WPP calls for review on war against terror

Islamabad, March 09, 2011 (PPI): Worker’s Party Pakistan (WPP) has once again called for an urgent review of the so-called war on terror and the foreign and strategic priorities of the state in the wake of two heinous bomb blasts on successive days in Faisalabad and Peshawar.

The WPP said it is no longer sufficient for government high-ups to simply issue token condemnations of such attacks, even while indiscriminate military operations continue throughout the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Instead the government û and particularly the security apparatus of the state û must be held to account for its disastrous policy since the onset of the Ewer on terror in 2001 that has destroyed the peace across the country and is rapidly taking Pakistan towards a civil war-like situation.

WPP president Abid Hasan Minto, general secretary Akhtar Hussain and central information secretary Asha Amirali have said that the incidence of violence has gone up dramatically to the point that the majority of Pakistanis are being dehumanized. They noted that large segments of the media have reinforced the opaqueness of state policy by refusing to bring to light crucial political questions such as Pakistan is India-centric foreign policy, the power of the military establishment, and the ongoing patronage of certain right-wing militant groups by the state.

The WPP leaders asserted that even in exposing the machinations of American imperialism in the shape of the Raymond Davis affair, those who shape public opinion have refused to call attention to the contradictions within the Pakistani state, and in particular the long-standing imbalance in civil-military relations.

It also slammed the mainstream political parties for their inability to come together and create a common front against the establishment and thereby reorient the state is policies away from militarism and towards people is welfare. They said that the petty bickering between the two major political parties û the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) in particular is a reflection of how little these parties are interested in genuine social transformation and actually reflects the fact that these parties are aligning themselves with different factions within the security apparatus as a means of maintaining a share of power.

The WPP said that all political forces instead need to come together and take concrete steps to rationalize the operation of all state institutions, cleanse the security apparatus of extremist ideologies, and work towards freeing Pakistan from the clutches of imperialist intervention and establishing genuine sovereignty.