Link to my interview with Voice.net.pk "The untold truth of Balochistan" on April 5, 2025 on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/4qBNN4ONaU4?si=_A_tT1e2HKxgpTFj
Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)
Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)
The April 2025 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com
Contents:
1. Mehrzaad Baluch: Jaffar Express Hijacking Exposes Pakistan’s Failing Strategy in Balochistan.
2. Saulat Nagi: History of Invaders and Gladiators.
3. Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar: Palestine-Israel Primer.
4. One Hundred Plus Years of the Communist Movement in India.
5. Chris Harman: The return of the National Question – IV: Social crises and nationalism today.
6. W B Bland: The Pakistani Revolution – IX: The Agartala Conspiracy Case and after.
Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)
Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)
Happy March 23
Rashed Rahman
March 23 rolled round this year in relatively muted fashion. This was not surprising, given the plethora of troubles afflicting the country. The day saw the usual fare on the media of commemorations of Pakistan Day, but the public mood seemed unenthusiastic.
Events in Balochistan cast a pall of gloom over the day. In the aftermath of the Balochistan Liberation Army’s (BLA’s) attack on the Jaffer Express and the events that followed, this was not unexpected. The BLA operation was of a scale and effectiveness that indicated the growing capability of the nationalist insurgency in the province. One consequence of the incident was the conflict over the dead bodies of BLA militants allegedly killed in the last stages of the counter-operation by the security forces against BLA ‘stragglers’ holding hostages taken from the train. It did seem strange that guerrillas would simply be sitting around with hostages, waiting for the security forces’ riposte, when the normal expectation would have been that they would have retreated along with their other colleagues once their day was done, as guerrillas normally are expected to do. Therefore this claim of slain guerrillas seemed suspicious to the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) that has been agitating since long on the issue of ‘missing’ persons. The BYC demanded access to the bodies of alleged BLA guerrillas killed by the security forces to determine whether any of them were ‘missing’ persons. Ostensibly an unobjectionable desire, the state’s response was the usual rebuff. No account was taken, nor leeway permitted, on an issue that is highly emotive for the families of the ‘missing’ seeking news of their loved ones since years. The result was a natural outburst of indignation by the BYC, which intruded into the hospital’s morgue where the dead bodies were kept and succeeded in retrieving five of them. Then all hell was let loose by the police and security forces on the BYC protestors, in which three people were reportedly killed by police firing on unarmed, peaceful people. The administration of course spun this incident the other way as the BYC protestors having attacked the police and injured some of their personnel, but no clear explanation was on offer how the three people were killed. Dr Mahrang Baloch, the leader of BYC, along with about 150 of her colleagues were arrested and charged with terrorism and such like offences. In response, the Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) has announced a conference in Quetta to address the issue, while Baloch students in Lahore have taken out a protest rally against such over-the-top actions.
This has been the recurring pattern of how the state has reacted time and again to the peaceful sit-ins and protests, in Balochistan and even in Islamabad, by the BYC on the issue of their ‘missing’ loved ones. This response has deepened, if anything, the alienation and anger of the affected families of the ‘missing’, not to mention Baloch society as a whole. Moderate nationalist political parties such as the BNP-M and the National Party, entities wedded to parliamentary politics, were cut to size through manipulation of the February 2024 elections. Akhtar Mengal, despairing of being heard, let alone listened to, has quit the National Assembly. Dr Malik Baloch bravely continues to raise voice in the Balochistan Assembly, all to no avail. Emasculating the moderate, parliamentary political forces and dealing with peaceful protestors demanding answers to the vexed question of the fate of their ‘missing’ loved ones with by far excessive force (as even the Human Rights Commission has found) is guaranteed like nothing else to push more and more young Baloch into the arms of the nationalist insurgency when no other recourse seems to suggest itself or, in practice, be available. In this regard, the state and its security apparatus is proving the best recruiting agent for the Baloch guerrillas.
People in the media and generally of good intentions have been railing for a ‘balanced’ approach and a democratic strategy, not force alone, to tackle the situation in Balochistan that appears to be growing graver by the minute. But all these good intentions appear only to be the paving for the road to hell since their authors seem to be whistling in the wind. Meanwhile the Baloch insurgency has acquired increasingly enhanced capability and, in the process, reflects more and more the changes that have been taking place quietly in Baloch society since the last nationalist insurgency in the 1970s. A new middle class has arisen in this interregnum that is providing a very different, educated recruit to the guerrillas. Not only that, since this newly emerging middle class is drawn from virtually all over Balochistan, it has managed to expand the sweep of the guerrilla war to almost every nook and cranny of the vast, rugged province. Along with enhanced military and political capacity, the Baloch nationalist insurgency has now expanded the old demand for provincial autonomy, redressal of historic grievances and rights for its people to an unequivocal demand for independence on the basis of the right to self-determination. An added, tragic dimension is the tactic increasingly in use to kill outsiders, whether travellers or working in Balochistan, on the plea that this influx threatens to change the demographic of Balochistan against its native inhabitants. Such is the fruit of more than seven decades of oppression of the Baloch and exploitation and extraction of their resources without even a glance at the poverty and deprivation of their people. Such persistent injustice engenders nothing but growing hatred.
Is this how we wish to remember the pious hopes once associated with the memory of March 23?
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
We need a core group of intellectuals, politically aware progressive thinkers to formulate a critical history of the socialist struggle internationally and at home. Only coming to terms with this track record in theory and practice can point the way forward and inspire new generations of revolutionaries. Simply repeating formulae from the past does not provide convincing answers to the defeat and retreat since 1989, nor does it provide clarity in a globalised world for Pakistan’s entrapment in external neocolonialism and internal colonialism. We also need a fresh analysis of our own state and society rather than relying blindly on other revolutionary experiences.
