the PTI may be hoping that with a change in command of the military (still two years away), their fortunes may turn. But not if the practice of extensions is trotted out again, which would mean the change in command would not arrive for five years at least, coinciding, as it happens, with the end of this government’s tenure. That much seems pretty obvious, but if the country’s crises, particularly the economy, do not recover from the slough of despond in which they are thrashing about, the establishment itself may feel compelled to address the conflicted political paralysis in favour of a compromise solution that burnishes the image of the country and opens the gate to recovery.

Given all these and countless other possibilities that this space does not allow to explicate, the only sane advice is, do not endanger yourself by holding your breath.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

RPC Guest in Town Lecture Series

Research and Publication Centre (RPC) invites all friends to a talk in our Guest in Town Lecture Series by Abdul Khalique Junejo on "The Nationalist Movement of Sindh and Sindh-Punjab Relations".

Abdul Khalique Junejo has an association with G M Syed for 25 years (1970-1995). He is currently Chairman Jeay Sindh Mahaz, which stands for a sovereign, autonomous, prosperous Sindh. He is the author of 15 books in Sindhi, Urdu and English.

Abdul Khalique Junejo's Lecture will be held in the Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom) on Saturday, April 20, 2024 at 3:30 pm. 

All friends are welcome. Tea will be served after the Lecture and Q & A session.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook). 

Business Recorder Column April 16, 2024

As written by me:

Iran-Israel Russian Roulette

 

Rashed Rahman

 

The expected has happened. After Israel’s strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, 2024 killed seven personnel including three senior Iranian commanders, Tehran launched a 300-strong missile and drone attack on Israel. This is a first, Israel territory being attacked by an adversary state. Although Israel claims 99 percent of the missiles and drones were shot down, it has admitted an air base in southern Israel allegedly used to launch the Damascus strike suffered minor damage. To those exulting in Israel’s incredibly efficient Iron Dome anti-missile defence system, a word of caution. Iran’s response to the Damascus atrocity was a carefully calibrated retaliation to ensure its honour would be salvaged but not lead (hopefully) to an escalation of hostilities. This is borne out by subsequent statements from Tehran that it considered the tit-for-tat ended, warning nevertheless that if Israel chose to strike back at Iran, a more resounding slap awaits it.

Escalation of the unprecedented exchanges between Tehran and Tel Aviv is something the entire world, including Israel’s main supporter the US, is trying to avoid. Relying on the fact that Tehran conveyed its intentions to launch the attack on Israel 72 hours earlier to Washington through indirect means, and which allowed the US, UK, and shamefully, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to help Israel shoot down the missiles and drones, it seems obvious that Iran bowed to internal, regional and worldwide pressure to respond, but had no intention that this appropriate response should go any further. The fly in this ointment, as usual, is the aggressive Zionist state led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right government. They have already put their heads together to work out how to hit back at Tehran. This would be a piece with its original intention to hit the Iranian consulate in Damascus to trigger a wider war, in which Netanyahu hoped to drag in the US-led west. Washington has conveyed its ‘steer clear’ stance in any such scenario, but that still may not stop madman Netanyahu. However, perhaps we should take a step back and examine Netanyahu’s motives, which on reflection may not appear as crazy as at first glance.

Netanyahu and his reactionary government were caught with their pants down by the Hamas raid into Israel on October 7, 2023. Much has been made in the west and elsewhere of the ‘brutality’ visited on Israelis living and working in the kibbutzim near the breached Gaza border. However, some of the more sensational initial claims have not been found truthful, such as raping women and slaughtering children. What, you may ask, was Hamas up to, what did it hope to achieve, and how far has it succeeded, at what cost? First, some context. The Israeli state was preening for many years, having reduced the once reputable Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to a perceived ‘sub-contractor’ of the Israeli state under the leadership of Yasser Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas. The repeated intifadas of the occupied Palestinians having failed, the resulting ‘lull’ was taken advantage of by the US to float the so-called Abraham Accords to open the door to acceptance and recognition of Israel by surrounding and even relatively distant Arab states. Some of these johnnies such as the UAE have already moved in that direction, others such as Saudi Arabia were poised to proceed. If successful, this trend would have accorded Israel its triumph and encouraged its moves to deny Palestinian existence, let alone any (dead in the water) two-state solution. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank would have swamped whatever remains of the Palestinian inhabitants, Gaza would have remained the biggest open-air prison in the world under more or less direct Israeli rule. In other words, a complete and total annihilation of the Palestinian people, with the very real possibility of wiping them off the surface of the earth.

