In May 2026, leading anti-imperialist thinkers of the world met in Pakistan to discuss the varied yet eerily similar issues affecting sovereign development in different parts of the Global South, and the role of imperialism and neocolonialism as the primary perpetrators of underdevelopment in the peripheries. The conference was organized and hosted by a far-left political party in Pakistan, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP), with the support of the People’s Academy of the Progressive International. The main themes crystallized into what is being referred to as the Lahore Declaration, a political statement that places the struggles of the Global South within a shared anti-imperialist framework.[1]
The conference centered on the principal contradictions of our time: world capitalism, neocolonialism, and imperialism on the one hand, and the forces resisting them on the other. It is rare for seminars like these to have such clarity of purpose around this topic. Too often, critiques of imperfect forms of resistance to these three interdependent sinister forces take center stage, and academics lecture movements in the peripheries instead of engaging with them. Particularly noteworthy is the critical geopolitical juncture at which the conference took place—amidst the imperial war against Iran, which can reasonably be seen in many, if not all, ways as a continuation of the genocidal project in Gaza.
Anyone interested in the content of the conference can watch the recordings online, and good summaries of the event have already been published. Here I instead want to focus on the impact of this potentially historic event. Part of that impact is visible on the surface, while part of it is not yet apparent but may prove far-reaching.
A Historic Gathering in the Periphery
Of special meaning is the venue of the conference. It took place in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city by population and area, and the country’s second-oldest industrial and economic center. It is also one of the cities with the heaviest military presence, and if there is one thing that most people know about Pakistani politics, it is that the military establishment and bureaucratic apparatus is the most pervasive and coercive force defining, steering, and controlling the Pakistani state—an “overdeveloped” state presiding over its own underdevelopment.[2]
It is also worth noting that there has not been a time in Pakistan’s history when the military establishment has not treated left-wing political and intellectual consciousness as a thought-crime of the highest order.[3] For much of Pakistan’s existence, its comprador ruling elite has mostly done the bidding of U.S. imperial interests in the region and has crushed domestic movements aimed at socializing the economy or sovereign development, as well as those pushing for cultural reforms.
Against that backdrop, the fact that a far-left political party was able to host several leading anti-imperialist thinkers from across the world to discuss capitalism, imperialism, neocolonialism, unequal development, and other similarly uncomfortable topics; openly advertise the event; and hold it at a central location in Lahore, all without any pushback from the state, makes one think seriously about the contradictions at play. I will be cautious of speculating too much about it before a pattern unfolds.
The holding of such a crucial discussion in the periphery carries a lot more significance than it would if it had been held in the imperial core. Well-meaning intellectuals in the imperial core, most of whom have some connection to the Western academy—even as they admittedly maintain their independence from these institutions and from the influence of what is known as Western Marxism—tend to address these issues from inside the Western world and to a predominantly Western audience. Although not completely fruitless, since it does help build consciousness, speaking to an audience that has historically not been a revolutionary subject is not a strategy that will help produce the most tangible outcomes or effective movements to resist imperialism. If there is one clear pattern that has emerged in the history of revolutionary struggles aimed at resisting world capitalism, it is that those struggles, contrary to Marx’s prediction, have not occurred in the core, and in fact came out of the peripheries. The fact that this conference spoke to a population that arguably possess great potential to constitute a revolutionary subject goes to the heart of where revolutionary promise lies.
This is not to imagine a simplistic, utopian prospect of a revolutionary movement snowballing in Pakistan in the months or years following this conference. Yet one can reasonably imagine that the conference has the potential to amplify the already growing consciousness of the peasant and proletarian classes in the country, a result of their despair, and to give them the confidence that comes from the support and validation of leading intellectuals who share their political outlook.
It is easy to find garden-variety Marxist intellectuals and their favorite publications in the West conveniently dismissing or straitjacketing struggles for national liberation and economic sovereignty when they do not neatly fit their sophisticated ideals of these struggles. The breed of Western intellectuals at this conference is a rare one, in that they were clear-eyed about the principal contradiction of our time and unequivocally stood in solidarity with a variety of struggles that confront it without demanding adherence to a pure ideological orthodoxy.
Pakistan, Iran, and the Wider Implications
I will now turn to the potential impact of this conference beyond national borders. One of the most immediate and noticeable features of the event, as I noted at the outset, is its timing. It took place as the Pakistani state was actively facilitating mediation between Iran and the United States. It was a rare historical moment when the Pakistani state was not doing the bidding of U.S. interests, and, dare I say, was even leaning toward Iran in its openly warm official exchanges and by providing military air escorts to protect against any ambushes by the U.S.-Israeli nexus.[4] This, juxtaposed with a recurring theme of the conference—unconditional solidarity with, and admiration for, the Iranian state’s formidable response to U.S.-Zionist imperial aggression—makes for an interesting coincidence: Pakistan’s most popular socialist, if not all-out communist, organization, the HKP, and the Pakistani state happened to find themselves on the same side.
