Business Recorder Column February 11, 2020

Maulana’s ‘assurance’

Rashed Rahman

Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), is a frustrated man. Two rounds of a sit-in in Islamabad and highly ambitious attempted blockage of highways throughout the country last year failed to find traction and had to be abandoned. Now the Maulana has announced round three of his campaign to oust the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf government by once again taking to the streets in Karachi on February 23, 2020, followed by a national convention in Islamabad on March 1, 2020 and a public meeting in Lahore on March 19, 2020.

The Maulana was bitter about the ‘betrayal’ of his cause by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) by not fully backing his drive against the government. The vote in favour of the bill to extend the COAS’ tenure proved, in the Maulana’s eyes, the icing on the cake of the ‘betrayal’ by the two largest mainstream parties. All this is by now well known as the Maulana has not been shy of criticising these parties on this account earlier too.

But what was intriguing about the Maulana’s latest avatar was the ‘revelation’ that he had called off the Islamabad sit-in on an ‘assurance’ that Prime Minister Imran Khan would immediately resign and fresh elections would be held three months after. No prizes for guessing who might have given such an assurance. Maulana referred to Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leader Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi’s statement that he could not disclose the conditions that led to the end of the sit-in since those were a ‘sacred trust’ with him by asking Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi to divulge the details of the ‘understanding’ that led to the end of the sit-in. The Maulana went on to castigate the government for the price hike making the people’s lives miserable, claimed it was his 13-day sit-in in Islamabad that caused the fissures appearing in the ruling coalition’s ranks, and dismissed the sitting parliament as based on a bogus mandate that had resulted in a vacuum in the corridors of power.

Whatever the hidden truth, it appears unlikely that the powers-that-be so easily gave in to the Maulana’s demands. If Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi did play the role of mediator and carrier of messages, it may not be the messenger who is to blame. This is not the only conundrum to emerge in recent days. First, there was the startling revelation on social media that Ehsanullah Ehsan, the erstwhile spokesman of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who surrendered to the authorities in 2007, had ‘escaped’ to Turkey. Although the report was belatedly confirmed by ‘a senior security official’, there is no clear or credible explanation of how such a prominent TTP figure who had been singing like a canary while ensconced in a safe house in Peshawar had managed to vanish from under the noses of those charged with his security. It is difficult to resist the suspicion that having been treated with kid gloves in exchange for information about the TTP that allowed the security forces to considerably root out its cells and organisation, he has been given a ‘free pass’ to freedom somewhere outside the country.

Or take the reappearance of the Lal Masjid cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz inside the infamous mosque two weeks ago, followed by hundreds of his militant female followers occupying Jamia Hafsa once again, to demand of the government that he be restored to his former position of the khateebof the mosque, be compensated for the cancellation of the plot in Islamabad’s H-11 sector meant for Jamia Hafsa, and paid between Rs 20 to 35 million claimed to have been spent by them on Jamia Hafsa. Do we need reminding of the bloody events of 2007 in and around Lal Masjid? How is it that Maulana Abdul Aziz gained entrance to Lal Masjid when the authorities had reportedly banned his entry? How were the Maulana’s female ninjas able to overcome the barriers to entry in Jamia Hafsa? Were the mosque and seminary left unguarded? Now reports speak of a ‘compromise’ hammered out with the Maulana by the Islamabad Capital Authority whereby he would be allowed to stay in the mosque but not deliver sermons, would be given a 20 kanal plot to build Jamia Hafsa and, according to Maulana Aziz, be paid Rs 35 million compensation for the ‘confiscated’ Jamia Hafsa in H-11.

The establishment seems to have latched on to the preferred tactic of making concessions to our religious parties and extremists in a bid to buy time, defuse the present standoff/crisis, and then deal with the recalcitrants in an ‘appropriate’ manner. First and foremost, we must remind ourselves that it is the establishment that, beginning with Ziaul Haq’s benighted rule, created, nurtured, and in various ways supported religious parties and fanatical extremist groups inside the country in pursuit of jihadi enterprises in Afghanistan and Indian Held Kashmir. Ignoring the warnings over the years of knowledgeable analysts that these proxy chickens would one day come home to roost, when some of these parties or groups no longer served the purposes of the establishment or actually took up arms against the state, they were unceremoniously dumped or worse.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman was winkled out of parliamentary politics through depriving him of his traditional seat in D I Khan in the 2018 general elections. Hence his newfound insight into rigged elections (of which he had been a beneficiary in the past, even forming the MMA government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under Musharraf). The hints he is dropping after the failure of his sit-in vis-à-vis assurances of an entry back into the power corridors reflect the old game of pressurising through street power the powers-that-be and then negotiating an end in return for concessions.

Unfortunately for the Maulana, he has failed to read the tea leaves correctly. If only he had reflected on the manner in which the Tehreek-i-Labbaiq Pakistan’s sit-in in Islamabad was dealt with (cash bribery to bring it to an end, followed by a crackdown on the group) or Maulana Aziz is currently being ‘favoured’ (with perhaps a similar denouement when circumstances allow), he would have taken the ‘assurances’ he received with a huge pinch of salt.

Maulana’s third wave campaign is likely to go the way of the first two, with his reaching out to religious groups (excluding the Jamaat-i-Islami with which relations have cooled) likely to prove no substitute for the PPP and PML-N, who for all practical purposes have abandoned him.