Given this context and trend, Hamas planned its brilliant tactical move of October 7, 2023, in which a lightning raid into Israeli kibbutzim near the Gaza border was carried out by first disabling the Israeli electronic eyes and ears installed on the border fence, and, before the Netanyahu government or famed Israeli Defence Force (IDF) could react, retreat with Israeli hostages back into Gaza. Since then, despite partial exchanges of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails during short lived pauses in the genocidal slaughter in Gaza, Netanyahu’s status has been blown out of the water. To save his political skin therefore, he has insisted on continuing the Gaza slaughter of helpless Palestinian civilians and come under pressure from the families of the still held hostages demanding an end to the Gaza war and safe return of their loved ones, not to mention vast portions of Israeli opinion castigating him for a monumental blunder of being caught with his pants down on October 7, 2023.

Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival, hence his obstinacy in continuing the Gaza slaughter, knowing when and if the war stops, he is a goner. Of course the cost of his political ambition to remain in power is being paid by the Palestinians, mostly in Gaza, but increasingly also in the West Bank. Israel has never been as isolated in the world as it is today. Its actions from hereon may be likened to the dying throes of a desperate regime, quite possibly in the long run, the Zionist state itself. Ne’er a moment too soon, one might add.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

As printed by the paper:

Iran-Israel Russian Roulette

 

Rashed Rahman

 

The expected has happened. After Israel’s strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, 2024 killed seven personnel including three senior Iranian commanders, Tehran launched a 300-strong missile and drone attack on Israel. This is a first, Israel territory being attacked by an adversary state. Although Israel claims 99 percent of the missiles and drones were shot down, it has admitted an air base in southern Israel allegedly used to launch the Damascus strike suffered minor damage. To those exulting in Israel’s incredibly efficient Iron Dome anti-missile defence system, a word of caution. Iran’s response to the Damascus atrocity was a carefully calibrated retaliation to ensure its honour would be salvaged but not lead (hopefully) to an escalation of hostilities. This is borne out by subsequent statements from Tehran that it considered the tit-for-tat ended, warning nevertheless that if Israel chose to strike back at Iran, a more resounding slap awaits it.

Escalation of the unprecedented exchanges between Tehran and Tel Aviv is something the entire world, including Israel’s main supporter the US, is trying to avoid. Relying on the fact that Tehran conveyed its intentions to launch the attack on Israel 72 hours earlier to Washington through indirect means, and which allowed the US, UK, and shamefully, Jordan to help Israel shoot down the missiles and drones, it seems obvious that Iran bowed to internal, regional and worldwide pressure to respond, but had no intention that this appropriate response should go any further. The fly in this ointment, as usual, is the aggressive Zionist state led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right government. They have already put their heads together to work out how to hit back at Tehran. This would be a piece with its original intention to hit the Iranian consulate in Damascus to trigger a wider war, in which Netanyahu hoped to drag in the US-led west. Washington has conveyed its ‘steer clear’ stance in any such scenario, but that still may not stop madman Netanyahu. However, perhaps we should take a step back and examine Netanyahu’s motives, which on reflection may not appear as crazy as at first glance.

Netanyahu and his reactionary government were caught with their pants down by the Hamas raid into Israel on October 7, 2023. Much has been made in the west and elsewhere of the ‘brutality’ visited on Israelis living and working in the kibbutzim near the breached Gaza border. However, some of the more sensational initial claims have not been found truthful, such as raping women and slaughtering children. What, you may ask, was Hamas up to, what did it hope to achieve, and how far has it succeeded, at what cost? First, some context. The Israeli state was preening for many years, having reduced the once reputable Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to a perceived ‘sub-contractor’ of the Israeli state under the leadership of Yasser Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas. The repeated intifadas of the occupied Palestinians having failed, the resulting ‘lull’ was taken advantage of by the US to float the so-called Abraham Accords to open the door to acceptance and recognition of Israel by surrounding and even relatively distant Arab states. Some of these johnnies such as the UAE have already moved in that direction, others such as Saudi Arabia were poised to proceed. If successful, this trend would have accorded Israel its triumph and encouraged its moves to deny Palestinian existence, let alone any (dead in the water) two-state solution. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank would have swamped whatever remains of the Palestinian inhabitants, Gaza would have remained the biggest open-air prison in the world under more or less direct Israeli rule. In other words, a complete and total annihilation of the Palestinian people, with the very real possibility of wiping them off the surface of the earth.

