Ground Zero: People’s Forum on Resistance Against Bombings, Militarism, and Repression | 19 June 2024 | Held at the International Festival for People’s Rights and Struggles at Penang, Malaysia

Azra Talat Sayeed is the General Secretary of the International League of People’s Struggles (ILPS) and the chairperson of the Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN). She founded the grassroot organization Roots for Equity in Pakistan and has been working actively on women’s rights and peasant rights.

Good afternoon, everybody. I’m very happy to be here at the International Festival for People’s Rights and Struggles. Very timely, immensely needed right now, not only because of Palestine, but the way the whole imperialist structure is rearing up. To finish off as that woman, whatever her name is, the American who wrote on an Israeli bomb, “Finish them.” We will finish them, yes.

Let me just start—it’s long and I will try and bear it down—this is the 21st century and we are now in the era of the highest stage of imperialism, which has, for all its three decades, witnessed violent economic policies being thrust on [the] society with the workers and peasants forced into many forms of callous atrocities, including hunger, poverty, and exploitation. But imperialist projects do not stop at severe economic exploitation only. They are accompanied [by] devastating wars and bloodshed. The latest is the ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestine. But history tells us that all this is not new. We have battled against colonialism, new colonialism, apartheid, capitalism, [and] feudalism over the past centuries, and our history of resistance is very rich. I will not go into that history right now—I think that’s not needed—but what we really need is to understand. Although in the original paper that I had written, there is quite a bit of discussion on what people have done over the centuries to fight—the reason that we remember our liberation fighters, and honor them, is because we have now entered an era where a fierce struggle for dominance is ongoing between the world’s imperialist powers. Which, of course, as we all know, include the United States, China, and Russia. But it is very important to know that all imperialist powers are not equal, and the United States remains the number one imperialist terrorist power, or much better—as we call it in the movement—it’s the number one terrorist in the world.

There are three fronts of war right now in the world. One, of course, [as] we all know, is the WANA region, the Middle East, where there is a fierce, fierce war going on, struggling for power [with which] we will overcome. That is our extreme belief. We have lost a lot. We have given huge sacrifices, but we will overcome. That, in part, is part of the, in Iran and the axis—as we call it, the axis of resistance—Iran is really the target. The Americans know that very well; that if resistance is going to come in that area, it’s going to come from Iran. That’s one area. Then in the Asia Pacific, the US has extreme problems with China and Democratic Republic of Korea. And so that’s the second phase. In the last few years, a number of security arrangements have entered in the Asia Pacific region. Many of us know them, and some of the names that occur, which is Australia, UK, [and] US. Another one is for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which is for the US, Japan, India, and Australia. So that tells you that the Western imperialists remained together, but they have found a new ally. Which is a great shock because over the past 70 [to] 80 years, India has been a secular force. If not entirely, we, in fact, do not consider them democratic, nor do we consider ourselves democratic, but India has really got a very strong right for its own people and for the history of the people of the world. So these four forces are now very clearly in the Asia Pacific region. And then we have Russia, of course, where the Americans are trying their best to isolate Russia and put it in a spot where it does not interact with others, especially the other European countries, because Russia was the source of energy. We also believe that one of the reasons that the Ukraine war is happening is to cut off the energy source from Russia to Europe because the Americans do not want the Russians to have any form of collaboration, especially economic relationships with the Europeans. And one of the reasons why the war on Gaza is happening [is] because of the IMEC [which] I will come to later. As mentioned above, the US and its Western allies are fighting in Eastern Europe; it’s basically to take down Russia. Then, they have set up a huge military configuration, which is not new. It was created for the Second World War.

[The] NATO, the North American Treaty Organization, which presently, right after the Ukrainian war, started increasing its membership [with] the Scandinavian countries who have been historically staying away from NATO. So now there are 30 European countries in NATO, and of course, the two North American [countries], the United States, and Canada, and it’s a huge army. But needless to say that 70% of NATO is actually powered by the Americans. So I’ve learned something about NATO, which I always find very interesting. First of all, in just 2023, the annual military budget of NATO was 2.03 billion EUR, which is about 2.17 billion USD. Then, apart from the military budget, they also have what they call a civilian budget—I don’t know what that means—but that’s 438.1 million EUR as well. Now, according to NATO, it is there to promote democracy, democratic values, to build trust, and, in the long run, to prevent conflict. In the long run, please note. To understand NATO’s understanding of democratic values, we can look at NATO and the US’s nearly 20 years of occupation of Afghanistan. I am from Pakistan and we have a very long boundary with Afghanistan. And so for us, the conflict has not been 20 years, it has been 40 years. It started in the 1980s. We had more than 4 million Afghan refugees for almost 40 years. It is a very brutal war and the price is being paid by both the Afghan people and Pakistan. That is the democratic value of NATO. We also need to know what NATO was doing in Afghanistan because Afghanistan is not part of North America. It is not part of Europe, so as they say themselves, ‘we will go wherever we are needed to defend the democracies of the bloody Western countries as well as the United States.’ So it means it’s [an] open war. NATO has nothing to do with North America, it has to do with the whole global world.

I think it’s very important to talk about women at this point because they were talking about liberation of women from the Taliban. And I wonder, who are liberating the women of Palestine? Is that the Zionists? The absolute double vision of these countries—they are butchers. Imperialism wants dominance in three major areas for maintaining hegemony. It is resources, it is markets, it is workers; we should always remember that. The control of these three is coupled with securing trade routes, especially marine routes and territories.

Tensions are further heightened based on the raging climate crisis, which is actually climate imperialism, and with so much land being lost. Again, I’m from Pakistan. I know very well what it means to be under a climate crisis. We are losing land to flash floods, to drought, and also the rising sea levels. So much water is coming in, and we already know what is happening in the back of it. I’m talking about South Asia. It is not in the middle of the sea, but here also, we are losing land. And so the Saudis, the Emiratis, and a lot of the Arab countries, including China, want the land. They have huge populations. In Pakistan—I will not go into detail—but we are losing thousands of acres of land every month, thousands of acres of [them], and it’s because of the Arabs. For the profit hungry monopoly capital, energy sources are fundamental. The quest for energy sources apart from fossil fuels now also include rare-earth metals. And I will not say what they are, but please do look up rare earth metals—it is very critical in the coming days and months and years of [our] fight. This whole sham about renewable energy—and Europeans really need to look into it—is causing one of the bloodiest wars especially for the rural and the Indigenous peoples because the renewable energies are dependent on the rare earth metals, which are really part of their ancestral land. They’re really part of the rural agricultural lands, and they’re digging them up and taking out the minerals. Also, the Pacific Ocean is rich in rare earth metals. They are nodules—they call them nodules. I don’t keep on reading, I forget very well. But anyway, there are nodules, which are found deep in the sea, and they are now diving deeper into the Pacific Ocean and at the moment, they seem to be only exploring. But as you know, we can never trust these imperialists; they lie. Every word that they say is a lie. So when they say they’re exploring, they’re actually marking territory deep in the ocean to find those minerals and to take them into their control. And so the Pacific Rim, some of my colleagues [from] IWA (International Women’s Alliance) and Resist US-led War, are doing a lot of work [regarding] the rimming of the Pacific Rim.

But it’s also not only just about the oceans which are responsible for surrounding China, it is a lot about energy as well. The amount, number of bases which the Americans have in the Asia Pacific, 175 in Japan and around 70 in South Korea. Just between the two. And the biggest bases are in Qatar, then in the Emirates, and so on, so forth. The other reason that these minerals are very critical is also because they are used in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence now is a military technology. As we know very well, they are using it in Gaza. They were calling it “Lavender,” which is so sick. So the artificial technology, our phones, all the electric batteries with the Europeans and the Americans saying it’s going to save the planet is really based on these rare-earth metals. And the biggest defense corporations are the primary ones who are part of the artificial intelligence technologies. I will not say what are the various different technologies that they’re using because I don’t have much time, but I would like to say that the Pacific Island is a hotbed of US military bases, a key base being in Marshall Islands, called the US Army Garrison – Kwajalein Atoll. I don’t know how it is pronounced. But just recently, just two to three months ago, that base was totally wiped off because of very high, huge monstrous waves. So, if nothing else, I totally believe in people’s resistance. The Americans provide economic assistance to the Pacific Islands and in return, they do not allow anybody else to enter those waters.

We all know that many of the Pacific islands remain a colony of the European and the American to this day. They didn’t even go through the pseudo-independence that many of us did, which we never did, but we call it ‘independence.’ Okay, so I will not repeat the basis because I’ve already talked about it. But another thing which is very critical for all of us to know is that the US Command in the Pacific region has what is called the US Indopacific Command, US INDOPACOM. It is one of the six departments of defense of the United States spread over the entire globe. The six commands, as they call them, are there to ‘secure’ everybody. What they don’t say is it’s there to secure the interest of the United States. Very soon, they’ll be holding the 29th Biennial exercises, Rim of the Pacific, just 28th of June which will include 29 countries, including the G7 countries, Israel, and India. And this is really to show a lot of muscle strength to the Chinese that ‘we are very active here and do not even try to think of occupying the territories of the Asia Pacific.’ Although not that we stand with China. But they [US imperialists] come and tell us that they have the right to provide security to Asia, whereas they are thousands of miles away from Asia, and that’s why they have changed the name from Asia Pacific, and they call it Indo-Pacific because they want to create this mindset that India and the United States are now like twin brothers. Correct? This is in one of the latest strategy papers that came out some years ago. Apart from the Pacific, the US presence is very strong in Asia as well. I’ve said on how many bases, so I will not do that anymore.

Another area of conflict, of course, for the Philippines, which is very critical, is the South China Sea, which is being claimed by both the Americans, by the Chinese and the Philippines and a number of other nations—that’s another area of conflict. Basically, Americans are doing the best to fan [it], and they have set up new bases in the US, in the Philippines. And the whole idea is, again, to push back China from there. Needless to say, imperialism views seaports as a crucial source for controlling trade, the ride around which it dances crazily.

According to the UN, more than 80% of trade is done through marine droughts. However, ports are more than trade nodes. They are also military preserves and means of military control. According to the US, China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force and the People’s Liberation Army Navy are the largest aviation force in Indochina. The PLA is considered the world’s largest army with more than 2 million active serving personnel. However, these figures are very deceptive because we need to see where the money is. In 2023, the United States military spent 916 billion USD, which is 44 percent more than the entire spending of the Chinese and the Russians. And it is also more than top five spenders, military spenders. So this whole context of them saying that the Chinese army is very big is actually nonsense, because if you look at the defense spending, nobody is even halfway close to what the Americans are doing. So while there is no doubt that the US remains the biggest military mind globally, China is also making headway, increasing its military presence especially in [the] Asia Pacific and Africa. In Asia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Iran, and now Gaza are still critical areas being fought over by both China and the US. For China, Gwadar in Pakistan is a lifeline. As through the Strait of Malacca, they are totally bound by the American ships and base. For them, the Strait of Malacca is really of no use. They will use Pakistan and the two ports of Pakistan over which they now have economic control, and also Iran, and also further down to have access to sea routes, because for China, the biggest trend is economic trade. That’s where their focus is. They do not want war right now. They really just want to keep on building up their economic strength and their military. And so for them, trade routes are very critical—that is what the Americans are trying to shut off. Since 2013, the Chinese have spent 1 trillion across the globe in development projects of which 160 billion have been spent in Africa, and its first military base has been difficult, versus 750 military bases of the United States.

I would also really like to especially mention the I2U2. The US is building a web of partnership with its allies, especially in the Middle East and Asia, to counter China’s rapid economic partnerships in Asia and Africa. A new fascist platform known as I2U2, which is Israel and India, UAE and USA. So two I’s for India and Israel and two U’s for US and UAE. They were the pilot project before the next project called IMEC, the India-Middle East European Economic Project, which was launched just before seventh of October. This was launched on 10th of September, just within less than 20 days of that launch, because it was clear that the Americans were trying to build a normalization relationship with the Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia which is still going on, and the Palestinian resistance stood up and said, ‘we will not do this.’ So I2U2 is very critical because India’s Ambani now holds more than 50 percent shares in many of the Israeli-occupied Palestine ports. That’s now owned by the Indians. And so you can see the very close relationship the Israelis have in India and that India has with the United States. So we, especially South Asia, is now in a very, very, hot spot because we have the trade routes and then we have two nuclear powers, Pakistan and India. And the racism and this religious bias between the Hindus and the Muslims, which the Americans started under the war on terror, is now being claimed by the Indians. And then Kashmiri-occupied India is going through some of the worst onslaughts which are often compared to Palestine and nobody can say anything about it.

As we know, the current genocide in Gaza is also partly based on the US ambition of ensuring the success of the India, Middle East, [and] Europe economic corridor, mimicking the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. Then IMEC is also a marine and land route which will lead from India to the Middle East, going through Saudi Arabia, Emirates, Jordans, into Israel, but actually it is Gaza, and from Gaza into Europe. So that is one of the key reasons. 

Hence, we see that there is now a much clearer picture emerging of what is happening in the world. We really need to figure out the people’s resistance cannot only be the Palestinian resistance. It has to be the people’s resistance. And that’s why the name Ground Zero—although I have always had this vision of bloody 9-11 when they say Ground Zero—this Ground Zero is us. And there is no way of surviving this except to ensure that we have a unity, a global unity of revolutionary fighters, of revolutionary bloomers, to hold this backlash, to overcome and conquer.

It’s now—now we are into what is called an existential crisis because on one side, we have climate imperialism, which is part and parcel of the imperialism of the United States and of the Western countries. Again, China is not part and parcel of that. Not that I’m trying to defend China—you know, Pakistan is under attack from China, but let us be very clear in how to balance who is the real enemy and the real enemy will always be America. So, I will just reread this: The lessons that have been relearned for us, that we had already learned with the defeat of the United States in Vietnam is that it is not the military strength of an oppressive nation that wins protracted wars, but [rather] the ability to organize the broad masses. [It is] the steadfastness of the people to stand up and fight against repressive imperialist regimes. It is our preparedness to be able to withstand the onslaught of inhuman wars, our determination to defeat the enemy, our belief and practice in people’s unity, with women’s unity critical to fight for a world free of exploitation, oppression, apartheid, injustice, class dominance, rape of the people’s lives, and rape of the environment.

That will win the fight for us against imperialism. I’ll finish with that. Thank you very much.