No lessons learnt
Rashed Rahman
Pakistan is a unique country in which the authorities seem incapable of learning from past experience. Here we are in the middle of trying to unravel the Independent Power Producers’ (IPP’s) ‘Take or Pay’ conundrum, the wisdom having dawned three decades after this idea was mooted that it does not take cognizance of market fluctuations, thereby landing the country in impossible financial trouble. The initial 1994 induction of IPPs taught us nothing, and was duly followed by another round in the 2010s, landing us with further burdens of paying for electricity whether taken or not. Some sceptics allude to murkier reasons than simply an inability to learn from the track record, corrupt practices being top of the list. Someone, somewhere, they allege, made a lot of money out of this (repeated) skullduggery.
Now we are confronted with the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority’s (OGRA’s) brilliant suggestion that the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) adopt a ‘Take or Pay’ model in their fresh Sale and Purchase Agreements (SPAs) to either lift their allocated petroleum product quotas from local refineries or pay penalties for failing to do so. This is ostensibly meant to support local refineries by ensuring them a guaranteed offtake, thereby reducing excessive fuel imports that were undermining domestic production, causing reduced capacity utilisation and financial losses. An added grey area is the accusation by some OMCs and refineries that a specific OMC was being favoured by OGRA through approving petrol and diesel imports despite sufficient local stock availability. As the criticism of OGRA mounted, it proposed the new brilliant ‘Take or Pay’ arrangement. The Oil Marketing Association of Pakistan (OMAP) has expressed grave concerns regarding this suggestion, pointing to the significant risks posed to the OMCs’ financial sustainability and arguing that such an arrangement will only serve (at best) the interests of refineries and large OMCs at the expense of smaller players, perhaps driving the latter to closure and consolidating further the monopolistic control of the big fish in the oil sector, which would end up severely hampering competition, discourage new entrants and ultimately harm the overall efficiency (if not existence) of the petroleum supply chain. OMAP pointed to the refineries’ opportunistic behaviour in routinely withholding their product when price increases are anticipated, thereby forcing the OMCs to resort to costly imports. Conversely, when prices are expected to decline, refineries attempt to offload maximum stocks to the OMCs, resulting in financial losses for the latter. (This is a tenuous claim since the timeframe of domestic price fluctuations and imports do not come even close to matching.) In essence this controversy shows our inability (i.e. in this instance OGRA’s) to learn the appropriate lessons from the past (the IPPs experience) and arguably militates against the current ‘consensus’ (in official circles at least) on free markets being allowed to work their ‘magic’ unhindered.
As though the above were not enough to prove our learning deficit, we are confronted by a conflict on the Torkham border between us and our Afghan neighbours, whom we once lauded as ‘freedom fighters’ and supported over many decades in our Afghan adventures. Now that our Afghan ‘friends’ are in power, they have returned our generosity by continuously violating agreed protocols on the Torkham border (the main trade route between the two countries and further with Central Asia and beyond). These violations, consisting of constructing posts at the border on the Afghan side, have led in recent days to severe clashes between the militaries on both sides. Now a joint tribal jirgacomposed of elders from both sides is bending its back to restore peace and confidence on the border to relieve the millions of rupees trade losses. Not just this ‘aggressive’ stance on the Torkham border, the Afghan military has been trading fire with its ‘brother’ Pakistan Army at various points along the mutual border, sometimes to support their other ‘brothers’, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in its campaign to overthrow the state in Pakistan and impose a Taliban-type regime. Remonstrations to Kabul to cease such ingratitude has met with diplomatic fobbing off (at best) or downright rejection of the charge of supporting the TTP operating from Afghan soil (at worst). And how did the TTP land up in Afghanistan? This occurred courtesy our brilliant military strategists when they failed (allowed?) to prevent the TTP from retreating across the border to escape our military offensive against them following the Peshawar Army Public School massacre in 2014. Clearly, there is room to argue that we have misconstrued the real nature of the ‘friendship’ with the Afghan Taliban (‘transactional’ to use the current Trumpian phrase) as well as badly failed to prevent the Pashtun tribes on our frontier from transmogrifying over time from logistical supporters of the Afghan religiously inspired fighters to their ‘comrades’. No lessons learnt?
If there was any room left to mourn our mental density, it is more than filled by the report of an international human rights platform, Civicus Monitor (CM), that ‘elevates’ Pakistan into the company of countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Serbia, Italy and the US, a list describing countries in 2025 that are experiencing rapid declines in civic freedoms. Pakistan’s status on CM’s website is listed as “repressed”. According to CM’s report, Pakistan has been awarded this honour due to narrowing civil space, human rights activists being arbitrarily targeted by the authorities, and the media being clamped down on through draconian laws. The report adds: “Pakistan’s recent criminalisation of activists, stifling of opposition and minority protests, and digital space restrictions have resulted in the country being added to Civicus Monitor’s watchlist.” It goes on to point to the government’s “trumped up charges” against Dr Mahrang Baloch, the leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, and human rights lawyer Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir. Mahrang, the report says, “faces multiple criminal charges, including under the Anti-Terrorism Act, for organising sit-ins (peaceful, one might add) across the country and attending gatherings” (!). Mazari-Hazir was “targeted on terrorism chargesfor actively supporting legal redress for victims of violence and persecution and advocating for the rights of persecuted religious and ethnic communities.” CM comes to the logical conclusion that the charges against both ladies are a political witch-hunt and attempts at silencing dissent. CM also underlines the government’s tender treatment of opposition, Sindhi and Baloch protests.