Given this context and trend, Hamas planned its brilliant tactical move of October 7, 2023, in which a lightning raid into Israeli kibbutzim near the Gaza border was carried out by first disabling the Israeli electronic eyes and ears installed on the border fence, and, before the Netanyahu government or famed Israeli Defence Force (IDF) could react, retreat with Israeli hostages back into Gaza. Since then, despite partial exchanges of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails during short lived pauses in the genocidal slaughter in Gaza, Netanyahu’s status has been blown out of the water. To save his political skin therefore, he has insisted on continuing the Gaza slaughter of helpless Palestinian civilians and come under pressure from the families of the still held hostages demanding an end to the Gaza war and safe return of their loved ones, not to mention vast portions of Israeli opinion castigating him for a monumental blunder of being caught with his pants down on October 7, 2023.

Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival, hence his obstinacy in continuing the Gaza slaughter, knowing when and if the war stops, he is a goner. Of course the cost of his political ambition to remain in power is being paid by the Palestinians, mostly in Gaza, but increasingly also in the West Bank. Israel has never been as isolated in the world as it is today. Its actions from hereon may be likened to the dying throes of a desperate regime, quite possibly in the long run, the Zionist state itself. Ne’er a moment too soon, one might add.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

The April 2024 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out

The April 2024 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com

Contents:

1. Rashed Rahman: Revolutions in the Third world today.

2. Rafi Pervaiz Bhatti: The Muslim Identity in India – IV: The Ascendency of Liberal, Mystic, Ascetic Islam.

3. Changez Ali: The 21st century proletariat.

4. Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur: The Rise of Baloch Nationalism and Resistance – VIII: The Frontier Corps (FC) and ground reality.

5. Fayyaz Baqir: My life and struggle – II: The years of resistance.

6. Ashraf Jehangir Qazi: Shab Khoon (Night Assault).

7. Fayyaz Baqir: Elections and Democratic Politics in Pakistan.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)

Business Recorder Column April 2, 2024

‘Frosty’ exchanges

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Perhaps it is appropriate that these lines are being written on April Fool’s Day. What lends this credence is the exchange of letters between US President Joe Biden and Pakistan’s Prime Minister (PM) Shahbaz Sharif. Before we get to the content and tone of this exchange, it would be well to remember that things have been frosty in the relationship between Washington and Islamabad for more than two decades. This is because, after 9/11, the US used muscle bound pressure on Pakistan to align with Washington’s declaration of the ‘War on Terror’ and help its intent to invade Afghanistan in search of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, in the process to punish the Taliban regime of Mulla Omar for hosting bin Laden and refusing to hand him over to the US. Pakistan’s help and support for the Afghan war was critical since the landlocked country could only, for both geographical and geopolitical reasons, be accessed through Pakistan. Thus Pakistan, then ruled by military dictator Pervez Musharraf, provided an air and land corridor for the US to invade Afghanistan and subsequently keep its troops in that country supplied. In return, Pakistan was provided money for ‘services rendered’. However, neither Washington’s heavy pressure nor its money could dissuade the Pakistani military under Musharraf from playing a double game, supporting at one and the same time the US’s campaign (targeting exclusively al Qaeda) and the Taliban’s resistance, the latter through the provision of safe havens inside Pakistan and logistical and other support.

This double game helped the Afghan Taliban maintain their guerrilla resistance to the US occupation for 20 years and finally paved the way for their victory and the ignominious retreat of the US from Afghanistan. In between, US intelligence surmised that Osama bin Laden, whom they had been unable to capture in the early days of the invasion in the Tora Bora mountains in eastern Afghanistan, was holed up in a compound in Abbottabad, a stone’s throw from the military’s Kakul Academy. When then President Barack Obama decided to approve a US Navy Seals operation in May 2011 inside Pakistan to capture or take out bin Laden, the outcome of the raid was that bin Laden was killed while offering armed resistance, with his face blown off, making it difficult to identify him. However, the Seals confirmed his identity from the length of the body and his ears. The body was then taken away in the Seals’ helicopters and dumped far out at sea so to prevent any burial site becoming a bin Laden shrine to his followers (cf. Mumtaz Qadri). Obviously, the discovery of bin Laden in near proximity to Pakistan’s ‘West Point’ did not endear the country to Washington. In fact there were reams of speculation and suspicion about the role of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services in hiding bin Laden inside Pakistan for 10 years. Although the US celebrated its ‘revenge’ on bin Laden for 9/11, this was one of the few successes it could boast of in this war. The rest, including the Ashraf Ghani regime and the much vaunted Afghan National Army (ANA) created, trained and armed by the US, disappeared like a puff of dust before the triumphal entry of the Taliban into Kabul and the chaotic departure of the US, leaving many of its collaborators behind to face the tender mercies of the Taliban.

