WELCOME NEW YEAR 2005!

Intensify Anti-Imperialist Resistance, 
Deepen Popular Intervention

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

THE year 2004 witnessed further intensification of the popular protest against imperialism worldwide, with the armed resistance in Iraq and mass upsurge in Latin America standing as two most important aspects of the whole process. And this intensification of the popular anti-imperialist protest took place and is taking place in ratio with the US attempts to further intensify its hegemonic drive.

SECOND TERM TO GEORGE BUSH

A SIGNIFICANT event of the year has been the re-election of George Bush to US presidency, and one must not minimise the threat that it poses to world peace.

A noteworthy aspect of Bush’s re-election is that it has been as tainted as his first election four years ago was. Several international observers have noted the fraudulent methods the Bush campaign managers employed to get him re-elected. There were reports that a large number of voters from the Negro, Hispanic and other stocks were not allowed to vote; at several polling booths the number of votes counted far exceeded the number of valid votes registered; and there were instances of rigging during the counting process also. The Bush campaign also terrorised the American voters in the name of 9/11 and by the prospect of more attacks by Al Qaeda. Also, for the first time perhaps in American history, the Bush campaign exploited the religious factor by seeking to rouse the Christians and Jews against the Muslims and Confucians --- along the line of the infamous Huntington thesis of a (supposed) clash of civilisations.  

Even though George Bush is yet to take charge of the White House a second time, he has made it clear that his second term is going to be more revanchist. His foreign secretary Colin Powell may not be a moderate according to our standards, but he was considered moderate by the Bush’s coterie and has been dropped from the team the president has already announced. His replacement will be Ms Condolezza Rice who is considered a hawk in American ruling circles. Bush has also dropped four other members of his earlier team, though they were not as prominent as Powell had been.

Further, as soon as Bush was declared the winner, he raised the issue of DPR Korea’s nuclear energy programme in order to terrorise that socialist country.

Bush has also announced an intention to more stridently intervene in West Asia and the aim is to browbeat the Palestinian freedom fighters into submission, to make them accept the ‘solution’ the US may suggest. Though the contours of this ‘solution’ are still not clear, there are dim indications that it may be along the lines of the Bush’s so-called roadmap of 2002 that was highly biased in favour of the Zionists and to the detriment of the Palestinian interests. The US is also trying its level best to exploit the leadership gap that has occurred in the Palestinian camp following the demise of Yasser Arafat.

The Bush administration is currently seeking to terrorise Iran on the nuclear energy issue and seeking to exploit the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN body, for the purpose. As we have already commented upon these events, there is no need to repeat them here. Suffice it to say that the next four years may see a further rise in US belligerence.

AMERICAN INTERVENTIONS

IN the meantime, the presidential poll in Afghanistan has ushered the country into a period of relative peace. There were two aspects to this poll. On the one hand, it was significant in view of the chance it has given to the Afghan people to concentrate on the rebuilding of their civil war ravaged country. At the same time, as the civil war had already decimated the democratic forces in the country, it was a pro-US candidate who won the poll.

Now, the first need of today is that the US must quit the country, without which the Afghans of various nationalities cannot have any real chance to strengthen democracy, preserve the fragile peace of today, and concentrate on reconstruction. One may only expect that various warlords would not again resort to arms in the days to come and thereby give the US one more excuse not to leave the country. 

In the last one month, the US has also intervened in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine. It is not that Ukraine was challenging the US in any way; indeed in the post-Soviet phase it was doing everything possible to be in the good books of American imperialists. Ukraine was one of the few countries that sent their forces to Iraq for policing job on behalf of the US-UK occupation forces. But this was perhaps not enough to satiate the imperialist thirst for hegemony and the US design was to have a more clearly pro-US regime in Kiev, in which it seems to be succeeding. 

The US intervention in Ukraine, like in another former Soviet republic of Georgia earlier, seems to be in line with the design to expand the NATO war alliance eastward. This can only cause more headache to the Russian Federation which can cope with this challenge only by seeking to mobilise other nations for the cause of world peace and by having with them mutually beneficial agreements. A further strengthening and expansion of the Shanghai – 6 will go a long way in meeting this threat.

EUROPEAN UNION’S EXPANSION

THE middle part of the year 2004 also witnessed an expansion of the European Union whose membership has now increased from 15 to 25. It is to be noted that some former socialist countries of East Europe and some former Soviet republics form 8 out of the 10 new EU members. (Cyprus and tiny Malta are the remaining two members, while Turkey and some others are in line.) The expansion has taken the EU population to 450 million from 375 million, but added only about 5 per cent to the EU’s gross domestic product.

There is need to patiently examine the possible fallout of the EU expansion. One opinion about it is that it was motivated by the EU’s desire to have a backyard of its own, of the kind the US once had in Latin America. It is certain that the more developed countries of Western Europe would treat the impoverished East European countries and former Soviet republics as a source of cheap raw materials and cheap labour as well as a market for their finished products. And if such an assessment is true, the expanded EU may cause problems to the third world countries by reducing the demand of labour power and certain goods from these countries. For example, it is said that textile goods from the Czech Republic would enjoy preference in EU markets, to the detriment of India and Pakistan, because the Czech Republic is now a part of the EU.

However, more importantly, such a strengthening of the EU may cause headache to the US whose economy is not in a rosy condition. Two years ago the US suffered the worst recession in its post-war history and there are reasons to doubt the veracity of the US ruling circles’ claim to have come out of that recession. Currently, the US is trying to rejuvenate its economy by a series of measures, including a hike in the interest rate.

This brings us to a very curious situation. While the US is facing a very tough competition from the EU and Japan, it is the military might of the US that still helps it maintain its status as the hegemon of the capitalist world. But the question is: Can this economy-military mismatch continue forever?

Right now, there seems to be no challenge to the US leadership of imperialist camp. But one must not ignore the voices other developed countries have been raising in this regard. France and Germany, for example, refused to tow the American line on Iraq in the UN Security Council. Moreover, some five years ago they had raised the point that the European Union should have a regional force of its own, of the kind of NATO. And the same point was made by German foreign minister Fischer this year when he was on a visit to New Delhi. Though Fischer took pains to clarify that such a force would not be a rival to the NATO but its ally, such clarifications seem to be more of a device not to arouse the US’s ire. However, whether such a European force finally materialises or not, there is no doubt that the recent expansion of the European Union would somewhat intensify the inter-imperialist contradiction.   

RESISTANCE GROWS IN IRAQ

FOR the most part of the year gone-by, however, the world people’s attention has been riveted on the barbaric violations of human rights in Iraq. The fact is that the more the US tries to convert Iraq into a ‘protected’ territory, the more it has to face the wrath of the people who have made it clear that they are not going to meekly accept the loss of their sovereignty. There is no doubt that the fight is highly unequal, as it is a by and large unarmed population that is fated to face the mightiest power on the earth, one that has a lot of sophisticated weapons at its command. And yet, this is also an undoubted fact that the Iraqi people are fighting, they are fighting with whatever they may lay their hands upon, and they are renouncing their mutual sectarian antipathies for the sake of this fight.

It is in such a situation that the American forces have been committing inhuman atrocities against the people in Iraq --- in a desperate move to somehow quell the popular resistance in the country. The Americans have not only been torturing the resistance fighters and violating all international conventions that guide the issue of treatment with the prisoners of war (POWs). Their tanks have also been assaulting the civilian areas, hospitals and public utilities, and they have been taking the common non-fighting people into custody and torturing them. There are also instances that, in violation of international law, US forces have assaulted hospitals on the plea that they were extending treatment facilities to terrorists.  

It is therefore quite natural that, for the people of the whole world, Abu Gharaib now stands as a symbol of imperialist savagery. This is the prison house where the US marines have been torturing their POWs and where the infamous CIA has set up secret facilities for the purpose. Of late, the US media have been full of news regarding official investigations into the brutal treatment being meted out to prisoners in Abu Gharaib. It is another thing though that, stung by criticism, what the Bush administration does at the most is to call the culprits back home instead of punishing them suitably. 

Moreover, Abu Gharaib is no isolated instance of the American brutality with the POWs. They have been behaving brutally with those taken prisoner after the US war against Yugoslavia, though the media have been underplaying the issue because of their class bias. However, the way US forces have been behaving with their POWs in the Guantanamo base has been sufficiently highlighted. The report is that Americans have detained more than 500 souls in their naval base in Guantanamo that is in fact a part of Cuba but is in the US’s illegal occupation. According to reports, most of these detainees are common people but have been kept in custody on the plea that they are Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists. According to a recent Washington Post report, the CIA has set up a secret prison here, and these “CIA buildings are shrouded by high fences covered with thick green mesh plastic and ringed with floodlights.” The report further says, “detainees from Pakistan, West Africa, Yemen and other countries have been housed there under the strictest secrecy” (Hindustan Times, December 18).       

But will the Americans be able to hold out in Iraq? The more the intended time of Iraqi elections approaches close, the more the resistance grows, the more the Americans are getting frustrated and intensifying their brutalities in the country. For more than a year they have been trying to involve other countries in the policing job in Iraq, but mostly in vain, and this highlights not only the failure of US foreign policy but also the fact that today the US stands thoroughly discredited in the world. In fact, it is only the mass revulsion against the US warmongering and hegemonic drive that has prevented the rulers of many countries from sending their forces to Iraq. For instance, despite all its loyalty to American imperialists, the erstwhile BJP led regime in India could not dare to send our troops to Iraq. 

RESISTANCE IN LATIN AMERICA

ANOTHER area where imperialists have been facing tough resistance is the Latin America which they have for long been treating as their backyard. The events that took place in this part of the world in 2004, only confirm the trend that started with the Chiapas revolt in Mexico about a decade ago.

It is not that Latin America has been lacking in anti-imperialist actions in the past. The region has been seething with anti-imperialist discontent in the last two centuries, and has given many setbacks to imperialist powers in the past. Venezuela, Guatemala, Bolivia, British Guyana and many other countries had had elected progressive, patriotic governments at one time or another. Yet, in a display of utmost cruelty in the region, American imperialists and their lackeys have taken recourse to mayhem and bloodshed in a bid to overthrow these progressive governments and crush the popular anti-imperialist movements. Not to go far back into history, the way the Americans overthrew a democratic government in tiny Grenada about two decades ago only exposed their desire to keep this region in hold forever. The US aim is to exploit the rich resources of the region, in order to compete with other centres of capitalism, like European Union and Japan.

Also, with the same aim the Americans got puppet governments installed in many countries of the region and were, with the power of their arms, protecting these governments from the people’s wrath. Moreover, in order to train the mercenaries of these pro-US dictators, the US established a School of the Americas (SoA), but the latter got so infamous that people began to call it the School of Assassins.   

It was in such an adverse circumstance that Cuba held aloft the banner of anti-imperialist struggle during the last four decades, most of the time quite alone.

Yet, if the Cuban party and government were confident that they had the support of the people of whole Latin America and the world, there was nothing wrong in their diagnosis of the situation, which gave rise to this confidence. Even though the Yankees outmanoeuvred the revolutionary Sandinista government of Nicaragua, very soon the Chiapas revolt in Mexico challenged the imperialist domination over the country and the continent. One must also note that it was the first major revolt against imperialist globalisation, and its legacy is still alive and kicking even though it could not achieve all its objectives.  

Though somewhat subdued in the changed world situation, the armed struggles in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia and some other countries of the region are still smouldering and may again flare up nobody knows when.

It was in this situation that pro-US governments were thrown out in many Latin American countries in a peaceful manner, by the people’s fighting will. If it was Venezuela at first, very soon Lula got elected president in Brazil. Nay, in the year that has just ended, Bolivia and Uruguay have also joined the rank and this has further enhanced the strength of anti-imperialist camp in the continent.

The year will be remembered for two more events. After doing their level best for two years to topple the Chavez government in Venezuela, which stands like a rock in the way of American exploitation of Venezuelan oil resources, the imperialists and their local lackeys suffered a big setback this year when they lost a referendum in the country. This defeat was all the more shocking to them, as they had been pressing the demand of a referendum on the justification of Chavez’s continuation.

The other event was the sentence a Chilean court recently pronounced against the former dictator Augusto Pinochet. This was the man who led a CIA-directed coup in the country, murdered the democratically elected president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973 (“the other 9/11”), and then instituted an excessively brutal fascist regime in the country when thousands were tortured to death and about 30,000 “disappeared” forever. Pinochet is also infamous for his cruel joke that every disappearance saves the concerned person’s relatives from a considerable expenditure on his last rites. And now the same Pinochet has been adjudged guilty of murder and appropriation of public fund. Though the sentence meted out to him is very mild because of the 89 years age of this killer, one hopes that it will strengthen the Chilean people’s resolve to defend their democracy and also serve as a warning to the future dictators the world over.

Now the demand raging in the whole continent, including the US, is that former US foreign secretary Henry Kissinger should also be brought to book and punished for the support he extended to the anti-Allende coup and to Pinochet dictatorship and its killer gangs. The court case in Chile has indeed exposed the anti-human nature of imperialism once again.

INDO-PAK DIALOGUE

THIS brief survey of the main events of 2004 would be incomplete if we do not mention the progress the process of dialogue between India and Pakistan has registered. Though this process started in 2003, its momentum increased this year, more so after the communal BJP led regime got ousted.

One will recall that, unlike the earlier occasions when the two countries tried to talk, the success of the latest dialogue process rests upon the fact that the two countries, in effect, gave up their respective preconditions and decided to first take up less complicated issues, resolve them and thereby build up and strengthen the atmosphere of mutual confidence. This is precisely what we of the CPI(M) have for long been insisting upon.

The road is still not without its difficulties; off and on the two countries keep harping upon their pet issues --- Pakistan on the centrality of Kashmir and India on the cessation of cross-border terrorism. But the hope is that, even when raising such issues to score a point, the two countries will not let them dominate the process of confidence building. Moreover, the ongoing process of people to people contacts needs to be taken to further heights, as the will of the people of the two countries has the capacity to remove many irritants. The people’s sentiments in favour of Indo-Pak détente can see to it that (1) the process of dialogue does not get derailed, and (2) it is not hijacked to their advantage by imperialist powers who are very much active from behind the curtain.

The process of Indo-Pak détente is also significant for the development and growth of the whole of South Asia and for making the SAARC a vital entity. It is known that in the past the Indo-Pak rivalry has held to ransom the whole SAARC process even though SAARC is the forum of not two but seven countries.

Moreover, the process has a vital significance for the whole world. The reason is that, unfortunately, both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers today and their past madness has brought the subcontinent to the point of an immensely horrific disaster. Nay, some people are of the view that if a nuclear conflagration starts, it will start from here. It is in such a situation that the need of restraint for the two countries further increases. And now we welcome the New Year with the hope that this process of Indo-Pak détente will further strengthen and the worldwide resistance against imperialism will also intensify in the coming days.

December 29, 2004