Standing up peacefully for the ‘disappeared’, fighting legal battles for the oppressed, and agitating peacefully for rights, it seems, are not allowed in Pakistan. Why does all this sound so drearily familiar? Lessons not learnt perhaps?
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
The March 2025 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com
Contents:
1. Navid Shahzad: The Elusive Self.
2. Chris Harman: The return of the National Question – III: Nationalism since the First World War.
3. W B Bland: The Pakistani Revolution – VIII: The ‘Six Points’.
4. Jamison Heinkel: Book Review: The genesis of Baloch nationalism: Politics and ethnicity in Pakistan, 1947-77.
5. From the PMR Archives: September 2019: From the Editor: Capitalism’s ‘gift’: climate change.
Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)
Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)
The Kurd struggle
Rashed Rahman
The Kurds are a people divided between four countries: Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. This reflects the fact that state boundaries were drawn in many parts of the world depending on factors other than ethnic homogeneity, reflecting the relative reach and control of territory by states that included peoples of the same ethnic origin, in the process dividing them. Closer to home, we can refer to the similar case of divided ethnic groups and nationalities: the Baloch (Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan) and the Pashtuns (Pakistan and Afghanistan). In the case of the Kurds, despite the division, sentiments of solidarity and expressed desire for self-determination in the shape of a unified Kurd state have been part of their history. However, the divisions into different states have proved stronger than this aspiration, leading to struggles by the Kurds within the confines of the respective states they find themselves in.
The Iraqi Kurds fought a long guerrilla war against their state for independence, led by Mulla Mustafa Barzani and his Peshmerga fighters from 1961 to 1975, but were eventually defeated, leading to the exile of Barzani in the Soviet Union and Iran, where he eventually died in 1979. After the overthrow of Saddam by the US in 2003, the Iraqi Kurds, now led by Mustafa’s son Masoud Barzani, gained autonomous control of their oil-rich territory in northern Iraq in a tenuous alliance with the new regime imposed on Baghdad through US arms. The Iranian Kurds took advantage of the Soviet Union’s control of northern Iran after WWII to declare an independent Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, but it was crushed after the Soviets withdrew. An attempt to resurrect the Mahabad Republic after the Iranian revolution of 1979 was also brutally crushed. Iraq, Iran and Turkey have long followed forced assimilationist policies against their respective Kurd populations.
In Turkey, recovering after WWI from the loss of the Ottoman empire, this forced assimilationist policy denied the Kurds’ very existence, dubbing them ‘Mountain Turks’ in the 1930s and 1940s. The words “Kurds”, “Kurdistan”, “Kurdish” were officially banned. After the military coup in 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life till 1991. Many who spoke, published, sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. It was initially against this assimilationist loss of identity and to gain cultural and political rights that the Kurdish Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane (PKK) was formed in 1978 under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan with a programmatic demand for autonomy. However, it was the Turkish state’s continuing fierce repression, including systematic executions, imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, destruction of villages, the murder of Kurdish journalists, activists, politicians, the prosecution and sentencing of teachers providing, and students demanding education in Kurdish, and the entire panoply of the modern state’s oppressive capabilities that incrementally persuaded the PKK to pick up the gun and wage an armed guerrilla struggle for independence in 1984.
The trajectory of the PKK’s guerrilla war has constantly fluctuated between conflict and unilateral ceasefires by the PKK in an attempt to restore peace through negotiations. But successive Turkish regimes, including the present Erdogan government, have never abandoned the mailed fist even while paying lip service to a peaceful solution through negotiations. The Turkish military pressure over the years on the PKK resulted in retreats into Syria, Lebanon, and eventually northern Iraq, the Iraqi Kurd area, where the leadership of the PKK is currently based. Unfortunately, the prime leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, who was snatched in an operation in Nairobi allegedly with the help of the CIA and Israel, has been in solitary confinement in a prison in the Sea of Marmara since 1999. Even from that isolation, Ocalan has attempted again and again to negotiate a peaceful solution with successive Turkish governments but to no avail.
This time though, through the intermediary role of the pro-Kurdish DEM party, whose delegation met Ocalan in prison, his message announcing the “end of the armed struggle” of the PKK has been made public, adding the PKK should now dissolve itself. The message and its import have been accepted by the PKK leadership in Iraq. What remains to be seen is whether the Erdogan government will accede to the PKK’s demand for the release of Ocalan from his long and lonely incarceration, and whether that will be accompanied by negotiations that frame a new future for the Kurds in Turkey and, indeed, for Turkey as a whole.
The Kurd example, whether in Turkey, Iraq, Iran or Syria, points to the futility and risks involved in denying a minority nationality its cultural and political rights in an attempt to wipe out its very existence through forced assimilation. Let us hope wisdom prevails and Ankara finds a fresh path to apply salve on the deep wounds of its Kurd people and adopts a democratic attitude to the vexed Kurd problem.
We in Pakistan too should learn the lessons embedded in the Kurdish problem in the four states between whom the Kurdish people are divided. The flowering of diverse cultures is the best means of achieving genuine unity between the federating units of any state. Pakistan can only be enriched and strengthened by its open hearted embrace of its minority nationalities, allowing an organic coming together of our diverse peoples to forge a voluntary, respectful unity, not one maintained by the knout.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
Russia-Ukraine War: Origins and Endgame
Rashed Rahman
Three years after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the advent of Donald Trump into power in the US has upset the applecart for Volodymyr Zelensky and hints at a changed geopolitical scenario in Europe and the wider world. Trump had exhibited a soft spot for Russian President Vladimir Putin even in his first term, and after leaving office, consistently opposed the war while expressing a tilt towards Russia. During his election campaign and on the eve of a return to the White House, Trump made no bones about wanting to, and being capable of, ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict “within 24 hours”. The timeline may have been the usual Trump hyperbole, but it did indicate the US President’s mindset vis-a-vis the war.
