Ecology, Trump’s new colonialism and a non-dogmatic theory of imperialism: An interview with Ana Cristina Carvalhaes

By Ana Cristina Carvalhaes & Federico Fuentes

Published 5 July, 2026

Ana Cristina Carvalhaes is a founding activist of Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) and a Fourth International executive bureau member. In this interview with Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Carvalhaes argues for a non-dogmatic theory of imperialism, which incorporates the issue of ecology, understands Trump’s aggressive neo-colonialist shift and recognises the imperialist and sub-imperialist role played by certain “middle-sized economies”.

Over the past century, the term imperialism has been used to define different situations and, at times, been replaced by concepts such as globalisation. Is imperialism still valid? If so, how do you define it?

Imperialism is a Marxist concept, though the word is commonly used in the media and by non-Marxist scholars. The answer to your questions depends on the Marxist perspective you analyse it from, as there are various forms of Marxism. I subscribe to one that rejects immutable dogmas, untouchable classics and sanctified gurus. Such ahistorical views contradict the essence of Marxist historical materialism. And without Marxist theory, it is impossible, for example, to understand the material and ideological roots of US President Donald Trump’s domestic and foreign policies — his wars, tariffs and blackmail against former allies.

The idea of imperialism remains extremely valid and useful today, even if it has been enriched by reality and new phenomena in the 110 years since Lenin’s seminal pamphlet on the topic. I am among those who defend and draw upon the concept of imperialism, formulated and debated by a great generation of Marxists at the turn of the 20th century. But I also think we must draw on the history of these past 100-plus years, and on important contributions regarding new phenomena in the global economy and geopolitics, especially by activists and theorists from the so-called Global South — that is, from colonised countries and regions.

For Marxists, neither “hegemonic transition,” drawn from Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi’s world-system school, nor globalisation, a term with neoliberal roots, can replace the idea of economic and political domination by a group of “core” countries — characterised by their early industrialisation and financialisation — over the majority of nations, which are exploited and oppressed to a greater or lesser extent. Inequality, exploitation (value extraction) and political oppression have been part of capitalism’s essence for nearly 150 years. The Marxist concept of imperialism is a systemic definition with far greater value — more theoretically sharp for understanding reality and useful for the struggle of exploited and oppressed peoples — than the theories you mentioned.

This does not mean Marxist theories should not incorporate contributions from other schools of thought. The idea of hegemonic transition, in which the main (hegemonic) capitalist core countries replace one another (first Genoa and Venice, then the Netherlands, England, the United States and now China) is interesting. It transposes Antonio Gramsci’s idea of hegemony to the international sphere and contributes to understanding capitalist history. Moreover, Arrighi was a pioneer in pointing to something that is evident today; namely, that China was emerging as a potential new hegemonic power in the 1980s and ’90s. He laid this out in his 2007 book, Adam Smith in Beijing. In Marxist terms, China was then already creating the conditions to become a new imperialism — a process still underway.

Globalisation is a term that neoliberals coined to extol the supposed virtues of a world economy under their leadership. However, something new occurred in that period. This encouraged many Marxists, including French economist François Chesnais and Latin American structuralist economists such as Maria da Conceição Tavares, to study what was happening to capitalism in the 1990s from a materialist perspective. Grappling with this new reality, Chesnais described the mechanisms of neoliberal financial globalisation as a new period of even greater dominance by finance. For their part, Tavares and her group in Brazil highlighted the oppressive geopolitical impacts of the US dollar’s power, which combined with its military superiority to reaffirm US power in the wake of the 1970s crises.

Discussions on imperialism often refer back to Lenin’s pamphlet on imperialism. Does it remain relevant today? What elements have been superseded by subsequent developments?

As well as being highly accurate and politically useful for his time, the merit of Lenin’s synthesis lies, above all, in that it revealed an extraordinary long-term strategic vision. As a revolutionary, Lenin was concerned about the war, which had already claimed 100,000s of lives in Europe when the pamphlet was written in 1916, and how socialists on both sides of the trenches should respond.

Most of what he described as imperialism remains relevant today:

• the systemic predominance of an alliance between banking capital and industrial capital — finance capital;
• the growing tendency towards capital's concentration through the formation of monopolies or oligopolies — the end of free competition;
• the ever-widening development gap between core and non-core countries;
• the tendency of industrialised nations, driven by capital’s needs, to expand their political, military and economic power over others; and
• rivalry among imperialist powers and the tendency toward war.

Each characteristic aptly describes today’s crises — with the notable exception of the ecological and climate crisis.

The Leninist concept of imperialism has not always been easy to defend over the past 110 years. New developments forced Marxists to debate imperialism and its transformations. The 30-year period after World War II was marked by the US’ complete economic superiority (in alliance with Western Europe and Japan). This led to debates over whether inter-imperialist rivalries had ended, with the greatest rivalry now being with the “Communist” bloc. The great industrial development of the 1950s and ’60s led some “First World” Marxists to question whether finance capital still dominated — which financial globalisation would conclusively refute.

Broadly speaking, the Marxist theory of imperialism has proven correct in the long run, though, of course, not without shortcomings. The Marxist theory of imperialism, further developed by Latin American dependency theorists and anti-colonial thinkers from Africa and Asia, rightly emphasises the core-periphery contradiction. But it took a long time to recognise — some still do not — the emergence of intermediate state-economies.

These state-economies are dependent on core imperialist powers, but oppress neighbours and partners at the regional level. They do not quite qualify as part of the core, but are no longer simply periphery. Brazil is one case; Australia, it seems to me, is another. This group is highly heterogeneous due to historic, social and demographic differences, among others.

Second, but no less important, is that no attention was paid to industrial capitalism’s predatory impacts on nature. In fact, nature did not appear in the writings of these thinkers. They failed, for example, to elaborate on the link between imperialism and inequalities in terms of the far greater environmental destruction inflicted on the colonised.

More recently, Marxists have sought to incorporate ecology and the environmental crisis into their concept of imperialism, for example, by proposing concepts such as “unequal ecological exchange.” How important is it to integrate the environmental crisis into our understanding of imperialism? How can we best do so?

This belated incorporation is, in my view, the most important contribution to Marxist theory since the 1970s. There is an expanding body of work on the subject, one that has grown in line with the rising number of ecological disasters, increasing awareness among broad sections of society, and mounting evidence of the climate and biodiversity crises we face. The main Marxist and Marxist-influenced theorists contributing to this ongoing discussion include Michael Löwy, Ian Angus, James O’Connor, Danil Bensaïd, John Bellamy Foster, Jason Moore, Ariel Salleh, Andreas Malm, Maristella Svampa and Kohei Saito. Anti-capitalists, such as Naomi Klein, have been crucial to popularising the issue.

