BASICS Issue #22 (Sep/Oct 2010)
by Noaman G. Ali & N. Zahra
One cannot deny that the floods that have devastated Pakistan since July 2010 have a basis in nature. However, to ascribe the death and displacement of tens of millions of people to something ‘natural’ obscures how American imperialism and the Pakistani ruling classes’ objectives have influenced the situation.
A scandal has recently emerged in Pakistan as reports claimed that in order to save a U.S. airbase in Sindh province, flood waters were diverted, consequently displacing 800,000 people and destroying hundreds of homes. According to reports, Pakistan’s Minister of Sports, Mr. Ejaz Jakhrani, along with soldiers and provincial government officials, entered the area in the middle of the night between August 13 and 14 in order to divert the flood waters from the base that has been in U.S. military hands since the so-called ‘War on Terror’ began in 2001.
In further disregard for the humanitarian needs of the Pakistani people, the U.S. has continued its unmanned drone attacks on Pakistan, killing 12 people and injuring many more, including women and children, in an attack on the Dandy Derpakhel area of North Waziristan on August 23, 2010.
What’s more, allegations also abound about large feudal landlords breaching embankments to preserve all of their own tremendous landholdings, and thus completely flooding those of smaller landholders or neighbouring provinces. Many government ministers other than Jakhrani are alleged to have participated in such flood diversions.
These allegations must be investigated, but they point to the similarity of tactics used by U.S. imperialism and their local allies—the industrialists and feudal landlords of Pakistan—to protect their interests in the case of flooding.
But the flooding merely intensifies the people of Pakistan’s suffering from widespread poverty, illiteracy and disease. The flooding was as bad as it was because Pakistan’s infrastructure is so underdeveloped. What is key to understand is that Pakistan’s underdevelopment has been maintained over the past 63 years by the alliance of U.S. imperialism and local exploiters.
Traders and industrialists exploit the people of Pakistan through hoarding essential goods, raising prices and paying substandard wages for work. Large landlords exploit landless labourers and peasants. Meanwhile, they are deeply linked with the military elites. All of these are supported by the U.S.
It is because funds are diverted from social services and infrastructure development to military spending and the corruption of generals and politicians that the masses of Pakistan have had to suffer.
For the ‘international community’ to call for ‘aid’ and ‘generosity’ on the one hand, while doing nothing to expose or oppose the imperialist aggression at the hands of the U.S., and Pakistani ruling classes’ collusion with imperialism, keeps us from understanding how a disaster of such epic proportions could be allowed to occur.
It will be up to the Pakistani people, and the Pakistani people alone, to rebuild after the devastation that has visited them. The current Pakistani ruling classes and their imperialist backer, the United States, have proved to bring nothing but economic stagnation, oppression, and war. The most important thing people of the world who are concerned with the sufferings of the Pakistani people can do is to expose U.S. imperialism and its support by the Pakistani ruling classes.
Comments