What is the Russia-Ukraine conflict? What are its origins and, in the light of the remarks above, its likely endgame? The problem with seeking an objective account of this conundrum is that the whole affair is shrouded in propaganda and partisan spin from both sides (not an unusual phenomenon in wars). First, some historical background.
Ukraine’s Donbas region, around which the current war has been waged, is considered in Russian historiography as the original home of the Russian people and culture after they migrated there from Scandinavia around the 8th-11thcenturies. Add to this nostalgia the fact that the Donbas, largely Russian to date, complained of discrimination and worse from Ukraine, particularly after the Maidan uprising in 2014. In the aftermath of that political cataclysm of regime change (one of the ‘colour’ revolutions in Eastern Europe orchestrated as it is widely believed they were, by the CIA), both the Russian denizens of Donbas and their Russian Orthodox Church (revived after the Soviet collapse in 1991) came under alleged attack by neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine. These neo-Nazis are considered the heirs of the WWII Ukrainian collaborators with the occupying Nazi war machine of Hitler.
Russian sensitivity regarding its diaspora scattered throughout the former Soviet Republics has informed Moscow’s actions in Abkhazia, Georgia (where a separatist Russian movement was indirectly supported by Russia) and Ukraine, the two most extreme examples of such intervention. Moscow has also kept an eye on the interests of Russians in the Central Asian Republics that broke away and became independent in 1991. Putin in particular appears to have made it his life’s mission to ensure his Russian compatriots in the former Soviet Republics are not maltreated.
On the other side of the divide is the perfidious role of the West which, not content with its ‘victory’ over the Soviet Union, has been needling post-Soviet Russia with NATO-creep (the inclusion of Eastern European countries in the military alliance, a development the West initially assured Moscow would not happen) and the doing down of Russia’s military might (which includes nuclear weapons). All this is intended to weaken Russia and ensure the US-led West’s unchallenged global hegemony. Sceptics are invited to cast a glance at how China, after being embraced when it opened its doors to capitalism under Deng Xiaoping, is today being considered an economic, political and military threat by the US-led West precisely because of the progress it has made. Thucydides is therefore alive and kicking.
Had the West remained content with the humbling of Russia post-Soviet collapse, things may not have reached this pretty pass. However, Trump is making one thing clear: the days of Zelensky are now numbered, along with those in Ukraine who still dream of recovering all the territory they have lost to Russia in this war. Trump seems uninterested in Ukraine’s refrain along these lines. His avid interest currently is in asking Zelensky for $ 500 billion in rare minerals to be found in Ukraine as payback for all the aid Washington has bestowed on the (by now lost) Ukrainian cause.
Another major loser in the second Trumpian era is Europe, which has been excluded from the table as US-Russia meetings roll out. The European Union’s angst about Ukrainian, and therefore European, security has been trashed by the new/old incumbent in the White House. Trump had in the past railed against the continuation of the US stationing troops in and bearing the cost of Europe’s security (a hangover of the post-WWII world) and repeatedly asked for Europe to increase its contribution to European defence. This had not been taken too seriously in practice by the EU, lip service notwithstanding. Now it seems the free lunch is over and the chickens have come home to roost.
Welcome to the Trumpian universe.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
The Naked Punch Review, Filmbar, Progressive Students Federation, Surkh Sawera, Kitab Ghar, Roshni Publications invite you to a screening of Mara Ahmed's film "Return to Sender: Women of Colour in Colonial Postcards & the Politics of Representation" at the Research and Publication Centre (RPC) on Thursday, February 27, 2025 at 6:00 pm.
The documentary explores how photography, art and culture were used to shape colonial narratives of gender, race and ethnicity in the Subcontinent. These constructs are still prominent in our society's structural vernacular, yet so are the quiet, subversive ways that were born to resist and create newer visions and possibilities.
This event is part of the Red Book Day festivities taking place throughout Pakistan, organised by many progressive publishing houses, artist collectives and student organisations. Red Book Day celebrates the publication of the Communist Manifesto, providing us with opportunities to revisit, reimagine and push forward Marx's ideas within a broader context.
Mara Ahmed is a multidisciplinary artist who works across various media including film, sound and visual art to challenge existing structures of post-colonial modernity and political borders. She will deliver a talk to accompany the film, followed by a Q & A session.
All friends are welcome. Tea will be served.
Address: Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd Floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom).
Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)
Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)
Cells: 0302 8482737 & 0333 4216335
Mad Hatter strikes again…and again
Rashed Rahman
US President Donald Trump, in his inimitable style and thrust, continues to rock the boat globally. Not only has he unleashed (without, it seems, any consultation, and almost as a parting shot in his joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) his ridiculous ‘cleanse Gaza, develop a riviera front there’ absurdity, he has threatened higher, punitive tariffs on friends, allies and ‘adversaries’ alike, triggering fears of a global trade war. The former has, as expected, evoked condemnation across the board and the world. The latter has transpired, at least in the case of Canada and Mexico, as bargaining chips intended to ‘persuade’ both neighbours to negotiate solutions to illegal immigration and trade issues. And let’s not even tarry on Trump’s threats to retake the Panama Canal and rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Trump thinks he can strike deals to reverse the decline of the US as a major industrial and trading power, the former having been depleted by globalisation and its concomitant shift of industries abroad, particularly to the lower cost, lower wages developing world, the latter highlighting the trade deficits of the US with most major trading partners, which have become a permanent fact for long.
Is Trump stark, raving mad, as some writers have suggested? I do not flatter myself that my characterisation of him as the Mad Hatter has prompted this description. In my view, Trump is a sane, albeit extreme and not always well informed, defender of what he calls nostalgically “America Great Again”. The facts, however, which Trump may or may not be aware of, point to the gaps and fallacies of his flurry of pronouncements since assuming office. Take illegal immigration for example. The southern states of the US, including Texas and California, have for years relied on illegal immigrant Mexican labour to bring in fruit and other agricultural harvests. The total clampdown on illegal immigration that Trump has initiated, without considering legitimising seasonal visiting labour during harvest seasons, is likely to cause major economic disruptions in these southern states because American labour, particularly white, is reluctant to take such jobs. The higher tariffs imposed on Canada and Mexico, now halted till negotiations on trade and illegal immigration issues are being conducted, cannot match the disruptive effects of a trade war between China and the US. A tentative start of this war has been signalled by China raising tariffs on some US imports as a warning shot across the bows against proceeding further down this path. Europe too is girding up its loins for a possible retaliatory raft of tariff increases if Trump carries out his threat to ‘reverse’ the US’s trade deficits, whether with friend or foe. Whether he succeeds in this enterprise or not, his attempt to do so is likely to cause severe repercussions and ripples through the global economic order touted as ‘rules based’. The fallout will not leave any part of the globe untouched. The declining hegemonic power (the US) is desperately trying to reverse the relentless march of history towards a multi-polar world, in which China threatens to overtake the US economically (perhaps not yet militarily).
On Palestine, almost on cue, Netanyahu has added fuel to the fire sparked by Trump’s insensitive, ill thought through, seemingly impromptu remarks on Gaza by suggesting the Palestinians should be ‘liberated’ from the world’s biggest open air prison (Gaza). This ‘thoughtful’ follow through to Trump’s silliness has added new feathers to this ‘comic’ duo’s circus act. Netanyahu generously absolves the US from the onerous task of sending American troops to ethnically cleanse Gaza, offering Israeli troops for the task. Further, he proclaims loftily: only those Gazans will be allowed back who forego terrorism. If this were not adding salt to Palestinian wounds inflicted by Netanyahu and his fascist settler colonialist, expansionist state, one might be tempted to laugh. Clearly Netanyahu has not drawn the correct conclusions from the incredibly courageous Palestinian resistance to Israeli genocide in Gaza. The Palestinians in reply to Netanyahu’s nonsense have reiterated their love of their land and their right to live on it. They have rejected any repetition of the 1948 Naqba (displacement). Despairing of the ruins their homes have been reduced to by the Israeli terror inflicted by its military machine, oiled and fed by the US-led west, the Gaza Palestinians have reiterated their patriotic love of their land. And lest we forget, despite the ceasefire a month ago, Israel has continued its killing spree in Gaza. The casualty count in this period alone is 110 Palestinians killed, 900 wounded. Add to this the raids by the Israeli military in the West Bank, and you get an inkling of what Israel’s real plan is: evict the Palestinians by hook or by crook from Gaza and the West Bank and annex both. Intone therefore the funeral dirge for the much touted, seemingly more and more impossible, ‘two-state’ solution.
Now there is only one solution. The Palestinians must continue their resistance struggle against Israel despite the odds and the many more sacrifices required of them in order to overthrow, liquidate the Zionist state and liberate Palestine, no matter how long it takes. Jewish citizens of Israel innocent of crimes against the Palestinian people can then be offered the choice of remaining as equal citizens of a liberated Palestine, or emigration to a country of their choice. Those Israelis found guilty of atrocities and crimes against the Palestinian people must face charges and be punished justly for their abhorrent past. The Palestinians unfortunately cannot, and, given the track record, should not rest too many hopes in the Arab or Muslim world. These are toothless entities, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
The February 2025 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com
Contents:
1. Lara Deeb, Maya Mikdashi, Tsolin Nalbantian, Nadya Sbaiti: A Primer on Lebanon: History, Palestine and Resistance to Israeli Violence.
2. Chris Harman: The return of the National question – II: Classical Marxism and the National Question.
3. W B Bland: The Pakistani Revolution – VII: The Role of the National Awami Party, the 1965 General Elections, War with India.
4. Hamza Alavi: Imperialism Old and New.
5. Dr Abbas Zaidi: Punjabis – Living down a vulgar language.
6. Maqsud Nuri: Socrates’ views regarding the business world.
Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)
Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)
Autocracy on the march
Rashed Rahman
The portents point to an overwhelming march towards autocracy. A country in the throes of unremitting crises in the political, economic and social fields will inevitably give rise to opposition and dissent. This is what the present dispensation has set out to control, if not quash. First it was the mainstream media. Newspapers are today a pale reflection of a once vibrant print media, even under the worst military dictatorships in our history, when journalists learnt to ‘creatively’ write between the lines, relying on the intelligence of the reader to discern the invisible fine print. Television, with its already deserved accolade of the ‘idiot box’, today is several lengths beyond even idiocy. Dictated content and choice of appearances, all subsumed within the looming weapon of the ‘cut-off’ switch, renders our plethora of ‘news’ channels unwatchable, except by the suffering few who are compelled to be tortured thus because of professional reasons. Now that the mainstream media has been ‘tamed’ it appears to be the turn of the social media.