Surveying the above examples, it should be amply evident that playing footsie with the establishment is a dead end as far as the people and their aspirations for justice and a better life are concerned. We should therefore leave the different varieties of Maulanas and their retinues to their own devices and concentrate instead on building a mass people’s movement for genuine democracy, a socially progressive system, and relief and a better life for the vast majority.

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Business Recorder Editorial February 11, 2020

Foreign policy controversy

An unseemly controversy has broken out regarding the country’s foreign policy. It all started when some cabinet ministers criticised the handling of foreign policy on Kashmir by the Foreign Office. Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari in particular had some trenchant things to say on the matter on the floor of the National Assembly last week. Asserting that she has followed the Kashmir issue for four decades, Shireen Mazari criticised the performance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Kashmir, saying it had failed to follow the forward looking vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan. She advocated sending parliamentary delegations abroad since the Foreign Office had missed several opportunities. During the weekly media briefing on February 6, 2020, the spokesperson of the Foreign Office defended the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by stressing that it has always taken the core issue of Kashmir very seriously and was considering a number of legal and political aspects, including taking the matter to the International Court of Justice. The spokesperson pointed out that the vision of Pakistan’s foreign policy is formulated at the leadership level by the government and is carried out under the direction of the foreign minister by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The spokesperson went on to point out that the observation that the Foreign Office is not taking the cause of Jammu and Kashmir seriously is not accurate. Pakistan and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the spokesperson added, have never been shy or negligent towards this core issue and were dedicated to taking it forward. As soon as India took the illegal and unilateral actions on August 5, 2019 (the abrogation of Kashmir’s special status), a Kashmir cell was established in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is a multi-agency unit dedicated to monitoring the evolving situation in Jammu and Kashmir and to take forward the strategy articulated by the government, steered by the foreign minister and executed by over 100 diplomatic missions of Pakistan all over the world. Taking forward the strategy on the Kashmir cause is not an event, it is a process. All aspects of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute are taken forward in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolutions. The spokesperson was asked what were the options available with the Foreign Office since so far it had failed to persuade Saudi Arabia to hold an emergency meeting on Kashmir. She was reminded of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s comments in Malaysia this week where he had complained about disunity in the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), which had failed to meet on Kashmir. In response the spokesperson defended the OIC’s role and recounted the process over the years whereby it had addressed the Kashmir issue.

The whole affair is surprising in some respects and raises some searching questions begging to be asked. Surprising because it is unprecedented that cabinet ministers should criticise their own government or its own foreign  ministry in parliament or even in the public space. Normally such discussions are held in cabinet and all decisions of the cabinet are considered binding on all cabinet members. But the really serious questions that beg for an answer include why Pakistan, its prime minister and foreign ministry’s efforts have failed to find resonance in the world at large, at the UN, in the west, and even in the Muslim world. Tentatively, it could be argued that Kashmir as one of the oldest extant disputes on the agenda of the UN is suffering from sympathy fatigue. Second, India has promoted itself in recent years as the next poster boy of development in the developing world. The opportunities this presents have persuaded a long line of countries, companies and entities to join the queue before India’s door. The west and important countries of the Muslim world are included in this company. Without doubting the government’s and the ministry of foreign affairs’ efforts in this regard, perhaps the focus should shift from within (implying fissures within the government) to without, meaning the world in the 21^stcentury and its geopolitical landscape.

Business Recorder Editorial February 7, 2020

Coalition blues

Having disbanded the committee charged with negotiating with its coalition allies over their grievances, Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan reconstituted his negotiation team and dispatched Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood to Lahore on February 3, 2020 to talk to the estranged PML-Q leadership. However, the efforts of the honourable minister appear to have come to naught. Chaudhry Shujaat and Pervaiz Elahi cast the meeting as anything but a negotiation, insisting there would be no talks with the new committee, only the fulfillment of the agreement arrived at with the previous negotiating committee. The deadlock therefore persists despite Shafqat Mahmood’s revelation during a press conference after the meeting that he had assured the Chaudhries that the new committee would not open negotiations anew but proceed on the foundations of the agreement already reached. That however was not the most important part of the press conference but rather the notable absence of the Chaudhries from it. It may be recalled that the previous negotiating committee, comprising Jahangir Tareen, Pervez Khattak and Shahzad Arbab, was disbanded and replaced by the new committee in which, apart from Shafqat Mahmood, Governor Punjab Chaudhry Sarwar and Chief Minister Usman Buzdar were included. Media reports say some party insiders complained to PM Imran Khan that Jahangir Tareen had proved too ‘soft’ and conceded more to the PML-Q than was justified. The PM then withdrew Jahangir Tareen from the negotiations with the PML-Q as well as another disgruntled coalition partner, MQM. Although the PM is within his rights to appoint anyone to negotiate with estranged coalition partners, his choice of Governor Chaudhry Sarwar and Chief Minister Usman Buzdar may not have gone down well with the Chaudhries. Their reservations revolve around the manner in which Buzdar is handling the affairs of Punjab. They are also unhappy with the Punjab bureaucracy working under him since they complain that the civil servants still are tilted towards the PML-N. Speaker of the Punjab Assembly Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi said during the meeting with Shafqat Mahmood that he would like a meeting with PM Imran Khan on the matter, and added that the federal government should refrain from making changes (in the committee) that create distrust. Moonis Elahi last week had also asked on Twitter why the PTI government seemed bent on sabotaging itself. Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and Chaudhry Shujaat expressed the view after the meeting with Shafqat Mahmood that some ministers were trying to create misunderstandings between the allies and that the PM faces a threat from people within his own party. Although disappointment was writ large over Shafqat Mahmood’s comment during his press conference that the PML-Q seemed not to believe in give and take, the fiasco appears to be a PTI own goal.