Washington obviously harboured a great deal of resentment and anger at Pakistan for its ‘betrayal’ in Afghanistan. I had predicted in a write up in these columns after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in 2021 that our relationship with the US would henceforth be extremely rocky, since empires have long memories and they do not forgive or forget. I predicted then that the US did not have to do more than use its hold over the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to make life difficult for Pakistan. That, at least, has come to pass and is continuing even as we speak. Washington, in the aftermath of its humiliation in Afghanistan, decided to at the very least keep Pakistan at arm’s length from here on. This explains why President Biden never contacted Imran Khan while he was PM, never congratulated Shahbaz Sharif when he became PM in 2022, and even in this letter now received, has made no mention of congratulations to Shahbaz Sharif for being elected PM again (albeit in a controversial polling exercise). Shahbaz too has chosen to reply in diplomatese, focusing on harmless, peripheral areas of mutual cooperation while the herd of elephants in the room is blithely ignored.

The question then arises, why this ‘frosty’ exchange now? The main factor is Washington’s continuing concern about a terrorist threat to it and its allies emanating from Taliban ruled Afghanistan. The second is the Pentagon’s desire, reiterated after COAS General Asim Munir’s visit to the US, to maintain its strategic relationship with the Pakistani military with the latter the best bet for policing the region in the interests of the US and the west. The third reason is the growing concern in Washington that too much distance from Islamabad could thrust Pakistan even further into China’s embrace. So, despite the victory in the Cold War ending in the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialism and the inescapable necessity for remaining socialist countries such as Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Cuba to tack with the prevailing wind and make compromises with capitalism for the sake of survival, the Pentagon still envisages a continuation of its long standing ‘independent’ relationship with Pakistan’s GHQ (independent of whoever is in power in Washington or Islamabad). Of course even the Pentagon cannot prevail in the halls of power in Washington to reopen the free lunch box Pakistan has been used to since the early 1950s. Therefore while a minimal relationship will remain between the US and Pakistani militaries, it is unlikely to reap for the latter the goodies it is used to receiving in the past. To sum up, what remains of the US-Pakistan relationship now is a minimum engagement (with an eye on security contingencies) for the foreseeable future, minimum support through the IMF and other international financial institutions to prevent an economic meltdown (something that promises to make the debt trap we are clearly in arguably worse), peripheral engagement in do-goodie areas that are hardly strategic (e.g. health, education, etc.), and straining to keep Pakistan as far away as possible from the Chinese embrace. Not a very tasty menu of maybes.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Column March 26, 2024

Massacre in Russia

 

Rashed Rahman

 

The toll of the horrendous terrorist attack on March 23, 2024 at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow’s northern suburb of Krasnogorsk has risen to 137 dead, including three children, and 182 wounded, of whom 100 are in hospital, some in serious condition. All this bloodshed and mayhem, including the terrorists setting the Hall on fire after they had shot at everyone in sight, was produced by just four attackers armed with automatic weapons, knives and firebombs. Although Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility, Moscow is sceptical, suspicious and wondering out loud at the possible involvement of its battlefield opponent Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin revealed that the four attackers fled after the massacre in a car in the direction of the Ukraine border, where, he alleged, a ‘corridor’ to safety awaited the perpetrators. Ukraine, as expected, has denied any involvement and accused Moscow of trying to shift the blame. Russia declared a day of mourning the day after, with streams of mourners making their way to the semi-demolished Hall to pay their respects to the victims and lay bouquets of flowers at the site.

TV footage of the roughed up and bloodied attackers showed them responding fearfully to preliminary interrogation by claiming they were hired by unknown people through the social media site Telegram (used for messaging by IS) to kill as many people as possible amongst the crowd attending a music concert at the City Hall in return for payment of Rubles 500,000 (a little over $ 5,000). Without clinching evidence one way or the other so far, this ‘confession’ does not sound like an IS suicide squad putting their lives on the line for their version of ‘Jihad’. The Russian security forces recovered weapons and ammunition from the captured terrorists but failed to find any suicide jackets on them, a signature ‘uniform’ for such terrorists in case of being close to arrest.