When the internet, and subsequently social media, burst upon the stage, everyone welcomed this blossoming of freedom of expression and speech. With time, the flaws in giving everyone with a cellphone the ability to post just about anything, did betray the depth of foolishness that surprisingly resides hidden hitherto amongst humanity as a whole. Hopeful minds comforted themselves with the thought that this was terra incognita, and would soon settle down to more acceptable norms. That optimism has been refuted over time. The foolishness on social media has grown, if anything. Foolishness was perhaps the least worrying of the new phenomena that began to assert themselves on social media before long. These included criminal, exploitative, even abusive usage. Despite their holy vows to prevent such phenomena being allowed to exist, let alone grow, social media platforms and providers have failed to scotch this unacceptable face of the new means of global communication, not the least because of their non-transparent, befogged ‘principles’, vows of political correctness that soon were exposed as hollow and hypocritical.
But social media did have a positive side too. Dissenting views, that could not find an outlet in the mainstream media, proliferated in the ‘liberated’ universe of its new born brother. It is this dissenting opinion and its airing on social media that the Pakistani government is now intending to quash through the draconian amendments to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA). The new provisions are frightening, even to hardened souls who have lived and struggled through the darkest periods of our history. The alarm is at the unbelievably broad, virtually undefined provisions that virtually permit the authorities to pummel with threats of imprisonment and fines anyone daring to voice an opinion that does not meet with the approval of the present dispensation or its military establishment backers (the real power behind the throne). If the powers-that-be delude themselves that such draconian steps will not meet resistance, clearly they have forgotten our history and in the process failed to learn any lessons from it. The entire journalist community has come out against this autocratic, suppressive construct. A decisive struggle for freedom of speech and expression is on the cards.
As if this were not enough, the manipulation of the superior judiciary to extinguish its independence marches on unabated. The superior judiciary has been targeted since some judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) revealed publicly that they had suffered attempts at intimidation to deliver verdicts according to our ubiquitous intelligence services’ wishes. Since that sensational exposure, the entire superior judiciary, but especially the Supreme Court (SC) and the IHC have been targeted in order to ensure no adverse judgements would be forthcoming, allergic as the security state is to being thus challenged by a pillar of the state that willy-nilly we all pay lip service to the independence of.
First and foremost, through the 26th Amendment, rushed through parliament without so much as a nod towards parliamentary consultation, let alone debate, the carving out of the Constitutional Bench (CB) from the ranks of the SC judges has rendered the rest of the SC virtually toothless. With due regard and respect for the honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) and his brother judges, this humiliation is beyond the pale of acceptance. Legal challenges to the 26thAmendment are perforce being heard by the CB, a creature that owes its birth to the same Amendment. Does this not represent an instance of being judge and jury in one’s own case? Perish the thought, because when this anomaly was pointed out by the counsel for former CJP Jawwad Khwaja, the CB rudely admonished him and even threatened to throw him out of court. I may be wrong, but this episode smacks of a guilty conscience. In the past, no matter how provocative the arguments of a counsel, the superior judiciary either responded with silence or pertinent arguments, never with rudeness beyond the ambit of behaviour expected from His Lordships.
This is not all. The IHC has received three judges from other High Courts, one of whom has been touted as the new Chief Justice of the IHC once the present incumbent is elevated to the SC. Five IHC judges in a letter to the CJP and the Chief Justices of the High Courts from whence the new transferred judges have been inducted into the IHC have raised objections to this ‘gerrymandering’ superior judiciary appointments. Lawyers’ bodies too are up in arms against such unprecedented manipulation. A ‘stacked’ SC, CB and IHC can only demean and destroy the respect owed to His Lordships, thereby destroying whatever little is still left of the public’s confidence in our superior judiciary.
Keep an eye on the burgeoning opposition to the two topics dealt with above. Journalists, lawyers, civil society and even political parties out of favour or still possessing a conscience, this is the joint front priming itself to come out against the blatant march of autocracy in our country.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
As written by me:
Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
Rashed Rahman
Trump 2.0 has come out swinging, enacting a flurry of executive orders along the lines of what he had promised during his election campaign. A short list of the most important pronouncements will help to understand the implications of Trump’s frantic, hurried interventions. First and foremost, Trump’s outlandish suggestion to “clean Gaza”. Trump thinks Gaza is now a “demolition site” after Israel’s genocidal over one year’s war has left little else but crumbling ruins in the Strip. In Trump’s ‘humanitarian’ heart is the notion that Jordan and Egypt should accept around a million and a half people out of Gaza’s population of about 2.4 million in order to build housing for them in the countries of their displacement and offer them safe and peaceful lives after their unprecedented travails. Surprise, surprise, this outlandish notion finds no takers, from Gaza’s ruined and displaced people to Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Jordan or Egypt. Gaza’s people affirm they wish to return to their homes, a desire temporarily stymied by the Israeli army’s refusal to let displaced denizens return to their (destroyed) homes in the north, a glitch that latest reports assure may be overcome now that one Israeli prisoner to be originally released last Saturday has now been handed over. Palestinians fear Trump’s proposal is the Naqba 2.0, the original terrorisation, murder and eviction of the Palestinian people in 1948 when the Zionist state was imposed on them with US-led western imperialism’s support.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army, freed from the Gaza war through the ceasefire, has been conducting raids in the West Bank even before the guns fell silent in Gaza. Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank has once again been the main target of the Israeli army, which they try to justify in the name of combating terrorism but which, if past such actions are taken into account has likely cost the lives of many innocent Palestinians. The Israeli army is not known for restraint when it comes to targeting Palestinians. The actions by Israel in the West Bank will no doubt receive a big fillip from Trump’s lifting of sanctions (imposed by his predecessor Biden) on West Bank Israeli settlers who have been attacking peaceful Palestinians, murdering them and burning their homes, farms and possessions. This too is an effort to force the Palestinians to flee their difficult, under threat lives in the West Bank to pave the way for Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Territory captured by the expansionist Israeli state in the Golan Heights while taking advantage of the recent civil war in Syria that ended with the ouster of Assad is still in the Israeli grip, while Israel’s military incursion into southern Lebanon during its war with Hezbollah too is not being vacated as per the agreement with Lebanon to end that conflict. Twenty two Lebanese citizens wishing to return to their homes in that area have been murdered by the Israeli army. Trump has lifted the temporary suspension by Biden on the supply of 2,000 lb. bombs to Israel. All these developments point to the precariousness of the ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, and the likely increased efforts by Israel to extend its presence or even annex these new occupied territories, such being the intrinsic character and zeitgeist of the Zionist entity thrust like a dagger in the heart of the Middle East by the western imperialists.