What the PTI has to learn is a very simple and basic truth. Coalitions cannot be held together without flexibility on the part of the bigger partner. Keeping coalition allies on board requires the understanding that politics in Pakistan has evolved over the years into patronage in the constituencies. If the PML-Q (and MQM) are ignored vis-à-vis their complaints that they are unable to keep their constituents satisfied because of a dearth of fulfillment of the promises made to them when they joined the coalition and an attitude on the part of the federal government that does not keep in view the exigencies of patronage politics in the constituencies, trouble is bound to follow. This is the ‘normal’ culture of coalitions in our country. It should not be taken for blackmail, since it appears to the disgruntled allies that there are promises the federal government must keep and maintain some sensitivity to their concerns. PM Imran Khan should not forget that the PTI has only a razor thin majority in the National Assembly. Unless his government smooths the ruffled feathers of its coalition partners, it may well find itself hoist on its own petard.

Business Recorder Column February 4, 2020

The price of defeat

Rashed Rahman

US Special Envoy for Afghan Peace and Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad is once more treading the well worn path of a political settlement of the Afghan war that would allow a defeated US a face-saving exit while saving as much of the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani and the liberal-progressive reforms in Afghan society since 2001. This repeat journey has taken him once again to Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban office is located and talks have resumed without disclosing their content. Swinging by Islamabad to meet Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Khalilzad ended his regional tryst in Kabul to have talks with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

The communiqués from Islamabad and Kabul tell us little, and there is only silence from Doha. Media reports churn once again past rounds of talks and at best add updates regarding the battlefield. However, the shape and conjuncture of the talks are by now clear.

The US seemed to be on the verge of an undisclosed deal with the Taliban in September 2019 before US President Donald Trump abruptly called off the whole thing because of an attack on US forces in Kabul. The resurrected talks suffered another blow because of an attack on US forces in Bagram. It seemed the US was, by its off-again, on-again talks tactic, conveying the message that violence must decrease if a peace deal is to be signed. After the two talks setbacks mentioned above, the Taliban have ‘conceded’ only a reduction of attacks on US forces and the cities, while increasing their attacks in the rural areas. Clearly, this is a tactical shift on their part to open a window to secure a US withdrawal, while keeping up the pressure on US and Afghan forces in the countryside.

Meantime the intra-Afghan dialogue so dear to President Ghani’s so far ignored government in the minuet between the US and the Taliban, seems nowhere in sight. The Taliban want to postpone any decision on this front until after a peace deal with the US is signed. So far, Washington does not appear to have put much pressure behind according the Kabul government a ‘promotion’ from ‘US puppet’ (in the Taliban’s eyes) to indispensable peace partner.

In 2019, just to illustrate the point, the Taliban carried out over 8,000 attacks, up from over 6,000 in 2018. Retaliatory stepped up air attacks by the US and operations by the CIA-trained Afghan special forces led to over 8,000 civilian casualties in the blood-soaked country. The Taliban have made overtures from time to time offering brief ceasefires, which have of late not found favour in Washington that would like a permanent ceasefire to produce the conditions for an orderly withdrawal under satisfactory conditions. However, the prospects for this ‘happy’ ending do not seem bright.

The US reacted to 9/11 by invading and occupying Afghanistan, in the process overthrowing the Taliban government that had hosted Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. In the early years after the invasion and occupation, Washington mouthed ambitious plans for ‘nation-building’ in Afghanistan to turn it into a modern, liberal, democratic state. However, the escape of the Taliban to Pakistan (and, as was later revealed, Osama bin Laden) and their guerrilla resistance put paid not only to such fanciful schemes, but over time demonstrated the precariousness of the US’s hold on the country.

By now, the peace process initiated by Washington reflects, more than anything else, its defeat at the hands of the Taliban resistance. ‘Defeat’ in such conflicts is defined by the fact that the occupying power has been unable to achieve its goals, amongst which can be counted the military defeat of the Taliban and the construction of a credible post-Taliban order in Afghanistan capable of standing on its own feet even after the US departs. For the Taliban, ‘victory’ translates into foiling the US’s plans and staying the course despite tremendous odds. As things have played out and as they now stand, the US is desperately searching for a way out of the Afghan quagmire that does not dent its image of the world’s pre-eminent power, before whom all must kneel or perish.

The likely post-US withdrawal scenario, whenever and in whatever circumstances it takes place, portends another disaster in disaster-prone Afghanistan. Whether the Ashraf Ghani government survives or not, the expected Taliban push for power (even despite some sort of power-sharing agreement, unlikely as it looks for the moment) promises a renewed civil war, with the tenuous unity of the Ashraf Ghani-led anti-Taliban Pashtun forces with the Tajik Northern Alliance coming under immense strain. If this unity succumbs to the exigencies of the new civil war with the Taliban, it could mean Afghan society splintering once again along ethnic lines, with the majority Pashtuns split between the Taliban and their foes.

