In the last few weeks, sections of the media, government, various NGOs and some on the Left have succeeded in creating a climate of terror in Pakistan’s middle class. Many are gripped with fear about the Taliban’s imminent takeover. The media has played a big part in spreading fear to bolster support for the government’s assault. But if there is a real danger of Talibanisation in this country, it is caused by the senseless and dangerous pursuit of the war on terror by the government.

The peace deal in Swat is finished. Since 26 April military operations have started on the orders of the Obama administration. The Pakistan army is using warplanes and heavy artillery against civilian areas in the name of fighting the Taliban. This military operation has already killed hundreds of people and UN and Unicef estimates put the number of displaced at between 2.4 and 3 million. Carpet bombing of villages and “tribal areas” continues daily.

This conflict in Pakistan is part of the wider imperialist war on terror, and the Pakistani army are the agents of US imperialism. The ink was barely dry on the peace deal struck between the government and the rebels when the US leaned on the PPP government to carry on the fighting. The US administration, whether it is under Bush or Obama is pursuing the same agenda, and it has led to all out civil war in Pakistan.

As a result of the government’s war, ethnic tensions are running high. The Pashtun people are suffering discrimination and attacks in other provinces, such as Sindh, because of the war against them in Swat.

The military is targeting people who are trying to move to the safe areas. One person described how the village of Kalpani had seen huge exchanges of firing and shelling between the military and the Islamists. The situation is so bad that dogs are eating the corpses left lying in the fields. Nobody dares to go outside their home to collect them for fear of being shot. A Taliban militant fired one single shot on a military vehicle, but in return the military gunship helicopters devastated large parts of the village.

The artillery bombardment is leading to huge numbers of civilian deaths, homelessness and displacement which only strengthen the Taliban and other militant Islamist forces. In addition to providing a huge pool of recruitment for Taliban fighters, the government has unleashed a massive humanitarian crisis and it is the Islamists who are feeding the refugees from it.

Journalists are not allowed to enter the area. The local journalists are not in a position to speak the truth either. Information is only partial and people rely on refugees to tell us what is really happening. Pakistan feels like it is decaying all around.

In this situation liberals and a section of the Left are looking to the Pakistani state and the military to defend us from “Talibanisation”. This is the same military which until recently held the country in the grip of a dictatorship. These people have no interest in democracy – they fight the Taliban because the US commands them to. The military is no friend of liberal democracy or workers and women’s rights. If the government was really serious about preventing the spread of the Taliban then why did President Asif Ali Zardari ratify the decision of the parliament to introduce Sharia law into Swat in exchange for the Taliban laying down their weapons?

The calls to defend democracy ring hollow. Democracy in Pakistan is a fraud. Since partition we have always hung in the balance between dictatorship and civilian rule. The growth of militant Islam is because of the desperation of ordinary people to take control of their own lives from the corrupt politicians and the army. Of course they are mistaken, an Islamic state in Pakistan along the lines of the Taliban’s Afghanistan or Iran today would be a disaster. But desperation breeds desperate thoughts.

Workers Power Pakistan not only opposes the military operation, we also argue that this is not in reality a war for democracy against the Taliban. This is a war by imperialism and its agents to dominate the area and smash any political forces that do not fit their “Washington consensus”. Of course we condemn the acts of terrorism by the Taliban, the attacks on women’s rights, minorities and other sections of society. We argue that the Taliban are not consistent anti-imperialist fighters, and that in fact they represent a reactionary programme of social oppression. Only the working class can be truly anti imperialist in its politics and methods of struggle, since the working class in power would remove the market mechanisms from Pakistan which bind it to the imperialist world order.

We have to mobilise working class people and the poor against imperialism. In doing so we put forward our socialist viewpoint clearly and we politically fight the Taliban’s vision and goals. A socialist revolution against capitalism and landlordism in Pakistan would emancipate ordinary people from their daily oppression and undermine the conditions which allow for the Taliban’s growth. We are in favour of an eruption of class struggle in the poorer tribal areas to divide the villages along class lines, to win the peasants and the poor to the side of a progressive outcome of the present crisis.

Socialists can not be neutral in the fight against the people of the Swat region. We demand the end of the military operation and the withdrawal of the army from the area. The Left in Pakistan needs to stop siding with the military and directing all of its criticism on the Taliban, because it means that they cannot develop a programme of struggle against the most serious enemy – the capitalists, the landowners, the military. Pakistan is faced with a choice of socialism or barbarism. The Pakistani workers and youth need to begin a fight for a revolutionary overthrow of the current government and social order to stop the unfolding catastrophe.