Trump has ‘dumped’ the Afghans who worked with the US during its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. Over 40,000 such Afghans await deliverance and refuge in various countries, including Pakistan, after Trump halted their already long overdue flights to the US to be granted special immigrant status. This reminds one of the similar ‘dumping’ by the fleeing US forces from Vietnam in 1975 of all those South Vietnamese who had worked for the US during its war in Vietnam. Since this ‘dumping’ after usage seems to be the pattern of US behaviour, it holds lessons for anyone contemplating playing such a role again for the fickle US.
Trump has unleashed his border security forces against illegal immigrants on US soil. Those arrested are to be deported en masse. Mexico has refused to entertain such flights, while Colombia’s initial refusal has been reversed by the threat of coercive tariff impositions by Washington. These actions have birthed a general resentment and anger throughout Latin America, particularly where Left governments are in power.
Trump threatens trade wars with the US’s major trading partners China, Canada and Mexico. He demands all countries either manufacture on US soil or be ready to face punitive sanctions and high tariffs. Shunning free market norms and multilateralism in his quixotic quest to “Make America Great Again!” Trump risks failure at home and destabilisation of the global, intrinsically linked economy of today’s world. The results are unlikely to be a revival of US industry, and are certain to cause so much ruction internationally that the whole world will be hard put to it to ride out the storm economically, let alone achieve progress and growth.
Welcome to Trump’s modern-day Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (with apologies to Alice in Wonderland).
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
As published by the paper:
A Mad Hatter’s tea party
Rashed Rahman
Trump 2.0 has come out swinging, enacting a flurry of executive orders along the lines of what he had promised during his election campaign. A short list of the most important pronouncements will help to understand the implications of Trump’s frantic, hurried interventions. First and foremost, Trump’s outlandish suggestion to “clean Gaza”. Trump thinks Gaza is now a “demolition site” after Israel’s genocidal over one year’s war has left little else but crumbling ruins in the Strip. In Trump’s ‘humanitarian’ heart is the notion that Jordan and Egypt should accept around a million and a half people out of Gaza’s population of about 2.4 million in order to build housing for them in the countries of their displacement and offer them safe and peaceful lives after their unprecedented travails. Surprise, surprise, this outlandish notion finds no takers, from Gaza’s ruined and displaced people to Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Jordan or Egypt. Gaza’s people affirm they wish to return to their homes, a desire temporarily stymied by the Israeli army’s refusal to let displaced denizens return to their (destroyed) homes in the north, a glitch that latest reports assure may be overcome now that one Israeli prisoner to be originally released last Saturday has now been handed over. Palestinians fear Trump’s proposal is the Naqba 2.0, the original terrorisation, murder and eviction of the Palestinian people in 1948 when the Zionist state was imposed on them with US-led western imperialism’s support.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army, freed from the Gaza war through the ceasefire, has been conducting raids in the West Bank even before the guns fell silent in Gaza. Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank has once again been the main target of the Israeli army, which they try to justify in the name of combating terrorism but which, if past such actions are taken into account, has likely cost the lives of many innocent Palestinians. The Israeli army is not known for restraint when it comes to targeting Palestinians. The actions by Israel in the West Bank will no doubt receive a big fillip from Trump’s lifting of sanctions (imposed by his predecessor Biden) on West Bank Israeli settlers who have been attacking peaceful Palestinians, murdering them and burning their homes, farms and possessions. This too is an effort to force the Palestinians to flee their difficult, under threat lives in the West Bank to pave the way for Israeli annexation of the Werst Bank. Territory captured by the expansionist Israeli state in the Golan Heights while taking advantage of the recent civil war in Syria that ended with the ouster of Assad is still in the Israeli grip, while Israel’s military incursion into southern Lebanon during its war with Hezbollah too is not being vacated as per the agreement with Lebanon to end that conflict. Twenty two Lebanese citizens wishing to return to their homes in that area have been murdered by the Israeli army. Trump has lifted the temporary suspension by Biden on the supply of 2,000 lb. bombs to Israel. All these developments point to the precariousness of the ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, and the likely increased efforts by Israel to extend its presence or even annex these new occupied territories, such being the intrinsic character and zeitgeist of the Zionist entity thrust like a dagger in the heart of the Middle East by the western imperialists.
Trump has ‘dumped’ the Afghans who worked with the US during its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. Over 40,000 such Afghans await deliverance and refuge in various countries, including Pakistan, after Trump halted their already long overdue flights to the US to be granted special immigrant status. This reminds one of the similar ‘dumping’ by the fleeing US forces from Vietnam in 1975 of all those South Vietnamese who had worked for the US during its war in Vietnam. Since this ‘dumping’ after usage seems to be the pattern of US behaviour, it holds lessons for anyone contemplating playing such a role again for the fickle US.
Trump has unleashed his border security forces against illegal immigrants on US soil. Those arrested are to be deported en masse. Mexico has refused to entertain such flights, while Colombia’s initial refusal has been reversed by the threat of coercive tariff impositions by Washington. These actions have birthed a general resentment and anger throughout Latin America, particularly where Left governments are in power.