Though the Pakistani military establishment may feel a quiet triumphalism at having brought the mighty US to its knees through its duality of policy of running with the (Taliban) hare and hunting with the (US) hounds, the fallout of a renewed civil war in Afghanistan cannot but affect Pakistan, particularly its Pashtun belt. If the US is paying the price of its defeat in Afghanistan and attempting to minimise the damage to its repute and status, Pakistan cannot remain smug or complacent if the above post-US withdrawal scenario plays out. The intra-Afghan dialogue, if, when and in whatever shape or form it occurs, will not untie this Gordian knot. Nor will Pakistan’s successes against its own homegrown Taliban movement remain undisturbed. The fact that the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan is now largely based across the border on Afghan soil could mean a resurgent Afghan Taliban or their all-out victory could bring the Pakistani Taliban back into play, with its concomitant implications for our security.

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Business Recorder Editorial February 4, 2020

Pressure for Afghan peace deal

The US Envoy for Afghan Peace and Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, has restarted his shuttle diplomacy to push the peace process forward. After renewed talks with the Afghan Taliban in Doha, Qatar, Zalmay Khalilzad arrived in Islamabad on January 31, 2020. Here he met Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Shah Mehmood Qureshi warned the US that the historic peace opportunity could be lost if the US did not act fast to clinch a deal. He argued that spoilers could exploit the fluid status quo. He emphasised that there was no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and if a political solution has to be achieved, the progress made so far towards a political settlement in the talks between the US and the Taliban over the past year needs to be consolidated and not frittered away. Zalmay Khalilzad, according to our Foreign Office, updated Shah Mehmood Qureshi on the developments in negotiations with the Taliban and other related issues. No further details have been made available. The US and the Taliban had restarted their talks about two weeks ago after the hiccups regarding attacks on the US forces in Kabul and Bagram provoked US President Donald Trump to slam the door shut. The renewed talks are described in media reports as ‘informal’, meaning thereby that nothing concrete is expected from them as an outcome for the moment, although both sides claim progress. However, the much touted and desired ‘deal’ remains elusive. The Taliban’s offer of reduced violence in response to US demands did not satisfy Washington as to its scope. Media reports describe the Taliban offer as being for a short ceasefire to allow the signing of the deal, which reflects their upper hand on the battlefield, whereas the US may be holding out for a longer if not permanent ceasefire to create the necessary conditions for an agreement on the pullout. The issue of an intra-Afghan dialogue is still hanging fire as the Taliban view the Ashraf Ghani government as a ‘US puppet’. After his talks in Islamabad, Zalmay Khalilzad flew to Kabul for discussions with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Currently, the talks hinge centrally on conditions, particularly the question of a reduction in violence. Unfortunately, the facts on the ground appear to point in the opposite direction. Although attacks in Kabul and the major cities have abated of late, fighting in the rural areas has intensified. In 2019, the Taliban carried out 8,204 attacks, compared to 6,974 in 2018. The trajectory of the intensification or abatement of the attacks seems to follow the ups and downs in the talks process. Fighting while talking appears therefore to have been mastered as an effective tactic by the Taliban. As Shah Mehmood Qureshi too has said after his meeting with Zalmay Khalilzad, a lot depends on the reduction of the level of violence, which has by now acquired the status of the main challenge and prerequisite. The fear of course remains that the longer the negotiations are prolonged, the greater the risk of the talks’ derailment. A single major attack on US forces could bring the whole process to a grinding halt. The crash of a US military plane in Afghanistan in recent days, claimed by the Taliban as having been shot down by them, has heightened such concerns. Although Zalmay Khalilzad received assurances from both Shah Mehmood Qureshi and General Bajwa that Pakistan would continue to back the peace efforts, there still lies many a slip between the cup and the lip. And even if some agreement is hammered out between the US and the Taliban that leads to the withdrawal of US forces from Washington’s longest running war abroad, the post-withdrawal scenario is still clouded in uncertainty, not the least because the intra-Afghan dialogue has yet to get off the ground. Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s anxiety about striking a peace deal while the iron is hot and spoilers have not yet managed to play their part is matched by the pressure of the upcoming US presidential elections. Naturally President Donald Trump would like to enter the electoral fray having fulfilled his promise to end US entanglement in the Afghan quagmire, but whether fortune will smile on him in this regard still remains to be seen.