The incorporation of ecology by Marxist theorists and social movements was — and remains — essential, as combating capitalism is a matter of human survival. This system destroys nature. If the capitalist system — which gave rise to colonialism and imperialism — is the heart of the problem, then its mechanisms of domination serve to worsen the current crises and threaten planetary collapse.

“Unequal ecological exchange” is a capitalist-imperialist mechanism. It explains why biomes and biodiversity destruction, as well as water and air pollution, is far greater in countries exploited by core powers. These countries are viewed as exporters of agriculture, livestock, minerals and oil, or sites to dump polluting industries that imperialists do not want at home.

Capitalism also creates what environmentalists call “sacrifice zones” in non-core semi-colonial countries: territories where imperialist corporations and governments impose mining, oil and gas projects, eucalyptus plantations for the pulp industry (and pulp mills), and dump their waste. We are now experiencing this with the building of data centres for US Big Tech firms throughout Latin America.

Inequality in imperialism is also expressed through “environmental racism,” a concept used by anti-racist movements in the Global South to explain (and fight against) the primary targets for pollution, toxic spills, noise and destruction being territories where Indigenous peoples, Afrodescendent peoples, and oppressed ethnic groups tend to live. Fortunately, movements and the left are taking up this issue, though not at the pace needed to halt imperialist capitalism amid the climate emergency.

The original imperialist powers built their wealth and military might through colonial conquest and plundering pre-capitalist societies. Do they remain the only imperialist powers? Or have some nation-states gone from non-imperialist to imperialist? If so, what specific characteristics and economic foundations enabled them to join the imperialist powers’ club?

This is another shortcoming of the Leninist approach. In defence of Lenin and his contemporaries, they did not set out to predict the future. The possibility that some imperialist powers might lose influence while new imperialisms might assert themselves at the regional level was not foreseen. But that is exactly what we are seeing.

Today, European countries have lost their leading role, though they remain imperialist. The US remains hegemonic within the “core” group, but is in economic decline and losing political influence. Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, exhibits the geopolitical characteristics of a regional imperialist power. And China seeks to join the “club” of the most powerful. China not only wants its share within the redivision of spheres of influence, but directly competes with the hegemon for economic, technological, and geopolitical supremacy.

The global capitalist-imperialist system is not static, but dynamic; it is in a state of constant transformation. China’s rise and Putin’s assertion of Great Russian imperialism — together with the existence of sub-imperialist countries — are the result of global and national conditions.

Interestingly, both Russia and China — which can be considered new forms of imperialism — were heirs to workers’ and popular revolutions. This enabled significant economic development in the former Soviet Union during the 20th century, and, in China’s case, substantial “pre-capitalist” accumulation after Mao’s revolution. This paved the way for its subsequent capitalist leap that began in the late 1970s and early ’80s and was tied to Western imperialism.

In light of changes over the last century, what relative weight do mechanisms of imperialist exploitation carry today compared to the past?

If by the “past” you mean the period prior to World War II, China’s revolution (1949), India’s independence and partition (1947) and the decolonisation movements across Africa and Southeast Asia in the 1950s and ’60s, then clearly the mechanisms of exploitation and political oppression have either changed or been refined considerably. But, as with Lampedusa’s The Leopard, they changed to ensure “everything remains the same.” The core countries still appropriate a significant portion of value generated by non-core countries.

There are few direct colonies left: Puerto Rico is a US colony; France, England and the Netherlands maintain some overseas colonies, including in Oceania. But direct colonisation is no longer the main mechanism for appropriating value. Instead, the main mechanisms are:

1. the international division of labour, which condemns dependent countries to the “perpetual” role of exporter of raw materials (primarily agriculture and minerals) for industrialised core countries;
2. the super-exploitation of labour in dependent or semi-colonial countries, which only benefits the buyers;
3. the flow of profits to industrial, service and technological oligopolies or monopolies headquartered in imperialist countries, even though they operate in periphery countries, where they destroy small businesses and hinder the development of domestic enterprises;
4. periphery countries’ debt to imperialist governments and international lending institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, as well as development banks run by the European Union, Japan, etc.

The main difference, however, between imperialism in the neoliberal era — alongside undermining social gains and states’ economic and financial sovereignty — and that of the preceding period lies in the balance of power. In the neoliberal era, imperialist exploitation expanded and became more sophisticated as imperialism resumed the offensive it lost in the previous period of great revolutions and colonial liberation.

Today, Trump’s extremist imperialism, which supports a 21st century genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, seeks to reestablish the old colonialist mechanism of appropriating wealth through plunder, invasions, looting and direct control over countries (as with Venezuela since January 3). Blatant political interference by Trump and his henchmen in elections in Honduras, Argentina and Colombia, and now in Brazil, embodies the stance “theorised” in the White House’ National Security Strategy, which sets the US as the master of the “Western Hemisphere” (the Americas plus Greenland).

After the Cold War, world politics seemed dominated by US imperialism. However, today it is in clear decline. What factors explain this?

As the hegemonic imperialist power, the US was the main driving force (along with Britain and the other European imperialist powers) behind the neoliberal changes that occurred in both global governance and in most states between 1990–2007. The global capitalist elite — the majority of the imperialist bourgeois factions — devised the neoliberal regime of capitalist accumulation as a solution to restore rates of profit and accumulation, which had been declining since the 1970s.

Neoliberalism was facilitated by the defeat of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European regimes, which triggered a tremendous political-ideological crisis among workers. It was also aided by China agreeing to participate in this neoliberal economic redesign. China’s capitalist restoration, which began in the 1980s but built on the “pre-capitalist” accumulation made possible by the 1949 revolution, was essential to neoliberal globalisation.

China’s rise and Russia’s “re-imperialisation” resulted from contradictions inherent to the neoliberal project. Despite neoliberalism’s successes — its spread across the West and parts of the East, its imposition on governments of all stripes, including social democrats and progressives — it also opened the door to the rapid industrialisation of China and East Asia (the “tiger” economies) by exporting production lines to the East. US and European leaders claimed victory after the fall of the bureaucratic regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe, drawing up business plans and strategies for “friendly governments” in Central Asia. But they underestimated history and the desire for revenge of the new Kremlin oligarchy, which emerged not out of Bolshevism but Great Russian imperialism.

In contrast, the US has largely deindustrialised and lost economic strength and influence — a trend that has worsened since the 2007–08 crisis despite maintaining control over the global currency (the US dollar) and worldwide financial transactions. One US business sector to escape this decline is information technology (IT, Silicon Valley), particularly AI companies. The new oligarchs of Big Tech, fintech firms and cryptocurrency investors are seeking to counter China’s advance.