Trump threatens trade wars with the US’s major trading partners China, Canada and Mexico. He demands all countries either manufacture on US soil or be ready to face punitive sanctions and high tariffs. Shunning free market norms and multilateralism in his quixotic quest to “Make America Great Again!” Trump risks failure at home and destabilisation of the global, intrinsically linked economy of today’s world. The results are unlikely to be a revival of US industry, and are certain to cause so much ruction internationally that the whole world will be hard put to it to ride out the storm economically, let alone achieve progress and growth.
Welcome to Trump’s modern-day Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (with apologies to Alice in Wonderland).
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
Six canals kerfuffle
Rashed Rahman
Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal has been roundly taken to task for his dismissive attitude to Sindh’s objections to the proposed construction of six new canals on the Indus to water the Cholistan desert. Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Sindh president Nisar Khuhro and former chairman Senate Raza Rabbani have criticised Ahsan Iqbal for rubbishing Sindh’s objections to the project as a ‘baseless debate’. To prove the worthy Federal Minister for Planning wrong, Khuhro and Rabbani have in no uncertain terms laid out Sindh’s case on the issue.
First and foremost, Nisar Khuhro questioned where the water to fill the Cholistan canals’ 4,152 cusecs capacity would come from. As it is, Khuhro argued, the 1991 Water Accord has never been implemented in its true spirit. It is a fact that the Water Accord agreed under the Nawaz Sharif government after its desired Kalabagh Dam project was shot down set a provisional figure of 10 MAF flow downstream Kotri, pending further studies. This 10 MAF provisional flow was intended to meet southern Sindh’s agricultural and drinking water needs, as well as safeguard the Indus Delta from sea intrusion. In a totally dishonest manner, this provisional 10 MAF is released during the summer flood and monsoon season in one go, leaving the Indus dry downstream Kotri for most of the year. This legerdemain has destroyed agriculture in the southern districts of Thatta, Badin, Sujawal, Tando Mohammad Khan, etc, and affected the Indus Delta, its mangrove forests and ecology because of sea intrusion. Surely that was not the intention of the Water Accord. One may ask in all innocence where are the ‘further studies’ the Accord laid down to agree a more permanent flow figure south of Kotri? Not a single one has been carried out.
Nisar Khuhro let his ‘imagination’ flow to answer the rhetorical question where the additional water for the Cholistan canals would come from. He feared that after remodelling of the Qadirabad, Sulemanki and Rasool Barrages, water from the Jehlum River would be released into the Cholistan canals, thereby rendering perennial the ‘flood’ Chashma-Jehlum Link and Taunsa-Panjnad Canals. As it is, the Chashma-Jehlum Link Canal was ‘sold’ to Sindh as a ‘flood’ canal, only to be allowed perennial flow since 1974 with then Punjab Governor Ghulam Mustafa Khar’s help and support. Nisar Khuhro also brushed aside Ahsan Iqbal’s contention that no province would get more than its settled share of water by pointing out that already, pumping machines had been installed from Taunsa to Guddu Barrage to steal Sindh’s water share. To substantiate his claim, Nisar Khuhro asked why the recommendations of the report on this water theft by MNA Khalid Magsi were not implemented. Khuhro raised the issue of why the long awaited telemetry system had yet to be installed and the Council of Common Interests (CCI) long delayed, constitutionally binding meeting was not being called to discuss these water issues.
Raza Rabbani on the other hand, in his response to Ahsan Iqbal’s insensitive statement added concerns regarding respect for provincial autonomy, the Water Accord, the rights of Sindh as the lower riparian and the sentiments of the people of the province. He pointed out that the decision to construct new canals to divert water from the Indus for farming in Punjab’s Cholistan region could not be taken by the federal government. He too pointed in the direction of the failure to call a meeting of the CCI, with no indication of whether or when the somnolent federal government may choose to overcome its violation of the Constitution in this regard. Raza Rabbani went on to say that the agriculture sector is the linchpin of Sindh’s economy (hence the sensitivity regarding the water issue, based on past upper riparian unfair practices). The province contributes 23 percent of the federation’s national value-added, 41 percent of the national output of rice, 31 percent of sugarcane and 21 percent of wheat.
Public opinion in Sindh has been stirred by the proposed new canals ‘adventure’. Apart from the statements quoted above, the opposition in Sindh has formed a broad-based Save Indus River Movement (SIRM) that is on the march from Hyderabad (yesterday it had reached Umerkot). The SIRM has accused the PPP of hypocrisy on the Cholistan canals issue, claiming President Asif Zardari had given his assent to the so-called Green Pakistan Initiative (under which the new canals have apparently been mooted) while chairing a meeting at the President’s House on July 8, 2024, while the PPP in Sindh was railing against the proposal. Not to be left behind (or miss a chance to do down the present dispensation), incarcerated Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) vice-chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi has let loose a broadside in the shape of a handwritten letter from jail, which argues the PPP should withdraw its support to the incumbent dispensation if its objections to the Cholistan canals are not heard. To add spice to the matter, there is the unsubstantiated allegation from Musharraf’s time that his insistence on building the Kalabagh Dam and taking out a canal or canals to water Cholistan was motivated by the fact that certain retired Generals had acquired (or been allotted) lands in Cholistan. When Musharraf finally backed off the Kalabagh Dam idea under pressure from Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) (not to mention Balochistan), it is believed there were a few sad faces amongst these Generals. But all this is hearsay.
The fact is that the lower riparian’s litany of past complaints regarding water sharing has now had more added to it. A federation that insists on overriding privileges for the dominant province across the board, is a federation teetering on the brink of a major disaster.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
