I remember reading an interview with Tariq Ali a couple of years ago in which he was asked about the contemporary Pakistani left. He responded that there is no meaningful left to speak of. I found this off-hand comment quite offensive, although not because the left is in fact a substantial force in Pakistani politics. Rather I think that it is irresponsible of someone who claims to be committed to left politics to be so dismissive of the left in Pakistan today. Whatever does exist demands recognition, if only because the kind of reflexive debate and action that is so urgently required within left circles in Pakistan will only begin to take place when today’s left – with all of its discord and dysfunction – is given due recognition.

Tariq Ali has lived outside of Pakistan for more than four decades. He, and many others like him, are haunted by the memory of what Zia-ul-Haq did to Pakistani society, politics, and particularly the political imagination. They assume – partly correctly – that we have yet to recover from the depths to which we were plunged during Zia’s black years. But their pessimism is deeply problematic insofar as Zia’s primary legacy is an abiding public cynicism, particularly vis a vis politics: by themselves projecting the idea that there is no dynamic, organic left organizing taking place in Pakistan today, progressives are in danger of making the Zia model of society into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As I have already noted, I do not want to suggest that there is much dynamism about. But it would also be unreasonable to ignore the many dedicated activists that have been at the forefront of political mobilizations as different as the movement of landless tenants in Punjab (which galvanized the resistance to General Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorship); the series of anti-privatisation strikes that have wracked PTCL since 2005; the fairly consistent opposition to mega water projects in Sindh and the Siraiki belt; and, of course, the lawyer-led agitation that culminated in the deposal of Musharraf. And then there is the increasingly conspicuous ethno-nationalist mobilization in Balochistan, which features entities such as the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO) that, at least in name, continue to lay claim to the Marxism.

It is in relation to the last two examples, I think, that one gets a sense of just how complex the objective situation confronting the left is, and why the various struggles I have mentioned here do not coalesce under the banner of a coherent and organized left politics. First the anti-Musharraf mobilization: many of us on the left closely involved in the movement that erupted following the Chief Justice’s deposal in March 2007 were aware that, notwithstanding the claims of the ‘rule of law’ brigade, the lawyer-led mobilization essentially captured the mood of a public that was fed up with yet another decade-long bout of martial law and wanted to see change (some cynics will argue that every incumbent government in Pakistan becomes deeply unpopular with the course of time, but I believe that military regimes face qualitatively different opposition because of their inherently repressive character).

In short the mobilization of lawyers allowed us, the left, to articulate in full public view, our long-standing pro-democratic politics while going beyond the slogans of ‘Go Musharraf go’ and instead demanding ‘Go Army go’, thereby emphasizing our rejection of the national security ideology. In short, for a political force that had become a shadow of its former self, it made sense to make common cause with a movement in which a broad coalition of political forces were pushing out an illegitimate military regime whose time was fast running out.

As it turned out, many other political workers who also associate themselves with the left, articulated a different viewpoint entirely. They suggested that the lawyer-led movement was hardly organic, represented realignment within the corridors of power, and was effectively a means through which right-wing forces could assert themselves in a prospective post-Musharraf dispensation. According to this perspective, the United States was already involved in engineering a ‘regime change’ and the ‘Chief Justice’ movement was actually an attempt by ultra-right wing forces within the establishment to regain lost political space.

Irrespective of whether this segment of progressive forces was correct in their analysis, what I find more important is the faultline that separated left forces vis a vis participation in the anti-Musharraf movement. Namely, it was left activists who have become more and more involved in ethno-nationalist politics that were skeptical about the lawyer-led movement. Siraiki activists – many of whom were members of or closely affiliated to left parties as recently as the 1990s – even called the lawyer-led mobilization the ‘GT Road movement’, underlining what they believed to be its underlying ethnic and class composition (and therefore political line).