How do you assess Trump’s foreign policy in this context? Does it represent a fundamental shift in the role US imperialism seeks to play globally?

Francisco Louçã and Diogo Machado point out that, even before Trump’s return to the White House in 2025, major transformations were underway in the capitalist mode of accumulation since the great crisis of 2007–8 and subsequent recession. These transformations, which affect everyday life through smartphones, social media, platform-based work and mass digitisation, helped create the breeding ground for neo-fascist far-right movements to flourish around the world.

The neo-fascist coalition in the White House does not represent a minor “shift in course”. The Trump administration governs in the interests of Big Tech, AI companies, fintech firms, asset managers and cryptocurrency investors. From a political-economic standpoint, the power bloc in the White House — the US bourgeois factions in government — has changed, even from Trump’s first term. In this regard, it is worth reading John Bellamy Foster’s “The U.S. Ruling Class and the Trump Regime.” The new oligarchies — or new billionaires — back the most brazen, violent and racketeering supremacist wing of Trump’s Project 2025 and his extremist coalition.

The Trump administration expresses, domestically and on the world stage, a certain desperation by sectors of hegemonic imperialist capital to halt the US’ relative decline. Faced with China’s rise, Russia’s unchecked influence and autonomy, and the equally unprecedented situation in Latin America and Africa (where Chinese investments have surged), these capitalists support Trump’s aggressive neo-colonialist shift. With accumulation rates too low and a rising competitor, this shift is also closely linked to efforts to make the US political regime even more authoritarian.

The changes are significant and qualitative, but I would not say “fundamental” — at least for now. This avoids the misconception that Trump represents “another” or “new” form of imperialism. Rather, it is capitalist imperialism in a “new” guise. It is actually quite vintage, resembling a kind of 19th-century imperialism in the age of platforms, social media and AI.

From time to time, a Marxist intellectual declares a new capitalism or new imperialism, as David Harvey did in 2005 in the wake of the US war on Iraq. The British geographer made an important contribution by warning about “accumulation by dispossession” — a concept first articulated by Rosa Luxemburg. Yet hasty definitions, such as “new imperialism,” may help sell books and gain prominence in academia, but they are of little use to the struggle.

How should we understand the growing US-China rivalry given both economies are more integrated than ever and the US maintains a significant military advantage?

This is the main contradiction in Trump’s agenda and actions: preventing China from challenging the US’s monopolistic control over the club of imperialist countries — that is, preventing China from taking the US’s place — without completely severing economic ties with the Asian dragon. Trump fuels fierce economic and geopolitical competition with tariffs, targeted measures against Chinese chips and TikTok, as well as speculation and meddling in disputes over the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Yet parts of Trump’s rhetoric and practice indicate he wants a dialogue with China (and Russia) over consensually redrawing spheres of influence.

US imperialism has an underlying interest in “containing” China and preventing its rival’s growing influence and military strength. But it is not in the same position nor faces the same conditions as in the 20th century to prevent this. As for military dominance, the US undeniably remains the strongest power in history; however, the war in Iran has shown it is not invincible.

What is your view on the concept of multipolarity, advocated by some on the left? Is it possible today to maintain a position of neutrality or non-alignment with respect to imperialist blocs or poles (or great powers), without renouncing solidarity with the struggles being waged elsewhere?

Non-Marxist schools of thought have a strong hold in the fields of international relations and political economy. Terms such as “powers,” “poles,” “hegemon,” “unipolarity” and “multipolarity” stem from two dominant non-Marxist theories of the global interstate system: realists (who advocate realpolitik and the inevitable supremacy of some over others) and institutionalists (proponents of “international cooperation” and pursuing peaceful coexistence between exploiters and exploited).

Multipolarity is a concept specific to institutionalists. It identifies a situation where the international system has multiple poles of power. This is viewed positively, in comparison with its opposite, unipolarity, where there is only one pole (a single imperialism).

These schools fail to take into account the peoples and workers of these countries, national exploitation and oppression by great powers or emancipatory struggles. Their raison d’être is perpetuating the system, not transforming it. (To be fair, I should say that most international analysts — realists and institutionalists alike, including many former White House, Pentagon and CIA advisors — are outraged by Trump’s foreign policy).

Most of the broad left in the Global South, having been cut off from the Soviet bloc and oppressed by US imperialism, seeks deceptive refuge in the rise of competitors to the US and Europe — namely, Russia and China. As both are quite independent of Washington and, in that sense, adversaries of the hegemonic power, these left sectors applaud “multipolarity.”

In practice, however, they simply side with the adversaries of their “main enemy”, without taking into account the nature of Russia and China’s economies and political regimes. They also do not take into account the interests of Russian and Chinese workers and people. This stance is a negation of internationalism with the downtrodden. Internationalists are not neutral — we stand with the peoples and workers.

At the regional level, we have seen Russia invade Ukraine, and nations such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia project military power beyond their borders. How should we understand these regional dynamics within global capitalism? The term “sub-imperialism” is sometimes used to describe such countries. Is this a useful term?

Sub-imperialism is real, and it is not just a useful but an indispensable concept. Furthermore, it is not something new. The debate on “middle” economies and countries began in the 1960s. Ernest Mandel referred to those countries as late-industrialising countries. Wallerstein called them semi-peripheral.

The concept of subimperialism was elaborated by Latin American Marxist dependency theorists, specifically the left-wing structuralists at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and, more concretely, Ruy Mauro Marini. Amid changes in the international division of labour after World War II, Marini examined the phenomenon of dependent “middle” countries that combined the following features:

1. a degree of labour super-exploitation and inequality, which limited the realisation of value within national borders;
2. diversion of a large portion of its industrial production toward exports due to the aforementioned limitation;
3. extracting profits from and exercising geopolitical influence over more vulnerable countries in its regions; and
4. ongoing wealth transfer and politically subordination to a hegemonic imperialist power.

Marini considered Brazil, Mexico and Argentina to be sub-imperialist at that time.

With the emergence of other sub-imperialist powers over the past 40 years, such as South Africa, the term is now used in a broad and imprecise manner. For a country to be sub-imperialist, it must be subordinate to an imperialist power. This does not apply to Russia, for example, and even less to China, which today can not even be characterised as a middle-sized economy. Describing BRICS as a bloc of sub-imperialists, as some do, is wrong. Brazil, India and South Africa are sub-imperialist — as is Turkey, which is outside the bloc — but the BRICS as a whole are not.

Do you see possibilities for building bridges between anti-imperialist struggles on an international scale, given some struggles seek support from rival powers? What should anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist internationalism look like in the 21st century?

The ideal, strategic approach is building anti-imperialist, anti-fascist and anti-capitalist movements against all forms of imperialism. Movements that raise their voices against wars, tariffs, interference and invasions by the US, should do the same against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We need an internationalism that allies with Chinese peoples and workers on the mainland and in Taiwan. Those of us who conceive of the struggle this way must be part of all these movements.

But we must recognise that uniting them all is a difficult task, given the strength of “campist” ideas on the left that view Russia and China as allied states. What should we do in the face of these difficulties? On one hand, we must forge any possible tactical alliances (united fronts) and be involved in any broad, specific initiatives against the US. On the other, we must do the same against Russia for its war on Ukraine.

We must do both while maintaining our political independence and waging a strong propaganda campaign to expose the imperialist and authoritarian nature of Putin’s regime. In urgent times, it is not a wise or useful strategy to remain isolated by demanding others adhere to our position before participating in the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist unity we need today.

Markets bet big on De la Espriella, Colombia's next president. Economists are not so sure

Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right lawyer and businessman whose campaign drew repeated endorsements from US President Donald Trump, won Colombia's presidential runoff on June 21 by a margin of less than one percentage point.Facebook

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By Cynthia Michelle Aranguren Hernández in Bogota June 24, 2026

Financial markets cheered Abelardo de la Espriella's victory in Colombia's June 21 presidential runoff. The peso surged, bonds rallied and equities climbed on hopes of business-friendly reform.

But two Colombian economists interviewed by IntelliNews caution that the structural costs of “El Tigre’s” programme — spanning deep state cuts, fossil-fuel expansion, labour deregulation, a sharp geopolitical pivot toward Washington and a hardline security agenda — could far outweigh the initial euphoria, with consequences felt most acutely in the country's poorest regions, communities and ecosystems.

Right-wing populist De la Espriella beat leftist senator Iván Cepeda by a margin of barely 250,000 votes — one of the narrowest in Colombian history — and is set to take office on August 7 presiding over a deeply polarised country that now joins a wave of like-minded governments across the region. That fragile mandate, economists warn, will collide directly with an economic and security programme that assumes far more room for manoeuvre than the numbers suggest he has.

The fiscal paradox of tax cuts that may not stimulate

Laura Andrea Cristancho Giraldo, an economist and tenured professor at the Faculty of Business, Management and Sustainability at Politécnico Grancolombiano in Bogotá, said market optimism rests on conditions that have yet to be met. "Markets typically react favourably to corporate tax cut proposals due to their potential to stimulate foreign direct investment," she said. "However, this effect will depend on the fiscal credibility of the incoming administration."

If lower tax revenues are not offset by structural adjustments to public spending, she warned, concerns over the fiscal deficit, public debt and the country's credit rating could mount. Foreign direct investment, she added, responds primarily to legal, regulatory and macroeconomic stability — not to tax cuts alone.

Felipe Abondano, a Colombian journalist and economic analyst, was more categorical: tax cuts as a stimulus tool have "never worked anywhere else in the world." He pointed out that De la Espriella's own campaign positions shifted repeatedly, leaving genuine uncertainty over which proposals will actually be implemented in office.

The proposed 40% reduction in the state apparatus carries the most concrete risks, Abondano argued. The merger or closure of institutions such as the National Savings Fund would directly curtail Colombians' access to housing finance, while planned ministry unifications would slash investment in culture and sport — sectors with outsized economic multiplier effects in many communities. "In many parts of Colombia the only official employer is the state, and the only people with purchasing power for many things," he said. "It will have a differential and very deep impact, especially in the regions."

Yet the scale of the fiscal challenge awaiting the new government is not in dispute. Outgoing President Gustavo Petro decreed a 24% minimum wage rise in January — more than even unions had demanded — aggravating a budget deficit that already exceeded 6% of GDP last year, according to Barron's. Nicolas Jaquier, an emerging-market fixed income portfolio manager at Ninety One, told the publication that Colombia needs "a 4-5% of GDP fiscal adjustment.” Meanwhile, some 90% of government spending goes to politically untouchable areas such as the military and pensions, Paul Dmitriev of Global X ETFs told Barron's, while interest costs already absorb around a fifth of state revenue.

Locally, the powerful National Association of Financial Institutions (Anif) has urged the incoming government to defuse what it calls a "fiscal bomb" by cutting $7.8bn in public expenditure and advancing a $3.5bn tax reform, Blu Radio reported. Anif's proposals — including reducing state payrolls, raising diesel prices and dismantling existing tax exemptions — sit in direct tension with De la Espriella's promise of corporate tax cuts, suggesting the new administration's fiscal room may be far narrower than markets currently anticipate.

Energy: short-term revenues, long-term ecological and economic costs

On fracking and hydrocarbon expansion, two of De La Espriella’s signature proposals, the experts who spoke to IntelliNews converged on the asymmetry between near-term gains and longer-term risk. Cristancho Giraldo acknowledged the policy "could increase fiscal revenues and exports in the short term," but warned of "the risk of deepening the existing dependency on fossil sectors within a global context of energy transition." Colombia's páramo ecosystems, the country's critically important high-altitude wetlands, could face heightened environmental pressure, she said, "affecting Colombia's water security and generating future economic costs."

Abondano questioned the economic rationale more fundamentally. Colombia, he noted, is not a country with strong fracking potential, and the real driver of such projects is often financial rather than productive: "What lies behind fracking is the selling of oil project portfolios to multinationals, which doesn't necessarily translate into higher national production." The environmental toll — depleted water sources, devastated fragile ecosystems and pressure on already-endangered species — comes with no guaranteed fiscal return, he argued.

He also pointed to a structural failure in how oil revenues reach communities. "Oil royalties supposedly reach communities via transfers, but that money never actually arrives," he said, citing the Pacific Rubiales precedent as the definitive cautionary case: "The zones where hydrocarbon exploitation occurs don't necessarily see an improvement in quality of life — what you get instead is a speculative movement of money that produces more crime and more prostitution."

The energy sector is indeed where De la Espriella's incoming administration intends to move fastest and furthest. Petro, an advocate of climate mitigation efforts, had blocked new drilling permits, keeping Colombian oil output below 750,000 barrels a day; pro-investment policies and unleashed fracking could lift that above one million barrels, Dmitriev told Barron's. According to S&P Global, much of this agenda can be advanced by executive action alone, since the exploration freeze was a matter of executive policy rather than law. "He can replace [state oil company] Ecopetrol's leadership and redirect its strategy back to hydrocarbons, since the state owns about 88%," said Dorian Kantor, a political science professor at Freie Universität Berlin and director of Kantor Consulting in Bogotá, who added that the incoming government can also fast-track permits and prioritise gas import terminals.