Whether the simplest and obvious explanation that the four purported IS attackers of Tajik origin were indeed engaged in hitting back at Russia for its role in defeating IS in Syria in support of the Bashar al Assad regime proves correct or some deeper conspiracy is behind the massacre may only emerge after the ongoing investigations reach some conclusive closure. Meantime Moscow voices in guarded manner its suspicion that Ukraine and its US-led west supporters timed the massacre to humiliate freshly elected President Vladimir Putin by denting his credentials as Russia’s defender and protector. While we await further clarification, let us not forget that the Ukraine war continues, with the latest exchange of missiles and drones yielding, apart from the usual destruction of civilian targets, hits on two Russian Black Sea ships off Crimea. Not to be left behind in the concerted pressure on Moscow in this conflict, Poland has jumped into the fray by accusing Russia of violating its airspace with a cruise missile heading for Ukraine.

It may help readers to recollect what IS is, where it stands after its resounding defeats in Iraq and Syria where it had occupied vast territory and declared an Islamic Emirate before being soundly defeated and beaten back, leaving only straggling remnants in those countries. Following that defeat, IS appears to have shifted its main base to troubled Afghanistan while denouncing its Taliban regime as not sufficiently hardline ‘Islamic’. From its bases largely confined to eastern Afghanistan, it has struck inside Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and now Russia. The IS affiliate in Afghanistan labels itself Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) and is strategically placed to reach out for new recruits in Central Asia. That could explain how Tajik attackers massacred so many people in this bloody attack near Moscow. However, in the shady world of ‘Jihad’, nothing can be ruled out, including the use of ISIS-K recruits in a western-Ukrainian intelligence joint venture to hit Russia and thereby cause embarrassment and political difficulties for Putin, or at the very least take the shine off his recent electoral victory.

The world is now holding its breath to see how Russia responds. Once Moscow has its facts settled, the riposte is likely to be swift, bloody, and contoured to assuage the feelings of grief and outrage of a Russian people feeling beleaguered for years by a hostile west seeking to do down Moscow and achieve full spectrum hegemony worldwide. Along the way, having annoyed and frustrated once post-Soviet Union ‘partner’ Russia through ‘NATO-creep’ and various other creepy manoeuvres, the US-led west has included another once ‘partner’ China on its hit list. For those puzzled why, after an initial embrace, post-Soviet Russia and post-Mao China, both having embraced capitalism to a greater or lesser extent, have been so targeted, the explanation lies centrally and crucially in the nature of capitalist imperialism, a system inherently driven to economic, political and military dominance and therefore sensitive to actual or perceived rising rivals. If Putin’s revival of Russia after the disaster of 1991 and the even bigger disaster of the Yeltsin years has ‘alarmed’ Washington and its satraps in Europe, Asia and Australia, China’s economic and now military rise has awakened Thucydides from the grave. Welcome to a world increasingly poised for horrendous conflict, with the menace of the mushroom cloud always hovering in the periphery of our memories.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

RPC Lecture Series: Dr Aurangzeb Syed on "The new system of state power in Pakistan"

Research and Publication Centre (RPC) is holding a lecture by Dr Aurangzeb Syed visiting from the US on "The new system of state power in Pakistan" at RPC, 2nd floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore on Thursday, March 21, 2024 at 3:00 pm. 

Dr Aurangzeb Syed is Professor Emeritus Northern Michigan University. He has a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Punjab University (Thesis: Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investments in Pakistan), a Master’s degree in American Studies (Thesis: Socio-economic Transformations during British Colonialism in Pre-Pakistan areas) from the University of Buffalo, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Virginia Tech (Dissertation: Political Economy of Pakistan’s Energy Policy). He began his teaching career at the Punjab University in 1978 and has taught at various Universities in the US: Metropolitan State University, Denver; Virginia Tech; and finally Northern Michigan University.

Aurangzeb was a political activist and participated in the socialist student movement as well as the Workers' movement in Lahore during the early to mid-1970s. He went abroad in 1975 for studies, first to Norway and then to the US where he continued his activism along with educational programmes.  In Norway, he participated in the activities of the foreign workers branch of the Workers Communist Party of Norway (erstwhile AKP). He was also active with the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) branch in Oslo. At the University of Buffalo, he helped organise the Third World Students Association, which promoted an anti-imperialist agenda and information.

Throughout his academic career, he consistently applied the Marxist political-economic paradigm to the subject matter of the courses taught in areas such as international politics, politics in developing countries, political economy, US politics, US Foreign Policy, etc. Within the post-war Marxist tradition, he especially appreciates the works of Nicos Poulantzas in the field of political analysis, Capital Logic school (Michael Heinrich) in the analytical approach to Capitalism, and Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism in dialectical materialist philosophy of social sciences.

For your urge to read something interesting and exciting, he recommends the recent (2015) political biography of Lenin by Tamas Krausz: Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography (Monthly Review Press, NY); Michael Heinrich’s biographical work Marx and the Birth of Modern Society (2018), a multi-volume project of which only the first volume has been published so far, is very interesting in bringing to light the formation of Marx’s ideas during the years of his early youth.