Business Recorder Editorial February 1, 2020

Clipping AGP’s wings

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government seems embarked on a strange effort to clip the wings of the office of the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP). This development has come to light through a media report that quotes the AGP office’s reaction to the attempt by the government to downgrade the AGP from a constitutional office to just a subservient body of the Ministry of Finance. On December 23, 2019, the Cabinet Division notified the office of the AGP as an autonomous body of the Finance Division. This was part of an exercise to restructure the federal government. Through the same notification, the Cabinet Division also intimated that a board of directors of the AGP will be created (presumably having members from all or most of the federal government’s branches) to oversee the functioning of the AGP. Apart from the constitutional and administrative issues any such redefinition of the status of the AGP raises, if the move is carried out, its immediate fallout will be on the officers of the Pakistan Audit and Accounts Service (PAAS), whom the Establishment Division initially refused to acknowledge as civil servants. The Central Selection Board is in the process of considering the cases of various civil service groups, including the PAAS officers, for promotion to grade 20 and 21. However, the Establishment Division is still seeking clarification from the AGP regarding the status of the PAAS officers. On January 3, 2020, the office of the AGP wrote to the Secretary Cabinet to point out that the scheme involving redefinition of the status of the AGP office should be based on the provisions of the Constitution, since the AGP is a constitutional body charged with the responsibility to audit the accounts of the federal and provincial governments and all other state institutions. The AGP letter also pointed out that making the office of the AGP subservient to the Finance Division is a glaring instance of conflict of interest since the Finance Division’s accounts too are audited by the AGP. The letter went on to argue that the independence and autonomy of a constitutional entity such as the AGP, with countrywide jurisdiction, must be upheld by treating it on a par with other constitutional offices. The AGP office terms the government’s decision as being in violation of the Constitution and the UN General Assembly’s resolution of March 2012 that guarantee the independence of the supreme audit institutions of all countries.

Another interesting aspect of the affair is the role of the Advisor to the Prime Minister on Institutional Reforms, Dr Ishrat Husain. The Cabinet Division’s notification was contrary to the promises and commitments Dr Husain had extended to the AGP office in May 2019 that its constitutional status will be protected. Now Dr Husain is saying the Cabinet Division’s notification was indeed an error that would be rectified. There seems to be a wide gulf between what Dr Husain has been saying and what the Cabinet Division is embarked upon. It is bizarre that the Advisor on Institutional Reforms seems to have been left whistling in the wind while the government of which he is an important part, and particularly the Cabinet Division, have chosen to ignore him. Another question that arises is about the functioning of this government. Surely they inherited a plethora of seasoned and experienced civil servants who would be in a position to point out the constitutional status of the AGP office and its role as the auditor and financial watchdog over all governments and state institutions. If such advice was available and indeed rendered, it too has been ignored a la Dr Husain. Where this confused blundering will lead is not clear, but it bodes ill for the audit of government and state institutions’ finances.

Pakistan Monthly Review Article January 2019

The contemporary struggle for revolutionary change

Rashed Rahman

The year 2017 marked the hundredth anniversary of the Russian communist revolution of October 1917. The hundred years in between have been the most violent in human history. The explanation for this phenomenon is incomplete without a recognition of the central role of revolution and counter-revolution during these 100 years.

Mankind’s aspiration for a just and equitable society is almost as old as mankind itself, certainly as old as the emergence of private property, classes, and the state. All these were outgrowths of the ancient agricultural revolution, which freed large parts of humanity from the precarious existence of primitive hunter-gatherers and led to settled communities. The ancient civilisations that arose on this foundation were riverine, as this was the only reliable source of fresh water in sufficient quantity to sustain cities. The three great examples of such civilisations are our own Indus Valley, Mesopotamia and Egypt, all more or less contemporary and, as the archeological record shows, in contact and trading with each other.

These ancient civilisations and those that followed were based on the subjugation of those who worked the land and provided the riches enjoyed by their ruling elites. This subjugation took the form of slavery and serfdom in the west, the Asiatic mode in the rest of the ancient world (this mode of production rests on the state controlling agricultural production through irrigation and public works and exacting tribute in cash or kind from the peasantry). Subjugation and the extraction of surplus required repressive force, hence the evolution of the state as an instrument of the class rule and domination of the ruling elite.

Revolts and rebellions against this extremely repressive system were either crushed bloodily or at best led to a change of rulers without denting the system per se. It was not till the advent of full-blown capitalism, starting from the Industrial Revolution of the late 18^thcentury, that the glimmer of a systemic change that would abolish the ancien regime first presented itself as a distinct possibility. In its native home in the west, the capitalist mode of production concentrated a scattered peasantry in cities and towns, crowded them into factories for long hours of backbreaking work, and relegated them to slums to live in. It is these miserable conditions of life and work that spontaneously gave rise to working class solidarity through trade unions at work and poor people’s social clubs during whatever scarce leisure time was on offer. The new emerging working class thus now began to take on the hues of a class-in-itself, without yet having achieved the status of a (conscious) class-for-itself.

Many utopian meanderings later, the general idea of a just and equitable society, now clearly expressed as socialism, was placed on firm scientific foundations. This scientific socialism, enunciated by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the 19^thcentury, posited that capitalism, undoubtedly the most dynamic and innovative mode of production in mankind’s history, was also at the same time producing its own gravediggers: the working class, a section of society with no means of production to its name and only its labour power to sell in order to survive. Certainly in Europe of the 19^thcentury, this appeared a real prospect. However, with the defeat of the 1848 revolutions in Europe and the crushing of the Paris Commune of 1870, counter-revolution and reaction seemed paramount.

It was not till the early 20^thcentury that revolutionary hopes were once more awakened. But they emerged in new form since the expected revolutions in the developed capitalist countries of Europe, such as Britain or Germany, had not materialised and ‘backward’ Russia was showing signs of revolutionary ferment. It is a testament to the wisdom and scientific approach of the founders of Marxism that far from being a dogma as uninformed or motivated critics have tried to paint the philosophy, they were open to a revisit of their earlier views if the circumstances changed. About Russia their initial scepticism, especially in the case of Marx, gave way to the acceptance of the possibility of a revolution in comparatively backward and underdeveloped Russia.