Yet S&P Global also underscores limits to the new administration's reach that echo Abondano's scepticism. Kantor noted that fracking itself, along with environmental licensing and prior consultation requirements, remains "blocked by the constitution and the courts, and thus beyond his reach entirely" — protections rooted partly in ILO Convention 169. In La Guajira, where large wind developments have stalled for years, independent consultant Oscar Alberto Mariño Estupinán told S&P Global that "the main bottlenecks are environmental licensing and prior consultation," with one project able to spend over two and a half years in consultation procedures and still be only halfway through. Kantor argued that transmission and financing constraints compound the problem: "The blackout risk is mostly a transmission-and-finance problem dressed up as a community problem. This same mechanism blocks both the La Guajira wind buildout and his own fracking plans", what he called "the real structural battle" of De la Espriella's energy agenda.

Labour reform: the pension trap and the Argentina warning

On proposed hourly contracts and labour flexibilisation, the two analysts surveyed by IntelliNews offered complementary but urgent warnings. Cristancho Giraldo acknowledged that "a well-designed flexibilisation strategy can facilitate youth hiring," but cautioned that if labour protections are reduced without accompanying structural reform, "this could increase job precarity and instability within formal employment," while simultaneously pressuring the sustainability and coverage of healthcare and pension systems.

Abondano singled out a more specific and immediate danger: the hourly-contract model championed by De la Espriella's vice-president-elect and running mate, José Manuel Restrepo, since his time as minister and as a professor at Universidad del Rosario, would make formal pension accumulation virtually impossible. "Very rarely does anyone manage to accumulate a pension by contributing on an hourly basis," he said. The model would affect not only gig-economy workers but also the large community of technicians who provide services to companies, all of whom could now be offered hourly contracts rather than formal employment.

Restrepo, a former trade and finance minister from 2018 to 2022, is expected to take de facto control of economic policy under De la Espriella, who talked little about economics on the campaign trail, focusing instead on security issues and his opposition to Petro's flagship "Total Peace" policy, which many say has failed to curtail guerrilla violence and drug trafficking.

The direction of pension policy also reverses the outgoing government's approach: where Petro sought to re-centralise pension funds, De la Espriella intends to favour private pension funds once again — a shift with long-term implications for retirement security across the workforce. The parallel with Argentina, where De la Espriella has openly cited President Javier Milei as a political muse, is stark, Abondano said: 'There, 26 companies close per day' — a warning that similar austerity dynamics risk reversing the formal employment gains recorded under Petro.

The proposed agenda also targets women's reproductive rights directly, Abondano added, with the incoming administration signalling a review of abortion rights, a rollback he said will disproportionately affect low-income women with the least access to private healthcare alternatives.

The China conundrum

Both analysts flagged a fundamental contradiction at the heart of De la Espriella's foreign policy. Cristancho Giraldo called for "a strategy of commercial and diplomatic diversification" to preserve Colombia's international competitiveness without abandoning existing economic ties with China, "an increasingly relevant trading partner" whose weight in Colombia's trade architecture continues to grow.

Abondano was blunter about the depth of the dependency now being built into Bogotá's foreign policy, which he said foreshadows a return to the pre-Petro era of close alignment with Washington. De la Espriella's government "owes a great deal to Donald Trump and will be subordinate to what is needed from that relationship," he said, predicting that Colombia will distance itself from the BRICS grouping (Colombia is a member of BRICS’ bank, the New Development Bank) and potentially withdraw from Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative in favour of attracting US investment exclusively. But the practical barriers are formidable: China is building the Bogotá Metro and accounts for a dominant and growing share of Colombia's imports. "It is very difficult for that to change despite what they want," Abondano said.

That newfound alignment with Washington was already on full display the night of the result. Trump, who had endorsed De la Espriella repeatedly during the campaign, promptly placed a congratulatory call to the president-elect, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on social media that the Trump administration "looks forward to working closely with your incoming administration to advance regional security co-operation, end illegal immigration to the United States, and strengthen our economic ties.”

Still, the geopolitical bet on Washington carries a significant political risk of its own, Abondano warned: Trump's executive leverage could be severely curtailed if Republicans lose control of Congress in November's US midterm elections, leaving Colombia diplomatically exposed without the Chinese relationships it will, by then, have actively dismantled.

Security: the ghost of false positives and the dismantling of accountability

On the maximalist security agenda floated by De la Espriella, Cristancho Giraldo offered a measured but pointed warning. "Stricter security policies can yield visible results in the short term, but their effectiveness depends on their articulation with social and territorial policies," she said. "An approach excessively focused on coercion could generate tensions with the peace process and increase social polarisation, particularly among youth and social movements."

Abondano identified two deeper structural dangers. The first concerns the mega-prison model itself: De la Espriella, inspired by the policies of El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, has proposed privately operated facilities, meaning the government will not fund construction but will ultimately pay for their operation — a model with a documented record of failure in the United States, where it creates structural incentives for judges to keep prisons full in order to sustain the business model.

The second, and more alarming, danger concerns accountability. The proposed 90-day target for operational results from the security forces precisely replicates the institutional pressure that produced Colombia's "false positives" scandal, in which military units killed civilians and dressed them as combatants to inflate body counts. "Under those pressures, Colombia arrived at the false positives," Abondano said bluntly.

More troubling still, he added, is the proposal to withdraw Colombia from the International Criminal Court and the United Nations human rights framework. "These were often the only controls the Colombian state had, and the only environments where state victims could denounce abuses," he said. Without the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, he argued, the full depth of the false positives cases would never have come to light — nor would the truth about events in Las Combreras and Ituango. Colombia has been condemned multiple times at the international level for human rights violations against indigenous and minority communities, he noted.

The deeper structural problem, both analysts agree, is that Colombia's insecurity – fuelled by a long and troubled history of paramilitary groups linked to cocaine trafficking – is rooted in inequality and lack of opportunity, not in insufficient punishment. "What young people needed was free public education and real job options, and those are precisely what will now be reduced," Abondano said. A security model built on coercion rather than opportunity, he argued, does not address the root cause. It simply makes it more expensive and more dangerous.

A narrow mandate, a wide agenda

De la Espriella's one-percentage-point margin of victory could very well complicate his ability to manage a fragmented Congress, where his fledgling Defenders of the Homeland party holds only a handful of seats — five in the Senate, while the leftist Pacto Historico, led by runner-up Cepeda, controls 39 of the 103 seats in the lower house. "A win by 5% or more would have been really positive," Paul Dmitriev of Global X ETFs told Barron's. Much of the energy and security agenda can proceed by decree; the tax reform, royalty incentives and any rewriting of the prior-consultation framework cannot.