All friends are welcome. Tea will be served after the lecture and audience question-answer session.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)  

Business Recorder Column March 19, 2024

A plethora of issues

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Normally one tries to focus on one critical issue that appears to be central when sitting down to pen these columns. However, such is the state of things in Pakistan that perforce one has to deal with a plethora of issues confronting the country and its people. That this may lead to important issues being treated peripherally or in insufficient depth is one of the occupational hazards of being a member of the commentariat.

Terrorism has never been laid to rest despite the military campaigns against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other like groups in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP’s) erstwhile tribal areas. The recent uptick in terrorist attacks, particularly in KP, endorses this conclusion. One reason for this is that the military offensives from 2014 onwards failed to plan a pincer movement to cut off retreat avenues for the TTP, admittedly in unfavourable and forbidding terrain, seemingly content to uproot these terrorist forces from their bases in erstwhile FATA and ‘allow’ them to flee across the border into Afghanistan. I have been consistently arguing since in these columns and elsewhere that the military has succeeded merely in ‘exporting’ the problem, not scotching the snake. This prediction has since come true, particularly after we helped the Afghan Taliban to come to power on the heels of the ignominious and shambolic retreat of the US from their 20 year military occupation of Afghanistan. However, this turn of events once again proved the adage in politics that yesterday’s friends cannot be taken for granted to remain tomorrow’s allies. That applies doubly to proxies, with whom many countries, including Pakistan, have had occasion to rue the day they plumped for support for such entities. Inherent in such a relationship is the risk of proxies sooner or later running off the leash. The retreat into Afghanistan has if anything strengthened the TTP’s hand because of unadmitted but obvious support from the Afghan Taliban regime in Kabul.

Multiple attacks by the TTP were witnessed in KP over the weekend, in which two officers and five troops were killed in North Waziristan’s Mir Ali area in an attack on a police check post, two policemen were injured in another attack on a police check post in Ambar Dub Chowk Tehsil of Mohmand district, a police mobile (with no casualties) was damaged in an attack on Otmanzai police station in Bannu, and a Motorway Police vehicle was attacked (again without casualties) in Kund, Nowshera. The pattern of these attacks, as previous attacks, suggests the spread of the TTP’s reach beyond their traditional tribal areas holdouts to KP province entire. From there it is a short hop, skip and a jump to Punjab and Balochistan, the two neighbouring provinces of KP. Having reverted to guerrilla tactics with dispersed units instead of concentrated forces in the past in the tribal areas, the TTP now can only be combatted through superior intelligence. That, unfortunately, remains conspicuous by its absence, not because efforts are not made night and day by military and civilian intelligence agencies, but because there is precious little coordination between them. Intelligence agencies the world over are notorious for keeping their intelligence information cards close to their chest and being reluctant to share them even with fellow intelligence organisations of their own country, engaged in a common struggle. The post-2014 National Action Plan (NAP) was stillborn in the face of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI) balking at the suggestion that they should coordinate with and (perish the thought!) share intelligence with their civilian counterparts under the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA). There the half-baked pie of the NAP rests in peace (RIP). There is no evidence that either the military or civilian authorities are seized of the critical requirement to overcome this logjam and get down to the serious task of rooting out the terrorist threat. We must therefore gird ourselves against more of the same for the foreseeable future.

But hark, perhaps I underestimate the resolve of the military. In the wake of these multiple attacks in KP over the weekend, Pakistan has carried out airstrikes against alleged TTP bases across the border, killing, according to Kabul, eight people in Khost and Paktika provinces, all the dead being women and children. Taliban officials claim the ‘reckless’ airstrikes prompted retaliatory actions with “heavy weapons” against Pakistani military outposts on the border. They followed up with a statement that Afghanistan would respond to any aggressive actions and defend its territorial integrity at all cost. The simmering tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan since the 2021 victory of the Taliban, which prompted the former to expel millions of Afghan refugees across the border back to their home country, promise, if Kabul’s veiled threat is to believed, in “very bad consequences, which will be out (of) Pakistan’s control”. Now it may be conceded that since the TTP terrorists based in Afghanistan’s border areas have their families living with them, the toll may well have included, if not been entirely composed of, women and children. To compare, not so long ago when Iran attacked alleged Jundullah bases in our Balochistan and Pakistan retaliated with strikes against alleged Baloch nationalist fighters in Iran, the casualties on that side, if correctly reported, were indeed women and children. With all the sophistication of drone and air force technology today, it remains an uncertain weapon for targeting elusive guerrilla organisations. Pakistan and Iran mended fences soon after, in an atmosphere of both sides’ ‘honour’ having been satisfied, but the new tensions between Islamabad and Kabul portend an escalation with no end in sight.

Pakistan needs reasonable, if not good relations with all its neighbours at a moment when it has so many other problems to contend with. Relations with Iran are on the mend after the mutual strikes on each other and the start on the Pakistan side of the much delayed Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline that threatened their bonhomie. With India, relations remain frozen, with little chance of even normal diplomatic outreach till after the Indian elections. With Afghanistan, we could be staring down the barrel of the gun of a continuing tension and even conflict on the border because of the reverse osmosis of TTP terrorists based in Afghanistan continuing and escalating their attacks inside Pakistan, the wages of the original sin of using religious extremists in Pakistan’s wars in Afghanistan since 1973.

Strangely, the terrorism issue has taken up all the space this week, but I shall no doubt be explicating the other issues facing Pakistan in flux in the weeks to come.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Lecture by Dr Aurangzeb Syed at RPC: "The new system of state power in Pakistan"

Research and Publication Centre (RPC) is holding a lecture by Dr Aurangzeb Syed visiting from the US on "The new system of state power in Pakistan" at RPC, 2nd floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore on Thursday, March 21, 2024 at 3:00 pm. 

Dr Aurangzeb Syed is Professor Emeritus Northern Michigan University. He has a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Punjab University (Thesis: Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investments in Pakistan), a Master’s degree in American Studies (Thesis: Socio-economic Transformations during British Colonialism in Pre-Pakistan areas) from the University of Buffalo, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Virginia Tech (Dissertation: Political Economy of Pakistan’s Energy Policy). He began his teaching career at the Punjab University in 1978 and has taught at various Universities in the US: Metropolitan State University, Denver; Virginia Tech; and finally Northern Michigan University.

Aurangzeb was a political activist and participated in the socialist student movement as well as the Workers' movement in Lahore during the early to mid-1970s. He went abroad in 1975 for studies, first to Norway and then to the US where he continued his activism along with educational programmes.  In Norway, he participated in the activities of the foreign workers branch of the Workers Communist Party of Norway (erstwhile AKP). He was also active with the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) branch in Oslo. At the University of Buffalo, he helped organise the Third World Students Association, which promoted an anti-imperialist agenda and information.

Throughout his academic career, he consistently applied the Marxist political-economic paradigm to the subject matter of the courses taught in areas such as international politics, politics in developing countries, political economy, US politics, US Foreign Policy, etc. Within the post-war Marxist tradition, he especially appreciates the works of Nicos Poulantzas in the field of political analysis, Capital Logic school (Michael Heinrich) in the analytical approach to Capitalism, and Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism in dialectical materialist philosophy of social sciences.

For your urge to read something interesting and exciting, he recommends the recent (2015) political biography of Lenin by Tamas Krausz: Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography (Monthly Review Press, NY); Michael Heinrich’s biographical work Marx and the Birth of Modern Society (2018), a multi-volume project of which only the first volume has been published so far, is very interesting in bringing to light the formation of Marx’s ideas during the years of his early youth.

All friends are welcome. Tea will be served after the lecture and audience question-answer session.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)  

Business Recorder Column March 12, 2024

A tangled web indeed

 

Rashed Rahman

 

As could be anticipated, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf’s (PTI’s) protests on March 10, 2024 against alleged election rigging were nullified by the police, particularly in Punjab, where newly inducted Chief Minister (CM) Maryam Nawaz Sharif had promised to ‘crush’ any such manifestation. Sindh saw little of a heavy-handed government response, perhaps because the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government headed by CM Murad Shah is securely ensconced with a huge majority. Balochistan barely witnessed a murmur, underlying the reality that the PTI has little if any strength in the largest by area and most troubled by a nationalist insurgency province. Also as anticipated, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the PTI was not only able to mount protests without police hindrance but also hold a rally addressed by CM Ali Amin Gandapur in Peshawar. The explanation for this clear exception to the rule lies in the fact that the PTI is in power in KP. Most prominent PTI leaders were arrested in Punjab, some by being dragged out of vehicles. The response of the PTI leaders and workers to this time honoured treatment by the Punjab police was different from the past. It seems that the PTI has learnt some lessons from the May 9, 2023 fracas and its aftermath, and now plumbed for ‘peaceful resistance’.

