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Isaac Nellist speaks with Ammar Ali Jan, Pakistani socialist and general secretary of the Haqooq-e-Khalq (Peoples’ Rights) Party, about the tensions between India and Pakistan, which escalated when India launched missile strikes against Pakistan on May 7.

In the second part of our interview, we discuss the current ceasefire deal, self-determination for Kashmir and steps towards peace in the region.

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Last year’s election result revealed the waning legitimacy of the Pakistani government and military. How are they using the conflict with India to reassert legitimacy? Is it working?

They have definitely regained legitimacy to a large extent. One of the issues was that a lot of people were observing in the past two weeks that the Pakistani state was showing a lot of restraint.

When your cities are being bombed there is not a lot that any activist can do, there is no protest that is possible and the analogies with the Arab world were being drawn, both inside Pakistan and from the Indian establishment, which said we need to “reduce Pakistan to Gaza”, use the Israeli playbook and do to Pakistan what we did to Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

This was terrifying, and when we found that there were Israeli drones that fell on cities, including Lahore, where I am from, it created a lot of panic.

So, there is a lot of sympathy [for the government], including from those on the left. Our party has thanked those who in that perilous moment defended the sovereignty of the country and the people.

However, we made it very clear that this is the responsibility of the military. If in the garb of self-defence, the military continues with its oppressive policies, we are under no obligation to remain silent.

In fact, what happened last week was that during this entire conflict the Supreme Court of Pakistan legalised the trial of civilians in military courts, so we have raised a statement on that.

The nature of the Pakistani state is that it will continue to use this hysteria to benefit those who run the state. It is our job to fight back and organise.

Most importantly, we know that this entire economic, political structure, the kind of militarised capitalism that exists in our part of the world, cannot sustain itself without sacrificing millions and millions of people.

Remember, not only do 40% of people in Pakistan live in poverty, 25 million children cannot go to school, 80% of the water is contaminated and 40% of people die from water-borne diseases. The wars that we have to fight are wars against illiteracy, poverty, disease and authoritarianism.

And those are wars that even our comrades in India will have to fight and those are the wars that should unite us, not this mindless bigotry we are seeing at the moment.

Large �鶹��ý of the Indian establishment got behind this war drive, and the Indian left had mixed responses. Have there been attempts by the Pakistan left to build bridges with Indian leftists and peace activists? If so, what has been the response?

Our policy is not to comment on the internal situation of the Indian left. The Indian left has to [debate] amongst themselves. We also have debates within the Pakistani left at the moment.

We have at least three positions on the Pakistani left. One is that, even if India is attacking, we should not retaliate. That is not our position. Our position was that if we are under attack we have the right to defend our people.

There was a third position that was almost jingoistic — that we should continue the attacks and continue fighting.

Part of the problem is that the Pakistani and Indian left do not have the same kind of relationships that we have had in the past — those are bridges that we need to build.

Some parties have had an excellent position, others haven’t. There are a lot of questions about some parties supporting Operation Sindoor. But it is best not to comment on that, because eventually we will have to work together and create a united path.

We are not going to create new parties on the left in India; that is not our job, just as they can’t change the fabric of the left inside Pakistan.

We will have to work with those parties, even those that have not taken a position for peace.

In the long run, there can be political errors, particularly in situations of immense hysteria and fear, but we should remember who our allies are in India. Despite the problems, we still have high hopes for our friends in the communist movement in India and we will develop a good relationship with them in the future.

What steps are needed for peace in the region?

There are three issues that are taking place. One is United States involvement. It wants to turn India into a hegemon of the region.

The recent defence pact signed between [US President Donald] Trump and [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi in February is a 10-year military strategic partnership that is part of the US’ China containment strategy and suggests that “our strategic interests are converging”.

It is not an anti-Pakistan pact, it’s an anti-China pact, but these pacts map onto existing conflicts and existing histories.

Trump is doing something similar with Saudi Arabia. But, of course, once Saudi has that power and those kinds of weapons it can use them anywhere to win its own regional dominance.

It's a very dangerous game that the US is playing in the region and we have to resist that kind of Western pressure completely.

Second, we have to find a just solution for the issues of Kashmir and terrorism, and they have to be separated.

Terrorism is an issue historically. It is something that is an offshoot of what Pakistan’s policy was in the 1980s during the Afghan jihad, when the Soviet Union was in Afghanistan.

This was a policy that was completely prepared by Washington. It was the US who prepared this entire jihad, who armed it and funded it.

Books on jihad were being published in the University of Nebraska. So, you can understand the close relationship between that jihad and US imperialism.

Since then, the region has had this entire logistical network that has killed 70,000 Pakistanis and has also attacked Indians and fought in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan; the entire region has been wracked by this.

There has to be a long-term solution to that.

But the Kashmir problem existed prior to the ’80s. It exists after the end of the War on Terror [and] it will keep existing until there is peace and justice for Kashmir, which is rooted in their right to self-determination.

That has to be the starting point for any resolution of the Kashmir crisis.

The third has to be that we are spending our surplus resources on destruction. We have already been denied development and modernity; we entered modernity under colonialism, which was a modernity of loot, plunder and exploit.

Even now, we are wasting our resources, wasting our time fighting each other. We have to think about development and trade and fighting the wars we need to fight against illiteracy, poverty, disease and authoritarianism.

If the far right is defeated in India, it will be a blessing for progressive forces in Pakistan. If militarism is defeated in Pakistan, it will be a blessing for progressive forces in India.

We are connected and we must try to mutually reinforce each other.

Any final comments?

This is a problem that requires more attention from the global left; this is a flashpoint and a region of over 2 billion people with nuclear weapons and more than 40% of people living in poverty.

It is showing us what the whole world could look like. There was a book by Mike Davis called Planet of Slums, but we are moving to a different world that could be a “Planet of Ruins” if this continues.

Comrades in Australia and elsewhere should not only be reading about it, but you have done an excellent job, particularly through �鶹��ý of bringing comrades from India and Pakistan together.

That is something that the global left can do. There are very few spaces we can meet with Indian comrades, we can’t go to India and they can’t come to Pakistan, so we need those spaces and platforms where we can talk to each other and thrash out our differences.

It is a historical imperative to work together for peace and justice in South Asia.

[Ammar Ali Jan will be a keynote speaker at the conference, in Naarm/Melbourne, from September 5–7.]