Czarist Russia was a bundle of contradictions, the main one being the conflict between an absolute monarchy and the economic, political and social changes being triggered because of developing capitalism. These contradictions came to a head in 1905 in the aftermath of Russia’s defeat in the Far East at the hands of a rapidly modernising and rising Japan. Revolution not only broke out in Russia, it threw up a new form of political power of the people: the soviets (councils) of workers, peasants and soldiers. Although the 1905 revolution was crushed, the memory of the soviets as a new form of people’s power re-emerged in 1917.

The trigger for the 1917 revolutions in Russia proved to be the First World War (WWI). An absolutist monarchy out of touch with its people’s misery and demonstrating its incompetence on the battlefield fell prey to a general uprising of the people in February 1917. The revolution abolished the monarchy and declared a democratic republic. Most revolutionaries (including Lenin’s Bolsheviks), not to mention reformers, believed this democratic phase of the revolution would last for an extended period of time, such was the relief and euphoria at seeing the back of Czarism. However, the one man who thought differently changed the course of Russian and world history by arguing that Russia was ripe for a socialist revolution. That man was Lenin who, upon returning from exile, enunciated his April Theses to persuade his own Bolshevik Party that the revolutionary iron was hot, especially considering the reluctance of the interim government of the Cadets Party to negotiate a badly needed peace with Germany and its insistence on continuing a losing war. On the contrary, the Bolshevik slogan of ‘Land, bread, peace’ struck such a chord with the masses that the party soon gained a majority in the soviets. By July, the Bolsheviks were in a commanding position and began to prepare the insurrection that was launched and proved successful in October 1917.

The declaration of a socialist state and society in hitherto backward Russia shocked the international bourgeoisie and persuaded 22 capitalist countries to support the monarchist White Guards against the revolution with money, weapons and even troops. However, a revolution that enjoys the unstinting support of the masses is difficult to defeat. The Bolsheviks not only defeated this panoply of local reactionary and foreign imperialist forces, their victory rang the bells for a new era in world history.

The victory of the Russian revolution in the civil war and against imperialist intervention by 22 countries soon after the socialist takeover in October 1917 was achieved after four years (1918-22) of bloody conflict through the length and breadth of the country. It demonstrated the strength and resilience of a people mobilised by a revolution they owned and supported because it had declared itself for the people and against their erstwhile oppressors and exploiters. However, a country already reeling under the privations of WWI was further placed in enormous difficulties because of the ravages of the civil war/imperialist intervention.

While the Russian revolution was marching to new victories and demonstrating that the capitalist front had been decisively breached in the largest (by area) country in the world, albeit with significant hangovers of serfdom (abolished in law in 1861) and underdevelopment, the revolution in the rest of Europe was defeated, bloodily in Germany in 1918 and Hungary in 1919. With the retreat of the revolutionary wave in the wake of WWI, the choices and chances of long-term survival of the Russian (by now the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR, encompassing the extent of the Czarist empire) revolution, appeared bleak. Until the October 1917 revolution, the article of faith amongst Marxist revolutionaries was that without a revolution in (by now defeated) Germany, any revolution in Europe, including the Russian, was doomed. Even Lenin subscribed to this received wisdom. However, history had now placed the Russian revolutionaries in the unenviable position (and, some argued, opportunity) of building socialism in the inhospitable terrain of an underdeveloped country with the barest rudiments of industrialisation and a vast reservoir of peasants relatively recently liberated from serfdom. The slogan of Socialism in One Country proclaimed by the Bolsheviks was as much a pragmatic recognition of the hand dealt them as an admission that backward Russia could not look for succour, support and sustainability from the revolutionary forces in the advanced countries of Europe.

The task before the Bolsheviks was formidable. How to lift a huge country (albeit with enormous, untapped natural resources) from its virtually medieval darkness into the light of the modern day exercised the minds of the Bolsheviks. With his characteristic clarity, Lenin summed up the challenge by focusing his government’s economic efforts on electrification (a huge task) to provide the energy base for rapid industrialisation. Having nationalised the commanding heights of the economy, the revolutionary regime gave the working class unprecedented rights, the peasants land under a redistribution of the vast lands owned by the nobility and aristocracy, instituted universal education (including adult literacy), healthcare, skills training and universal employment. In addition, they transformed the ‘prison of nations’ as the Czarist Empire was known, into a country with equal rights for all the nations and nationalities in the USSR, including cultural and linguistic rights. Taken as a whole, these revolutionary policies brought enormous change in the lives of the overwhelming majority of the people and evoked in them the spirit of living and dying for the revolution. The example of the Russian revolution inspired generations of revolutionaries all over the world.

If the problems inherited from WWI, the seizure of power and the civil war/imperialist intervention were not enough, soon after the death (premature due to sclerosis of the brain as a result of an assassination attempt on him in 1918) of Lenin in 1924, the spectre of fascism began to raise its ugly head in Europe. Italy succumbed to the scourge in 1922 (Mussolini), Germany in 1933 (Hitler). In the latter case in particular, the Nazi Party fed on resentment at the harsh terms imposed by the victorious allies on Germany at the end of WWI through the Treaty of Versailles and the misery of generalised unemployment, hunger and starvation for the working people during the Great Depression (1929-39). In echoes of the development of fascism in Europe, Japan in the east and Spain in the west also exhibited features of fascism. As the immediate threat from fascism grew from a rapidly rearming Germany under Hitler, while the continuing hostility of the other imperialist countries remained a fact of life, the Soviet government embarked on rapid industrialisation, even at the cost of agriculture and other needs of the people based on the argument that either the Soviet Union must catch up with the imperialist countries to be able to defend itself or it would be exterminated.