What is notable about the PTI’s protests on the street is the extraordinary array of gleaming vehicles. This is perhaps a reflection of its urban middle class base, particularly in Punjab. This relatively new phenomenon in the country’s politics points toward the changing social and political dynamic in the country, of which the PTI is the main beneficiary, having focused on this demographic since at least 2011. The question that remains unanswered is whether this urban middle class base can demonstrate in practice the efficacy of street protest, even if peaceful. It goes without saying, and the events of March 10, 2024 indicate that the incumbent government in Punjab particularly is in no mood to allow the PTI to gain momentum for its political campaign against alleged rigging of the elections through street power. Although the PTI has also seemingly learnt the lesson that abandoning parliament, as it did after its government’s removal in 2022, is bad strategy, it remains to be seen whether its clamorous opposition inside the Houses combined with its newfound Gandhian peaceful resistance on the streets can or will yield the expected results. For the PTI, those results rest centrally on the dissolution of the present government and anointing of the PTI in power or, failing that, a fresh election with some guarantees that it will be conducted in a fair and free manner and without the manipulation and other legerdemain employed for the Elections 2024. It is possible to see the shape of some of the future if PTI’s Sher Afzal Marwat’s announcement of another protest in Islamabad (and elsewhere?) on March 30, 2024 comes to fruition. As it is, the authorities have released prominent PTI leaders such as Latif Khosa and Salman Akram Raja but charged many workers for defying the imposition of section 144 just before March 10, 2024. This may portend an even harsher response to future protests. What this means is that the rules of the democratic game remain suspended except on the establishment-backed government’s terms, which naturally include acceptance of their (controversial) mandate.

The PTI’s game, on the other hand, seems to include continuing efforts for a rapprochement with the estranged establishment. One pointer to this continuing effort may be detected in outgoing president Dr Arif Alvi’s revelation that he had been, and continues to try for such a rapprochement, but regrettably without success so far. Perhaps Dr Alvi needs reminding that it takes two hands to clap, whereas the miffed establishment (because of the thrust of the May 9 ‘uprising’) is so far not interested in talking to the hitherto ‘insurgent’ PTI.

Meanwhile the system juggernaut continues in motion with the first phase of a 19-member federal cabinet being sworn in on March 11, 2024 in the aftermath of Asif Ali Zardari returning to the presidency. This cabinet assumes office on the verge of Ramzan. Surprise, surprise, Mohsin Naqvi’s stars are not confined to being anointed Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman immediately after he surrendered the caretaker CMship of Punjab (a trajectory that seems to be acquiring the permanence of a norm given the previous example of Najam Sethi), but also shine for him in terms of being inducted into the federal cabinet as proposed interior minister, a post he can hold for six months until he is elected to parliament, which opportunity beckons in the impending Senate elections. Now to ordinary sceptics there is no answer how or why this has transpired. What are Naqvi’s credentials for the post he is destined for? But then why quibble over qualification when now CM Balochistan Sarfraz Bugti was, until recently, caretaker federal interior minister? In both cases, the deft hand of the establishment seems inescapable. The only difference is that whereas Bugti had already won the affections of the establishment in the conflict with Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006 and after, which was instrumental in him being awarded the caretaker federal ministry, Mohsin Naqvi seems to have passed the establishment’s test as caretaker CM Punjab with flying colours. This conclusion is not as farfetched as it may seem at first glance, given the fact that both the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the PPP are at pains to deny Naqvi is their man. Now President Asif Ali Zardari, on the other hand, will have little hesitation in honouring Sarfraz Bugti with this title since, in an extraordinary sleight of hand, a caretaker interior minister resigned just days (literally) before the general elections 2024, stood for a Balochistan provincial seat in his home area of Dera Bugti, and was not only elected, but duly ensconced as CM Balochistan. There are some who question the constitutional and legal validity of this sleight of hand. Others feel constrained to remind us that the PPP inducted Sarfraz Bugti into its ranks immediately after he left the caretaker federal cabinet and Asif Ali Zardari even campaigned for him (albeit from a distance because of bad weather cancelling flights) in his provincial constituency at a triumphant election rally. Now the PPP can boast of heading not just the Sindh government, but that of troubled Balochistan too.

It seems this may well be the last caretaker government Pakistan will see, as both the PML-N and the PPP seem determined in the light of all the objections that have been raised against the last such body, including overstaying its constitutional welcome to straying into areas that were not within its purview, to change this rule that has been in vogue since the 1977 abortive elections. Whether, however, a polarised polity such as Pakistan’s at present can agree how and what rules to replace the caretaker setup with, remains in the realm of the unknown so far.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com