03.11.2005
Support working class relief
Ted Crawford takes another look at progressive and working class organisations working in Pakistan after the devastating earthquake
Since I last wrote a small piece on the earthquake relief efforts, I have discovered a bit more about things (Weekly Worker October 27). A friend in Pakistan says: "Muzaffar Abad is the stronghold of Markaz-i-Da'awat wal Irshad - now Jama'at-ul-Da'awa - a militant islamic organisation closely associated with al Qa'eda. They had some training camps at this place. It is natural that the biggest volunteer effort is initiated by them. It is an interesting fact that they trained the 'lumpenproletariat' in these camps. Thus they have created a whole lot of 'islamic scoundrels'. Many of them died in the earthquake; those who survived came up immediately for the rescue work." Another report I have had says that the hardest thing is Ramadan, which means the volunteers are shattered and dehydrated all day, but, worse, the refugees cannot be motivated to work and there are huge manpower shortages. But without religion these people would have nothing. So they take the opium of the people. One would have thought that high-up clerics could have given dispensation from fasting in such a situation, as is the case for the elderly, sick, pregnant women, etc, anyway. A third piece of information from a different person says that all Pakistanis believe that the reconstruction contracts will all go to firms owned by the sons, sons-in-law, nephews, etc of the army officers in charge of the efforts. As far as the left is concerned, there is rather more information about the Trade Union Rights Campaign Pakistan or TURCP (www.turcp.org), sponsored by the Committee for a Workers' International, on the Socialist Party website. The TURCP does bring out into the open the threat of the islamists to the left. They too have suffered casualties in the earthquake and a number of their comrades are killed, injured or missing. One report says: "Members of the Trade Union Rights Campaign Pakistan and Kashmir have intervened on four occasions to stop dozens of armed men from a religious group who tried to force the loaded aid trucks arriving in Bagh to go to their camp. They wanted to distribute the aid, claiming it was their 'aid to the people'. These trucks were destined for the rural areas. When TURCP members intervened to stop the armed group taking the supplies, local people also gathered and opposed the armed groups. TURCP members, with the help of local people, forced the armed groups to leave the area" (www.socialistworld.net). Like the Struggle group (see Weekly Worker October 27) they also have a good line - not so much calling for the frontier to be opened, but constructing a useful series of demands on the government. The Struggle group explains how the first three lorries of aid from Indian working class, trade union and other non-governmental organisations was allowed across the frontier this week, but everything had to be unloaded from the lorries and reloaded on to Pakistani lorries, which took seven hours. Even Indian and Pakistani left MPs had to lend a hand. This is how the disgusting government of Pakistan helps its people. Incidentally Struggle claims to have sent doctors in at least four medical teams, plus supplies, and to have treated at least 1,500 people (see www.marxist.com/pakistan-earthquake-appeal101005.htm). Personally I find it a great pity that the comrades of the TURCP and the Struggle group could not have got together in some way - they come out of the same stable after all. The split back in Britain in the early 1990s between Grant and Taaffe was, of course, faithfully copied by all the sections everywhere else, though I believe that there were accusations by Struggle that the others had taken money from NGOs. I do not think that this was denied, but I am uncertain as to whether this deserved expulsion. What madness! The more so as these two groups do seem to me to be easily the best in Pakistan and with some standing in sections of the class. But bugger the class - build the sect! The only two groups that appear to have a decent web presence are Struggle, which has a number of very good, informative accounts and photographs, and the comrades of the quite hard-line Stalinist Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party (CMKP). The other leftwing political groups or parties have very little on their websites about their contribution that I could find, which does not mean to say they were making no effort. Neither the Pakistan Peoples Party, the Communist Party, the Labour Party Pakistan or the Socialist Workers Party affiliate (which is in Urdu and has a monthly whose current issue did not mention the earthquake) appeared to say much. The PPP are mentioned by comrades of the CMKP as having made an encampment, but just standing around doing nothing or very little. Indeed on the CMPK website I saw a couple of very interesting accounts (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cmkp_pk/messages). However, I have been told that they are a very small, uninfluential group, the proverbial two men and a dog. But I understand that the CMPK supports the All-Pakistan Trade Union Federation (APTUF), in which the Lambertists also work. Hassan Nasir, the general secretary, has just sent out a statement urging all communists to support the APTUF, as it is a "leftist union". Apparently it is the only union in Lahore, for example, that specifically tries to organise women and has some excellent women activists. So, however much I disagree with the CMPK politics, the motives, intention and general attitudes in many of their people appear excellent. And finally another correspondent says that "the situation is going to get much worse by all accounts, with people leaving the mountains and more landslides expected as the weather changes." So I would ask every socialist to dig deep for whichever one of the appeals they feel closest to.
Worker