To stave off an attack from Germany, the USSR made a non-aggression pact with Hitler, hoping that he would confine himself thereby to the conquest of the rest of Europe in what Moscow saw as another inter-imperialist war for a redivision of the world (WWI was the first such conflict, and in many ways fed into WWII). However, the USSR under Stalin, Lenin’s successor, gravely underestimated Hitler’s ambition of world conquest and hatred of communism. Having conquered the rest of Europe and driven the British off the continent, Hitler launched a surprise offensive against the Soviet Union in June 1941. The element of surprise, relative technical inferiority of the Soviet forces, and the blitzkrieg (total war) tactics of the Germans initially overwhelmed the Soviet defences and brought Hitler’s legions within striking distance of Moscow. Basing himself on the rapid conquest of the rest of Europe through this unprecedented total war strategy, Hitler thought the Soviet Union would succumb before the onset of the severe Russian winter. However, he had not factored into his calculations the resilience of the Soviet people and revolution. Hitler’s offensive bogged down after its initial rapid advance in the face of the determined resistance of the Soviet people against terrible odds and degenerated into a war of attrition, with the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad reflecting the strategic stalemate.

Meanwhile Japan had brought a reluctant US into the war through its sneak attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941. Now the fascist Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan, faced on paper a formidable alliance of the capitalist powers with the socialist USSR. However, the air war over Britain, the American war in the Pacific and the allied war in North Africa notwithstanding, the USSR bore the brunt of Hitler’s cruel hordes. Starting from the defeat of Hitler’s siege of Stalingrad in February 1943, the Soviet people turned the tide against Hitler, finally defeating him virtually alone (until 1944) on the eastern front at the cost of 26 million dead and many more millions wounded. Arguably, as honestly admitted by British military historian Basil Liddell-Hart, the Soviet Union virtually singlehandedly defeated Hitler while the allied effort came towards the fag end of the war.

WWII shook the world order to its roots. Movements for independence and national liberation from colonial control broke out and accelerated in the wake of peace. ‘Peace’ does not fully fit the situation, since a divided Europe between the capitalist west and the socialist east entered the Cold War, punctuated by rebellions against the communist regimes of Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), crushed by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces’ interventions. On the other hand, the part liberation of Korea and Vietnam characterised the growing desire for independence of the colonies in what came to be called the Third World. The Chinese revolution’s triumph in 1949, the Cuban revolution in 1958 and the renewed anti-colonial, anti-imperialist  liberation war in Vietnam (not to mention the indeterminate conflict in Korea 1950-53) inspired the outbreak of guerrilla wars throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. It seemed at that historical juncture that the advance of socialism was looming on the horizon and the day of colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism was done and dusted, especially given the inspiring example of the Vietnamese people’s heroic resistance against superpower the US and their complete victory in 1975. The Vietnam War radicalised the whole 1960s generation and this phenomenon changed the social (if not political) world of their elders beyond recognition. However, the owl of Minerva had not yet spread its wings and the liberatory hopes of the Third World came to be dashed eventually at the end of the 1980s. Guerrilla movements were defeated in the Third World, and even where they succeeded in capturing power, soon discovered the process of capitalist domination of their economies by a world order still largely in the grip of capitalism, and in which the socialist camp’s best efforts to aid and help these newly liberated countries proved inadequate.

Guerilla movements in the Third World virtually ceased to exist in the 1990s, notwithstanding some notable examples such as Colombia (that long running insurgency is currently in the process of a turn from civil war to a negotiated peace settlement). And in 1991, the Soviet Union imploded and re-emerged as the Commonwealth of (15) Independent States. That construct, aimed at keeping close ties between the newly independent countries that hitherto constituted the USSR, did not prove long lasting and withered on the vine. The process of the collapse of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union that began with the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall was now complete.

The factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union are complex and multi-layered, but if one overriding one can be identified it is the inherent difficulties and problems of constructing socialism in a comparatively underdeveloped country, and that too in the face of unremitting hostility and sabotage by the imperialist powers. That inevitably leads the revolution and its leadership into a siege mentality, where survival against imperialist subversion and the ever-looming threat of attempts to restore the ancien regimedominate over all other considerations. The war communism imposed on the USSR during the life-and-death struggle against the monarchist White Guards and their imperialist supporters soon after the 1917 revolution inevitably produced great hardship for the Soviet people, including hunger and in some areas, starvation. The victory of the revolution in this conflict was therefore achieved at great human cost and suffering. Immediately after the end of the civil war, the Bolsheviks introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) to stimulate a revival of the economy, offering concessions to the rich peasantry (kulaks). Lenin predicted that after its overthrow, the resistance of the expropriated capitalist and large landowning classes increases ten-fold. The class struggle, therefore, could only intensify, despite the revolution’s victory.