A similar faultine is reflected in the prevailing trends within the Baloch nationalist movement. In short, Baloch nationalist parties – with notable exceptions – are becoming increasingly parochial insofar as they are beginning to perceive their struggle to be limited purely to the Baloch themselves and view any other political constituency that retains links to Pakistan with the greatest of suspicion. The target killings of non-Baloch in Balochistan is a clear line in the sand: it would be difficult for leftists of any denomination to defend such actions, even though we know that it is the state itself that is primarily responsible for the emergence of a politics of hate. In the past the symbiotic link between the left and ethno-nationalists energized anti-establishment politics whereas today prominent Baloch leaders are asserting that they want to have nothing to do with Pakistan (which presumably includes the Pakistani left) and are even happy to have the United States engineer Balochistan’s freedom.

This leads me to yet another related – and major – faultline in progressive circles today. When the so-called ‘war on terror’ began in late 2001, a clear difference in opinion emerged between those who argued that the attack on Afghanistan was an old-fashioned imperialist intervention and those who claimed that ‘surgical strikes’ were necessary to eliminate the mullahs who constitute the greatest threat to society in the present conjuncture. As the ‘war on terror’ has spread into Pakistan this difference in opinion has become more and more acute. Those of us who have opposed in principle the military operations in Pakhtun areas launched by the governments of Musharraf and now the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) under the guise of fighting terrorism have been called Taliban supporters. Others who argue that the US is the lesser of two evils spew polemic against those who maintain that imperialism is the biggest opponent of genuine peace and the socialist ideal in suggesting that the latter conflate the Taliban’s politics with anti-imperialism.

It is beyond the scope of the present discussion to explore the merits and demerits of either side of all three of these serious political issues. It must suffice here to note that the contemporary left in Pakistan is seriously divided, and that reconciliation on all or some of these issues is becoming increasingly unlikely with the passing of time. The left, of course, both within Pakistan and throughout the world, has a long tradition of internal debate and dissent. Unfortunately all too often the striving for ideological purity becomes more important than the political task at hand, namely to unite against state, imperialism and the dominant classes.

In any case, the reemergence of a broad-based left movement in Pakistan hinges on the thrashing out of the issues highlighted here. Many parties, groups and individuals have been and will continue to be the face of a principled politics of resistance but if there is to be a meaningful challenge to the status quo it is necessary to think deeply about these very difficult questions that surface time and again in the course of our political struggles.

There are numerous other objective constraints to the revival of the left, and these constraints are also likely to become more acute in years to come. First and foremost, the NGO phenomenon and donor funding has dramatically transformed the progressive political landscape. Many old leftists have now abandoned politics of the traditional kind and are now running NGOs. That our strategies require changing is not disputed. The primary problem I have with NGOs is that they typically intervene in political movements with disastrous effects. If NGOs were limited to service delivery there would still be a critique (which has to do with their tacit acquiescence to the neo-liberal rollback of the state), but NGOs that talk of ‘rights’ tend to be even more culpable of damaging what are inherently political struggles.

A related issue is that of young people and the increasingly obsolete notion of volunteer activism. In the heyday of the left in the 1960s and 1970s, it was not difficult to attract youth towards the left. Romanticism, freedom from responsibility to family and similar concerns, and widespread politicization and awareness of the revolutionary trends of the time explained the steady stream of young people towards the left. Things have changed dramatically in the past 2-3 decades. Zia’s military junta succeeded in alienating young people from leftist political ideologies and indeed from politics more generally. Add to this the seduction of the new information technology and the hope of a life replete with the all of the luxuries that capitalism has to offer and it becomes clear how much more difficult it is for today’s youth to be attracted to the left.

In a perverse kind of way the religious right has taken over the mantle of insurrectionary ideology of choice. Today’s disaffected youth are attracted to millenarian causes and the promise of heavenly salvation. If there is a silver lining to this frightening trend it is that it shows that young people are still imbued with revolutionary spirit despite all of the signals telling them to settle for a life of indifference and cooption. Whether or not we in Pakistan are able to build a new left as an alternative political option for the young people of our society will determine not only whether we can fight off the appeal of millenarianism but also whether all of the nations that comprise this state can find a way to live together in peace with one another while fending off the machinations of the biggest oppressor of them all, 21^st century imperialism. Those who think that there is no left to speak of in Pakistan would do us all a favour by keeping their ideas to themselves.

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar