The drums of war are beating again, this time along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the impact is far beyond the mountains of the Durand Line.⁽¹⁾ This is not a border issue; it is another tremor within the global crisis of capitalism and a step towards imperialist slaughter.

According to the bourgeois press, this particular conflict started when Pakistan accused the Afghan Taliban government of nurturing terrorist groups such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and using them for terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. A Taliban spokesperson, in his turn, condemned Pakistani security forces for border violation. What followed was an airstrike from Pakistan, apparently on terrorist camps inside Afghanistan, which, the Taliban claimed, resulted in civilian deaths.

In response, the Afghan army launched cross-border shelling. Pakistan responded with its own call for ‘Open War.’ Since then, both sides have claimed major damage to the other’s military, while independent observers have pointed out that the civilians along the Durand Line are facing the bigger brunt.

Now, after more than 10 days of Pakistan’s call for ‘Open War,’ the fighting between them shows no signs of stopping. Behind this façade of ‘protecting territorial sovereignty’ lies the reality of the crisis, which is neither accidental nor exceptional. In times of capitalist decay, war is not an accident but a permanent feature. War breathes new life into the stagnated bourgeois camps. There is no progressive camp to defend, no progressive, ‘lesser evil’ state to which workers can declare allegiance. What appears as regional rivalry is nothing but inter-bourgeoisie confrontation. With this, former tactical agreements have collapsed under the pressure of capital.

When the USA was forced to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan after a two-decade-long military occupation in 2021, the country’s ruling puppet regime quickly collapsed in the face of rising ethno-religious insurgency of the Taliban, a reactionary force to its core. Pakistan initially supported them and envisioned them as a loyal regional proxy; while China, the major imperialist power bordering Afghanistan on the other end, saw in this as an opportunity to quickly offer the Taliban government a place in its Belt and Road project, a tool of imperial domination and capital export. The Taliban government readily accepted this, eager to ally itself with the Chinese. The USA, confronted with declining power, reluctantly had to adjust to the shifting balance of power. Since then, China has been performing a balancing act between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are no helpless puppets, though. The Pakistani state attempts to consolidate regional leverage and thereby prove itself to be a stronger ally to both the USA and China. Afghanistan, despite lower and uneven economic development, wants to maintain authority and gain more recognition. They also have their own designs in Pakistan’s Pashtun dominated Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region, and TTP, on their behalf, is carrying out a proxy war inside the region. The Pakistani state, like all states, views this problem from above and frames this as a refugee problem where only pushing them away can solve this problem. Those refugees were largely working-class people of Afghanistan, who largely depend on underpaid jobs for their subsistence, most of whom fled during the NATO offensive and the Taliban insurgency and takeover.

China prioritises its corridors, mineral access, and the advancement of its regional economic influence while avoiding direct conflict that could threaten its projects. Iran rushes to consolidate power within the region, protecting its material and geopolitical interests. The USA leverages Afghanistan as a site to extract geopolitical advantages to punish a state for its challenge in 2021 to the prior client regime. They also offer full diplomatic support to Pakistan. India seeks to exploit Pakistan’s western entanglement while ensuring diplomatic backing to the Afghan Taliban. In all cases, the behaviour of these states reflects the dynamics of global capitalist competition, where national strategies are subordinated to the pursuit of accumulation, control of resources, and the maintenance of class hierarchies on a global scale.

The current conflict cannot be understood as the product of a single miscalculation or of ‘evil actors’. In backward capitalist countries, war emerges because the working class is unable to break free from bourgeois ideology. Clerics, media, and state institutions mobilise populations in the name of religion, nationalism, or ‘defence of the fatherland’, binding the working class within the logic of inter-bourgeois competition. Defencism on one side generates chauvinism on the other, creating a cycle in which workers are subordinated to national antagonisms.

To choose one country over another is to subordinate the working class to imperialist interests. Each is an imperial actor, only of different statures within the global imperialist framework. These different statures within the global imperialist framework do not mean a change in class character. Campism, choosing a side between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Beijing and Washington, India or Iran, only ties the proletariat down to their own destruction.

Religious fundamentalism is not the root cause here, as many blame; it is a cover for mobilising the masses ideologically. The religious clerics of both mainland Pakistan and Afghanistan are quick to support their respective rulers in the name of ‘Holy War.’ It is not hard to understand that this provides the perfect mystical garb for the contending military powers to claim their superiority while masking the bourgeois violence.

A new Pashtun state carved away from Pakistan’s northwest would not resolve anything, as the TTP proclaims. Alignment with the USA or China offers no respite for the working class either. We have already seen how disastrously the working masses of Afghanistan fared when the USA and Taliban contested for control. Right now, we are witnessing how Chinese imperial interests are unfolding in the Balochistan region of Pakistan and pushing it towards more internal strife, bloodied contests between ethnic groups and asymmetrical guerrilla warfare.

Therefore, we categorically reject campism, nationalism, and religious mobilisation of all kinds. The problem is not of policy. The capitalist state cannot solve the problems because the state itself represents the problem, integrated within the global imperialist economy.

The only thing that breaks this is the class struggle waged by a conscious working class, united across borders, against national blocs of the ruling bourgeoisie, against imperialism, against religious war cries, and against the bourgeois concept of nation-states.

Only the organisation of the working class internationally against all national bourgeoisies, bureaucracies, militaries, ethno-fascists and clerical hierarchies can take us beyond this cycle of never-ending crisis and slaughter. Neither defence of the fatherland, nor campism, religious dogmatism, nor any bureaucratic policies have the strength or will to do so.

We devote our strength to and hope to witness the rise of a class-conscious proletariat able to end this once and for all and bring forth the liberation of all.

Against imperialist slaughter!
Against nationalist warmongering!
Against religious dogmatism!
In the face of all these, we uphold the communist cause and reply firmly – no war but the class war!

Notes:

Image: Al Jazeera English (CC BY-SA 2.0), commons.wikimedia.org

(1) The Durand Line is the international border named after the British diplomat Henry Durand who agreed the border of ‘British India’ with the Emir of Kabul in 1893.