At the time of writing this, the present situation with the assassination attempt on the ex-prime minister Imran Khan, has given one faction of the bourgeoisie its martyr, giving an organic flavor to Khan’s popular movement, as in Sri-Lanka, the working masses have remained tied to the popular movements. The intensified crisis in the bourgeoisie has further delayed the provision of IMF funds, and developmental programs.

Pakistan’s bourgeoisie, crisis-stricken and submerged in water, continues to juggle between imperialisms

The Pakistani bourgeoisie has long been trying to juggle between the two great imperialisms, American and Chinese, in seeking to defend the interests of their own national capital.

Prime minister Khan’s ouster is a consequence of the need of the crisis-stricken Pakistani ruling class, namely to try to rebuild its ties, lost in recent years, with the United States.

Historically, Pakistan’s relations with Washington intensified shortly after independence. At the height of the Cold War, in 1954, Pakistan joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), a U.S.-sponsored organization aimed at containing any so-called Communist expansion into south and central Asia.

During the Indo-Pakistani Wars of the 1960s and ‘70s, Washington decided to loosen relations, which were nurtured again after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, when Islamabad was fortified as a check on the Russian advance.

With the fall of Russian State capitalism, the two States were once again driven apart. The new invasion of an ever-tormented Afghanistan, this time by the U.S., whom sent substantial military and financial aid, revived American imperialist interest in the region once again.

It is more recent that the advance of Chinese imperialism in the region has actually soured relations with Pakistan’s allies in the American ruling class. Relations with Beijing bloomed in the last twenty years but are also longstanding. By the end of the 1950s to the early ‘60s, common rivalry with India pushed Islamabad closer to China. In 1963, Pakistan recognized the region of Shaksgam as Chinese, which before 1947 was formally under the control of the Maharaja of Kashmir, an area still claimed by India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

The Sino-Pakistani military cooperation was reinforced in the early 1960s: the People’s Republic, after distancing itself from post-Stalin Russia, approached Pakistan with funding for the army, beginning in 1962. In the ‘90s the alliance with China was crucial in developing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. With the rise of Chinese imperialism, investments on Pakistani soil have increased. From 2008 to 2019, China loaned Pakistan $40 million for the construction of transport infrastructure (primarily highways) and energy. The high point of economic cooperation between the two countries was in 2015. That year, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched, marking the foundations for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to connect the Pakistani ports of Gwadar and Karachi to the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

With regards to armaments trade, relations with China have also increased. Today, Pakistan primarily buys its arms from Beijing. In the period between 2000 and 2021 (according to SIPRI data), the country buys about three times more arms from China than from US.

The relations between the two countries were consistently strong. The result is the subjugation of the Islamic republic’s recent governments to Beijing’s interests.

Nevertheless, a State in the grip of such a deep economic and social crisis inevitably has to try to search for other sources to get out of the quagmire in which it finds itself, and it is in this scenario that the new government’s attempted rapprochement toward U.S. dollars and support for the permanent settlement of the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad should be seen.

It should also be considered that China itself is reevaluating the usefulness of part of its investments in Pakistan considering several knots that Islamabad is unable to untie: the continuous attacks by separatist (Balochi) and jihadist groups, the instability of domestic politics, the huge accumulated debt and Beijing’s consequent aversion to keeping credit tabs open to such a high-risk country. All are unresolved factors that have effectively chilled relations between the two countries.

The stakes are very high for international capital and exercising control over this borderland will remain on the agenda of the major imperialist powers.

Flooding Exacerbates the Crisis

The year 2022 was a year of severe economic crisis that affected a large number of countries whose political and social situations, in many cases, were already precarious. Pakistan, only one such country, is now in a worse condition than in the crisis that occurred in 2008. Even before the 2019 global recession, after a small post-2008 recovery, the economy had begun experiencing sharp declines since 2017.

Today the country is facing unprecedentedly high inflation which is struggling to ease, with an external debt of about $130 billion. Since the end of May, fuel prices have by risen 90%, with food prices rising by 37%.

The former prime minister, facing growing discontent, had arranged for fuel and energy subsidies last March, which were revoked by the new government in an effort to reduce the rising fiscal deficit and ensure the resumption of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) “bailout” program.

A major energy crisis had emerged even before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Pakistan, being heavily dependent on fuel exports, was among the first countries to complain of serious supply problems. The bourgeois State at various times cut off electricity to households[,] but also to various companies and industries, with adverse consequences on agricultural and industrial production. Many large cities were deprived of electricity for 12 hours a day, worse in rural areas where a power grid is present.

In late August, the IMF, to avoid default as happened in Sri Lanka, reinstated the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program to benefit Pakistan, which will receive $1.1 billion. The approval came only after the new government of Prime Minister Sharif introduced several austerity measures, including a further increase in fuel prices. Unpopular measures that strengthened the bourgeois faction linked to former Prime Minister Khan.

The situation became dramatic when there were unprecedented floods in the summer months that inundated large areas of the country. Floods fueled by melting glaciers and continuous monsoon rains destroyed homes, transportation, and agricultural yields including cotton and rice plantations. The United Nations has labeled this scenario as “climate carnage”, without going into the merits of the issue; as materialists, we know well who is the real and main culprit: capitalism, which as we described and explained in a previous article (il Partito Comunista, n. 418), is responsible for massive deforestation and uncontrolled urban planning, especially in flood-prone areas.

As we write this, the waters, which had invaded one-third of Pakistan’s territory, have begun to recede, leaving behind an apocalyptic scene. More than 1,500 people are confirmed dead and thousands are still missing; nearly two million homes have been destroyed or damaged, and millions more displaced.

The worst flooding occurred along the Indus River in the provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Sindh. In the latter region, 25% of the population is displaced, about 60% have inadequate access to drinking water, and more than 40% do not have adequate access to food. Nearly 1 million livestock and more than 2 million acres of orchards and crops have been lost.

In addition to the deaths and destruction of infrastructure and housing, the biggest problem for the displaced people who have been living under the open sky for weeks is that of infectious diseases fostered by stagnant water: malaria, dengue, and dysentery abound. There will also be repercussions on the food supply and market.

The damage amounts to about $30 billion, affecting field harvesting and industrial production: a capital, environmental, social and economic disaster that will also have medium-term consequences in the rest of the world, particularly in terms of the reduced supply of Pakistani agricultural products caused by the devastation of cotton and rice crops, of which the country is in fact one of the main producers and exporters. Today it is estimated that about half of the country’s cotton crop has been destroyed. The floods also threaten to disrupt much of the autumn season’s wheat planting, with serious yet predictable consequences for exports and far-reaching consequences for domestic needs.

Even if large landowners survive the floods, a different situation stands for small farmers, already in crisis and weighed down with debts they can no longer repay. Also remarkable is the condition of many wage earners who were already employed in super-exploitative conditions and have now lost their jobs.

The wage-earning class, at large, suffers from not only high inflation but worsening living and working conditions. The data recorded in the first quarter, certainly better than those that will be collected in the coming months, described this picture: in the service sector, where 40% of the workforce is engaged, wage growth decreased from 3.4% to 2.4%, for mechanics from 5.9% to 3.6%. Most of the labor force engaged in the informal sector earns as little as 15,000 rupees (equivalent to $67) per month. In the public sector, the minimum wage for “first-grade” (or entry-level) employees stands at 12,000 rupees ($50) a month.

Occasionally the State gives up crumbs, this time in the form of a “relief package,” as they called it: 2,000 rupees, or $8.70!