What unites the economists' assessments is an abiding sense that the gap between market enthusiasm and economic reality has yet to be tested. As Cristancho Giraldo put it, foreign investment will ultimately follow stability, not slogans. And as Abondano's analysis suggests, several of the new government's central promises, from fracking revenues to a harsh security crackdown, may deliver far less than advertised, at a cost borne disproportionately by Colombians least able to absorb it.

Jammu Kashmir under siege: The unfinished revolt against national oppression and class exploitation

KASHMIR IS INDIAS GAZA

By Umair Khurshid

Published 18 June, 2026

First published at Asian Marxist Review.

As these words are being written, the people of Pakistani-administered Jammu Kashmir (PAJK) remain in the streets after almost 10 days of blackout, siege, and state violence. Since around 11:35-11:45 pm on the night of 5 June, the entire region has been cut off from the world. Internet access has been shut down, mobile networks have been blocked or badly disrupted, towns have been militarized, and whole areas have been pushed into near silence while paramilitary troops and police carry out raids, arrests, shelling, and firing.

This blackout is meant to cut people off from one another, stop the wounded and the bereaved from reaching the outside world, hide the scale of state violence, and give the state and its media time to shape the story before the people can speak for themselves. Around two dozen people have been martyred, and more than 200 people have reportedly been injured so far, though the actual figure may be higher because the blackout and curbs on access have made independent verification nearly impossible. Homes of activists, workers, and Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) leaders have been raided. Protesters have been attacked with tear gas, batons, shelling, and live fire.

Yet the movement has not been broken. Sit-ins continue, people are still coming out in large numbers, and the state has failed to force the masses back into silence. In fact, there are now reports that the government has been pushed onto the back foot and is trying to open negotiations. As communication remains cut and access to reliable information is still blocked, the exact nature of these talks cannot be stated with certainty. It would be wrong to declare a complete victory while the siege continues and people remain under threat, but it is already a significant achievement of the movement that, after days of open firing, the state has been forced to look again toward negotiation.

What is unfolding today is neither a sudden riot nor a narrow dispute over one clause. It is the latest and sharpest stage of a mass movement that has grown through years of anger, organizing, betrayal, repression, partial victories, broken promises, and renewed struggle. The present uprising cannot be understood without going back to the road that led here: the early campaigns against electricity bills and wheat prices, the long march of 2024, the unfinished gains that followed, the renewed confrontation of 2025, and the return of the same unresolved demands in 2026.

How it all started

The immediate roots of the movement lie in the economic crisis that followed the COVID period. Across Jammu Kashmir, people faced rapidly increasing electricity prices, fuel costs, food hikes, and worsening living conditions. While workers, students, unemployed youth, and lower middle-class households struggled to make ends meet, the political elite continued to enjoy privileges that appeared increasingly detached from the realities of everyday life.

Yet economic hardship alone does not automatically produce a mass movement. Those issues acted as catalysts, but the political conditions had been developing for years.

The events surrounding India’s revocation of Article 370 in August 2019 had a profound impact across Jammu Kashmir. While the immediate constitutional changes occurred on the Indian administered side, the political shockwaves were felt throughout the region. The event renewed discussions about sovereignty, representation, self-determination, and the future of Jammu Kashmir as a whole. It also exposed the limitations of the dominant political forces operating in Pakistan-administered Jammu Kashmir, many of which appeared incapable of offering any meaningful political response.

In response, various left-wing, nationalist, and progressive forces attempted to build broader coalitions. One such effort was the People’s National Alliance (PNA), which sought to bring together different strands of political opposition. Although these initiatives generated enthusiasm and, at times, substantial public support, they struggled to develop a coherent political program capable of connecting broader constitutional questions with the everyday economic concerns of ordinary people. As a result, they failed to establish themselves as durable mass organizations.

At the same time, worsening economic conditions, inflation, rising utility costs, and declining living standards steadily expanded social discontent. By the early 2020s, political frustration and economic grievances had begun to converge, creating conditions for a movement with a broader social base than previous campaigns.

The earliest protests against high electricity bills and wheat prices were spearheaded by left-wing and nationalist organizations, student groups, and trade unionists. Among these, the Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation (JKNSF) played an active role in mobilizing students and other sections of the youth, participating in demonstrations, organizing discussions, and linking immediate economic grievances to broader questions concerning democratic rights, political representation, and control over local resources.

Local protests over electricity prices and wheat costs began appearing across different areas during 2022 and 2023. These protests often involved symbolic burning of electricity bills, non-payment campaigns, sit-ins, shutter-down strikes, and local demonstrations. What initially appeared as isolated protests gradually developed into a broader movement that connected communities across the region.

One of the important early centers of agitation emerged around Rawalakot, where protests over wheat prices helped demonstrate the potential for sustained mass action. As these campaigns spread, activists increasingly recognized the need for a common platform capable of coordinating activity across Jammu Kashmir. This process ultimately led to the formation of the JAAC in September 2023.

The contradictory strength of the movement

The formation of JAAC represented a major achievement. For the first time in many years, a movement succeeded in bringing together social layers such as workers, students, transport unions, traders, nationalist organizations, and left-wing activists.

Commercial electricity rates hit traders particularly hard. Small business owners, shopkeepers, transporters, and other middle strata had immediate economic reasons to support the movement. They also often overlap socially and politically with nationalist and progressive currents. This broad composition gave the movement enormous strength. Yet it also introduced contradictions that would become more visible as the struggle developed.

With the industrial proletariat virtually non-existent in the region, as traders and transporters entered the movement in larger numbers, they acquired growing influence within its leadership. This was not merely a matter of numbers. In these peculiar conditions, their organizations possessed practical leverage as traders could shut markets, and transport unions could halt movement. Together, they possessed the ability to enforce shutter-down strikes and wheel-jam actions across entire districts.

This growing influence gradually shifted the center of gravity within the movement. Many of the forces that had helped initiate the struggle came from left-wing, nationalist, student, and progressive political traditions. Yet the expanding leadership increasingly adopted the language of being “non-political.” While the movement continued raising political demands, it avoided developing a broader political program capable of explaining how those demands would be secured and sustained.

This remains one of the movement’s key limitations. It did not develop a comprehensive political and economic program. This gap became increasingly visible as the movement grew stronger. At the same time, it would be a mistake to dismiss the movement because of this weakness. The absence of a program did not prevent it from becoming the most significant popular mobilization in Jammu Kashmir for decades, but it does explain why many of the same questions continue to return.

The long march of 2024

The first great turning point arrived in May 2024. After months of organizing, protests, strikes, negotiations, bill boycotts, and growing confrontation with the authorities, the movement announced a long march toward Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Jammu Kashmir.

