Category: Pakistan

  • Release the arrested trade union leaders

    Stop terrorising the workers movement Azam Janjua, organiser TURCP Islamabad and vice president PWFP The four leaders of a cement factory in Lucky Marwat have been arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Act on 19th September in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province. The police have registered a case against 21 union leaders and activists. The police are trying to…

  • Editorial: India and Pakistan conflict

    Politicians use terrorism for their own ends Once again, terrorist carnage – this time in Mumbai in India – has shocked working people around the world. In a thoroughly planned and financed operation, a group of right-wing Islamic terrorists turned buildings and streets in Mumbai into a killing field, slaughtering and injuring innocent people, with…

  • A country on the edge

    State and society in crisis Pakistan, even before the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, was gripped by a severe political and social crisis. There are country-wide protests against the price hikes and power shortages. There seems to be no end to the suicide bombings and terror unleashed by the reactionary armed Islamic groups. The state apparatus…

  • Violence erupts in Karachi as political polarisation increases

    Fifty killed and more than 150 injured Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city saw its worst political violence in decades on 12 May. Over 50 people were killed and more than 150 injured in clashes and gunfights between the pro-government Muttahidda Qaumi Movement (MQM – a chauvinist reactionary party which primarily bases itself amongst the Mohajir minority)…

  • Kashmir conflict: Capitalist Crisis Threatens Nuclear War

    The world is nearer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The United States and the Soviet Union came close to a nuclear exchange, when Khrushchev based nuclear-armed missiles on Cuba. Fortunately, US imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy negotiated their way out of the crisis, despite pressure from…

  • Raising the stakes in Kashmir

    IN THE aftermath of the 11 September carnage in the US the world situation has changed significantly. Half-a-million soldiers have been massed along the Indian-Pakistani border, including Kashmir, the largest mobilisation of armed forces since 1971. “We don’t play soldiers on the border… what I’m doing is for real. I have not gone to do…

  • Kashmir Crisis: Regional Powers Threaten New War

    TONY BLAIR’S shuttle diplomacy to resolve the longstanding Kashmir crisis that has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war has been an abject failure. Even as he tried to defuse the political tension, shelling continued along the disputed Line of Control forcing 50,000 to flee their homes. And while the prospect for an…

  • India/Pakistan conflict: Only Socialism Can End the ‘Madness Of War’

    GLOBETROTTING TONY Blair has jetted off in a bid to avert a looming military conflict between Pakistan and India. But it is the US-led Afghan war – backed by ‘lieutenant’ Blair – that has further destabilised central Asia, risking an India/Pakistan war. IN THE most serious conflict between the two nuclear powers since the Kargil…

  • The Kashmir Battle Zone

    This summer’s clashes between India and Pakistan, the world’s newest nuclear powers, claimed hundreds of lives. Then, as tensions seemed to be easing, on 10 August a Pakistani navy plane was shot down, leading to further retaliatory action. KEVIN SIMPSON and JAMAL KHAN explain the latest twists and turns in this 52-year conflict. “TWO MONTHS…