This perceptive view re-emerged in Stalin’s work, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR,after the victory in WWII. His prediction about the need to intensify the struggle against the class enemies of the revolution reflected what hindsight reveals was the growth of capitalist restoration forces that had quietly gathered force as a result of the devastating losses, human and material, in WWII, which fed into a resurgence of silent resentment against the deprivations experienced since the revolution.

Stalin’s repression of ‘counter-revolutionary’ dissent, both outside and inside the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), led to his denunciation by new leader Nikita Khrushchev in a secret speech to the CPSU Congress in 1956. The leak of the speech (allegedly by the US CIA) evoked unrest in Hungary that year, aimed at an overthrow of the communist regime that had emerged there and in many countries of Eastern Europe after the Soviet Red Army liberated them from the Nazi yoke on its way to the final defeat of Hitler in 1945. The Hungarian uprising was crushed, but the questions and issues it threw up were never satisfactorily resolved. These included the nature, not only of the eastern European communist regimes, but even the Soviet Union itself. The ravages of war, the needs of survival of the revolution in the face of awesome internal and external odds, the unwise and unfettered repression of any and all dissent within the CPSU, even if it was not necessarily counter-revolutionary, had alienated the party and government from the people. The 1968 crushing of the Czechoslovakian experiment at reform in the direction of ‘Socialism with a human face’ proved that the Hungarian example was not an isolated phenomenon. Both countries’ developments exposed serious contradictions within the communist system.

If the crushing of movements that appeared to Moscow to reflect counter-revolutionary tendencies in Eastern Europe was problematic, the adventure in Afghanistan (1979-89) proved the last straw. This invasion and occupation ostensibly was mounted to save the Afghan revolution being led astray, it was argued, by Hafizullah Amin, who had overthrown and killed Nur Mohammad Tarakai, the leader of the 1978 revolution in Afghanistan. In the process, time has revealed, it killed off the Afghan revolution and accelerated the process of collapse of the Soviet Union itself under the weight of its internal contradictions. The backdrop to the 1991 collapse was the attempt by Mikhail Gorbachev, elevated to leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, to reform the Soviet system under the rubric perestroika(restructuring) and glasnost(openness). What Gorbachev and the Soviet Union learnt to their cost is that an arguably stagnant, bureaucratised and alienated-from-the-people system is at greatest risk when it tries to reform. To add to the simmering cauldron of discontent, it became clear later that Gorbachev had embraced social democracy and abandoned Marxism despite having been elevated to the leadership of the Soviet Union. The rest, as they say, is history.

The collapse of the Soviet Union provoked unabashed triumphalism in the capitalist west, with British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously declaring: There is no alternative (to free market capitalism). In the wake of the capitalist west’s victory in the Cold War, unbridled capitalism expanded horizontally into the former communist countries as well as the rest of the world (globalisation). It appeared that the bourgeoisie’s victory was so complete that Marxism and socialism were declared passé or even dead. But the Red Mole (Revolution) has a peculiar tendency to prove the reports of its demise as premature again and again after every defeat and retreat. The 1999 Seattle protests against the world’s grouping of pre-eminent capitalist countries (G-7), the Occupy Wall Street movement, the focus on the one percent filthy rich of today’s world in sharp contrast with the inequality and immiseration inflicted on the rest of the 99 percent, the resurgence of the Left in Latin America and Europe, all indicate that capitalism’s claims of final victory (the ‘End of History’ thesis, amongst others) is once again flying in the face of history’s lessons. The human aspiration for a just and equitable society remains alive and kicking in the contemporary context. The struggles against capitalist-imperialist domination will no doubt adopt different forms and paths (as they are already embryonically indicating), not perhaps the classical forms of the revolutions of the 20^thcentury. But for all its undoubted development of the modern world, capitalism in its moment of greatest triumph still faces the spectre of the peoples of the world challenging the system and, if history is any guide, overcoming or changing it in the direction of a just and equitable society.

To understand the world today, including Pakistan, requires an understanding of how the modern world evolved out of the womb of pre-capitalist societies. 

In Europe, feudalism gradually was impregnated with new ways of producing things and new ways of understanding things, the latter in particular the result of technological and scientific advances that fed into the ideas associated with the Enlightenment. The old order incrementally gave way to and was overthrown/replaced by the new, not always peacefully, often accompanied by violence, including revolutionary violence. Even societies that managed the transition relatively peacefully, were impelled forward by the example of revolutions in their midst (the English, French and American revolutions standing out in this regard). 

In Asia, despite the argument that similar processes were at work, the encounter between Asian and western societies soon revealed the advantage the new form of production (capitalism) had over traditional societies. In the Americas and Africa too, the gap between indigenous societies and the colonisers was glaring. The conquest by colonialism of most of the known and ‘newly discovered’ world had a catastrophic impact on the latter while providing a fillip for the former.

In the light of this movement of history and its laws of motion so brilliantly enunciated and analysed by the founders of Marxism, what is the way forward? The prospects of revolutionary struggles appear dim at present. What they need is a clearly articulated theoretical framework that lays bare the heart and workings of the globalised contemporary capitalist system and serves as a guide for practical struggles. Those struggles need first and foremost to rely on and develop the organisational weapon to serve as the motivating force for the mobilisation of the working masses to throw off their chains and march forward towards the realm of light and freedom. It is these tasks to which our people must now dedicate themselves.