The state responded with arrests, intimidation, road blockades, and the deployment of additional forces. Movement leaders and activists were detained, while a sustained propaganda campaign sought to portray the movement as illegitimate, foreign-funded, and dangerous. Yet every effort to halt the march appeared only to strengthen public support for it.

As the caravans advanced, they were welcomed by communities throughout the region. Entire villages and towns mobilized around the movement. People lined the roads to greet the marchers, provided food and water, opened their homes, and offered shelter to participants. What had begun as a campaign against electricity bills and wheat prices had developed into a genuine mass movement capable of paralyzing the state across large parts of Jammu Kashmir.

The government attempted to stop the march through force. Clashes broke out in several areas as protesters confronted roadblocks and security forces. During the confrontation, 3 protesters were killed and more than 100 people were injured, exposing the willingness of the state to use violence against a movement whose demands centered on basic democratic and economic rights.

The authorities eventually found themselves facing a dilemma. Stopping the march entirely risked provoking an even larger confrontation, while allowing it to continue risked exposing the weakness of the government itself. As the movement continued to grow and thousands advanced toward Muzaffarabad, the state’s room for maneuver steadily narrowed.

Faced with mounting pressure, government in Islamabad announced a package worth Rs 23 billion, while the government of Jammu Kashmir announced major concessions. The movement succeeded in forcing significant reductions in electricity tariffs and wheat prices, while additional commitments were made concerning elite privileges and other demands.

For the first time in many years, ordinary people saw a government retreat under pressure from a mass movement. The victory was real, but it was not complete.

The return of the movement in 2025

The victory of 2024 changed the political mood across Jammu Kashmir. For the first time in decades, a mass movement had forced the state to retreat. But as the months passed, it became clearer that the deeper questions raised by the movement had not been answered. The issue of elite privileges remained. The question of control over local resources remained. Democratic accountability remained little more than a slogan in the mouths of those who had no wish to be held accountable.

By late 2025, JAAC returned with a broader 38 point charter of demands. The movement had now moved beyond electricity and wheat alone. It raised demands concerning health, education, governance, employment, accountability, hydropower royalties, elite privileges, democratic reforms, and the abolition of the 12 reserved seats in the Pakistan-administered Jammu Kashmir Legislative Assembly for migrants residing in Pakistan. These seats are often used by the state to influence or manipulate politics and the process of government formation in Jammu Kashmir. This showed that the movement had grown through its own experience. The people had learned that high bills and wheat prices were not isolated hardships but part of a wider order built on extraction, patronage, and outside control.

The state understood at once that this was no longer only a dispute over subsidies. On 26 September 2025, nearly 13 hours of talks between JAAC, the AJK government, and federal representatives collapsed. The deadlock centered mainly on two demands: the abolition of elite privileges and the abolition of the 12 migrant seats. The government could bargain over subsidies, delays, committees, and administrative steps, but it refused to yield on demands that struck at the political frame through which the region is ruled.

As the announced shutdown approached, the authorities answered in the same way they would answer again in 2026. Mobile and internet services were suspended. Security forces were deployed. Entry and exit points were tightened. The state tried to break the movement’s ability to speak, gather, and move before the strike could take hold.

Yet the strike and long march went ahead. Demonstrations took place across Muzaffarabad, Rawalakot, Kotli, Mirpur, Bhimber, and other towns. Markets closed, transport was halted, and the movement again showed that it could bring the region to a standstill. The clashes that followed were bloody and 5 people were killed. Eventually, after days of confrontation, a new but relatively vague agreement was reached in early October, reflecting the limitations of the leadership. The government once again promised implementation, and the movement once again suspended its immediate actions. But the underlying dispute remained alive because the state had not dealt with the heart of the matter. It had once again bought time without settling the political questions standing at the center of the conflict.

Within months, it became clear that implementation was stalled, delayed, or only partly carried out. The lesson of 2025 was therefore sharper than the lesson of 2024. The state could be forced to retreat, but it would retreat only as far as it needed to save itself. On questions that touched elite privileges, political engineering, and control over Jammu Kashmir’s own future, it would resist until forced again.

The question of the 12 seats

Outside Jammu Kashmir, discussions concerning the demand to abolish 12 seats of migrants living in PAJK are often misunderstood. The word “migrant” immediately leads people to believe that the dispute is driven by hostility toward migrants or displaced people. Such interpretations completely miss the substance of the issue.

The demand is not directed against migrants but directed against an arrangement that has long been viewed as a mechanism of political engineering.

The people elected through these seats participate in making laws for a territory in which they do not reside. At the same time, the laws they help make do not apply to the places where they themselves live. Over decades, these seats have repeatedly functioned as a channel through which political outcomes within Jammu Kashmir can be shaped by forces outside the territory itself.

Even mainstream political parties have frequently criticized these seats while sitting in opposition, only to defend them when political circumstances change. The pattern through the years has been difficult to ignore. The party ruling in Islamabad always enjoy disproportionate success in these seats.

For many supporters of the movement, the issue is fundamentally democratic. It concerns political representation, accountability, and the right of people living within a territory to determine the composition of institutions governing that territory.

As socialists, we support the abolition of these seats not because we believe this demand will, by itself, solve every social and economic problem facing Jammu Kashmir. Under the present constitutional order, built through the 1974 framework and upheld through Pakistan’s control over the region, the local ruling class would still remain a ruling class, and exploitation would not disappear with one democratic reform. Yet this is no argument against the demand. Revolutionary socialists have always fought for democratic rights even when those rights fall short of the full transformation of society, because every democratic gain can widen the ground on which workers, students, women, peasants, and the poor are able to organize and fight.

The right to form trade unions does not abolish capitalism, nor does student unions, freedom of speech or the right to assemble. Yet each of these rights gives ordinary people more room to organize, speak, gather, resist, and fight those who rule over them. The same applies to the demand for abolishing the 12 seats. It will not end exploitation by itself, but it would remove at least one of the long-standing tools of outside political control and weaken a mechanism through which the political will of the people of Jammu Kashmir has been bent, managed, and overridden from outside. For us, this is a democratic demand that must be defended, not as an end in itself, but as part of the wider struggle for working-class power, control over resources, and genuine self-rule.

June 5 to June 15: The siege that failed to break the people

The current protest is the direct outcome of agreements left unimplemented and political questions left unresolved. Its immediate trigger was the continuing dispute over the 12 migrant seats, which had become the clearest symbol of what many people viewed as outside political control over Jammu Kashmir. Negotiations failed, and the courts upheld the constitutional protection of the seats. In response, JAAC announced a renewed call for a long march on 9 June. The question of whether the leadership should have adopted a different approach as the general elections approached, and whether the path of direct action is always appropriate, remains open to debate. In any case, the state responded with repression before the march had even begun.

Shortly before midnight on 5th June 2026, internet services were suspended across much of Jammu Kashmir. This was not an isolated administrative step. It was the opening move in a broader operation against the movement. In the days that followed, FC, Rangers, police, and other security forces were deployed across the region. Roads were blocked, activists were arrested, and the homes of JAAC leaders and workers were raided and ransacked.

The state believed that by cutting communication and isolating towns from one another it could prevent the movement from gaining momentum. Instead, the opposite happened. On the night of 6 June, state forces opened fire in Rawalakot. Among those martyred was Shahzaib Habib, an activist of JAAC. Rather than frightening people away from the struggle, his killing deepened public anger.

By 8th June, Rawalakot had become the centre of a major confrontation. Protesters attempting to continue the movement faced direct firing. Reports from the ground indicated 13 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

The following day, curfew was imposed in Rawalakot. Yet despite the killings and the curfew, protesters continued moving toward the city. The state had expected fear to stop the march. Instead, every act of repression appeared to bring more people into the struggle. Reports also emerged from Kotli and other areas of further firing, injuries, and around 4 more deaths.

What followed was perhaps the most remarkable development of the entire confrontation. Caravans continued advancing toward Rawalakot. Protesters crossed barriers, bypassed blockades, and reached areas that the authorities had hoped to isolate. The same city where the state had tried to crush the movement through bloodshed became a gathering point for even larger numbers of people. By the time the marches reached the outskirts of Rawalakot, it had become clear that repression had failed in its primary objective.

On 11th June, security forces again opened direct fire on protesters. At least 4 people were martyred. This incident further exposed the reality of the state’s strategy. Rather than addressing the demands of the movement, it was relying more and more openly on force to intimidate and disperse protesters. Once again, the killings failed to achieve their intended effect.

From 12th June onward, women began participating in much larger numbers, joining sit-ins, demonstrations, and public gatherings despite the ongoing repression. Earlier phases of the movement had been marked by informal restrictions and conservative pressures that limited women’s visibility and participation. The growing presence of women therefore became one of the most important political developments of the struggle. It reflected the strengthening of progressive tendencies within the movement and the weakening of efforts to keep women on the margins of public political life.

On 14th June, security forces attacked protesters once again. According to reports from the ground, at least 3 more people were martyred and 8 others injured when FC and Rangers opened fire while attempting to disperse peaceful demonstrators. By this point, the pattern had become unmistakable. The state was no longer relying only on arrests, roadblocks, raids, and blackouts. It was increasingly turning to direct violence in an attempt to break the movement.

By 16th June, the sit-ins and protests still continue despite everything that had taken place during the previous ten days. Unable to force the movement off the streets through bullets, arrests, raids, curfews, and communication blackouts, the state has started to deepen the siege further. Reports from the ground indicated restrictions on food supplies, medical supplies, and other essentials reaching protest areas. The state was attempting not only to suppress the movement but to exhaust it through isolation and deprivation.

JKNSF has been part of this struggle from the beginning. Long before the movement became a headline, JKNSF activists were involved in organizing students, supporting protests, linking economic grievances with democratic demands, and helping build the political atmosphere from which the movement emerged. Our comrades participated in demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, discussions, and mobilizations through every phase of the struggle.

Unlike some sections of the left that dissolve themselves entirely into broader movements, JKNSF has sought to maintain an independent political position while remaining fully committed to the struggle itself. We support the movement. We defend it against state repression. We participate in it. At the same time, we also recognize its limitations.

The greatest weakness of JAAC has never been its demands. Most of its demands are democratic and legitimate. The problem is that demands are not the same as a program, and the movement has not yet developed a coherent political and economic program explaining how these wrongs can be permanently overcome.

Another major weakness has been its inability to draw organized sections of the working class more directly into the struggle. Health workers, electricity department employees, and other public sector workers were already protesting around their own demands. We understand that bringing government sector workers openly into a mass movement is not easy, especially under conditions of repression, intimidation, and the threat of victimization. But JAAC already had broad popular support. Had the demands of these workers been consciously linked with the wider democratic and economic demands of the movement, it could have pulled in an important section of workers whose position gives them real strategic power. Their participation would not only have broadened the social base of the struggle, but also strengthened its capacity to resist repression and move beyond protest toward organized mass pressure.

This criticism, however, must not be confused with opposition to the movement. On the contrary, we raise these questions precisely because we are part of the struggle and because we want it to advance. The movement has already shaken the existing order, exposed the brutality of the state, and shown that ordinary people can challenge forces that once appeared untouchable. Its courage, scale, and persistence deserve the full support of all progressive, democratic, and revolutionary forces throughout the world.

Our criticism is therefore not from outside the movement, but from within it. We defend JAAC and the wider people’s movement against state repression, propaganda, arrests, bans, bullets, and siege. At the same time, we believe that the movement can only move forward if it deepens its social base, links democratic demands with the struggles of workers, women, students, and the poor, and develops a program capable of turning mass anger into lasting political power. To support the movement seriously means to stand with it, defend it, participate in it, and also help strengthen it where it remains weak.

Call for solidarity

As these last lines are being written, the state is once again tightening the siege. Essential supplies are being restricted from reaching protest areas, while preparations are being made for another operation against the movement. This makes solidarity not a matter of distant sympathy, but an immediate political responsibility.

The key internationalist task at the moment is to stand in active solidarity with those facing repression, while also understanding the deeper political questions beneath the immediate confrontation. We call on trade unions, student organizations, progressive forces, academics, writers, journalists, socialist groups, and working-class organizations across Pakistan, South Asia, and the world to raise their voices in support of the people of Jammu Kashmir, demand an immediate end to the siege, and stand against the repression being carried out by the state.

The struggle in Jammu Kashmir is not simply about tariffs, subsidies, or assembly seats. It is about democratic rights, political representation, control over resources, and the right of ordinary people to shape their own future. Its success would not belong only to the people of Jammu Kashmir, it would strengthen every struggle against exploitation, repression, dispossession, and undemocratic rule in the region. Its defeat would also not be a defeat for Jammu Kashmir alone, it would strengthen the hand of every state and ruling class that believes popular movements can be crushed through force, siege, propaganda, and fear.

The ordinary people of Jammu and Kashmir have already shown that they can fight and force the state into retreat. The question now is whether the movement can transform these acts of resistance into lasting political gains. In this regard, international solidarity is both essential and urgently needed.

Umair Khurshid is the Editor of Azam, the organ of the Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation (JKNSF).