It is difficult to say whether Pakistan’s pro-Iran stance is driven by strategic necessity, regional pressure, cultural affinity, or a broader shift in how the Pakistani state reads the changing global order. Pakistan cannot afford hostility on its western border while it is actively belligerent toward its northwestern neighbor, Afghanistan, and while its relationship with its eastern neighbor, India, has recently escalated into active belligerence, perpetually on the verge of renewed confrontation. Pakistan has also maintained a relatively stable relationship with Iran for much of its history, helped by shared religious, cultural, and regional ties. At the same time, there might be a genuine shift in the mood of the Pakistani state as it observes the increasing multipolarity (or an effort to achieve an equilibrium) in the world and the rapid decline of the US’s unipolar overreach, and realizes that it can benefit more from allying with, or at least not being at odds with, states that are resisting the imperial order in different ways, even if such resistance amounts merely to an effort to delink. The motivation remains uncertain and is likely some combination of these factors.
If strategically broadcasted, the conference has the potential to send reverberations through the pivotal struggles already underway and emerging across the Global South. It can encourage other movements to have similar discussions. This is not to say that these movements are not already having these discussions; in fact, they are having very serious ones, and some have progressed well beyond discussion, into action. However, expanding these discussions and having them in concert across borders has considerable merit for building a vast cadre with members drawn from as many Global South countries as possible. This makes strategic sense, since Global South movements are already closely connected through their shared problems, which stem from neocolonial instruments of dependency and control maintained by imperial military presence across their regions.
A gentle critique of this conference can be made in this regard. Although participants joined from many different parts of the world, including several Global South countries, it would have been preferable if the majority of the panelists were not from the Western academies. This is not a judgment of their merit—their anti-imperialist commitments are not in question, and their contribution to the struggle is invaluable. However, thinkers and organizers from the peripheries who are actually directly involved in struggles with which the HKP is also involved would have added to its qualitative as well as quantitative impact, and would also have helped advance the goal of building a Global South cadre. I trust the HKP enough to say with total conviction that this was neither intentional nor the result of special treatment afforded to Western academics, nor was it a rejection of Global South thinkers.
Toward a New Horizon of Regional Anti-Imperialism
Imperialism is the most powerful diabolical force in the world today and, although Iran is confronting it successfully, it has done so at the expense of more than 3,500 lives—including many innocent civilians, as well as some of the most valuable figures in the Iranian state apparatus—not to mention significant economic and military losses. In contrast, the United States has reportedly lost fewer than fifteen military personnel.[5] The key lesson here is that, while acknowledging the value of strategic response and tactical maneuvering in resisting an imperial assault, the optimal way to bring down imperialism would be to build cross-border movements across all or most of the periphery.
Through its praise for Iran’s effective defense and the near-decisive blow it has dealt to imperial aggression, as well as through the participation of an important Iranian scholar, the conference creates the conditions for a deeper intellectual and ideological alliance between resistance formations in both countries. Such an alliance has magnitude beyond the theoretical. A strongly connected resistance movement across Pakistan and Iran, organically allied through shared struggle against neocolonial economic subjugation, might eventually develop the capacity to exert the kind of political pressure that translates into state-level alignment, oriented toward genuine economic sovereignty and regional self-determination.
Pakistan is heavily reliant on, and perpetually trapped within, the IMF debt cycle, which rams down the country’s throat austerity measures and structural adjustment programs—essentially euphemisms for squeezing the working class and the poor through cuts to public services and social safety nets—as preconditions for loans.[6] This, combined with overall terrible economic planning, prevents sustained development. In the same vein, Iran, which faces many similar domestic economic-planning problems, also bears the additional weight of brutal sanctions, which further drastically restrict its development. Although both countries independently maintain strong relations with China for trade and diplomacy, the emergence of a trifecta—with the potential for other players in the region joining after having settled their political differences—would be a game-changer for the region. At this point, all three states have appreciated each other’s proven strengths. For such an alliance to develop to its full potential, Pakistan needs to radically change course by recognizing that it need not depend on global financial institutions, seeing them for what they are—instruments of neocolonial control—and breaking away from its current economic model and servility to the empire. This should not necessarily require an antagonistic relationship with the empire, but a much more independent one would suffice, the signs of which it has, in some ways, shown in its recent role in foreign policy and international relations vis-à-vis Iran and the United States.
United Front and Tactical Alliance: Merits and Limits
Left-wing formations for national liberation and economic sovereignty, confronting imperial domination, may find it imperative to ally with their state at a given point in time if they find the state similarly interested in that objective. In this way, the value of such an unholy alliance, however much it may feel like a betrayal of the internal class struggle, cannot be overstated and may serve as a necessary precondition for creating the space in which the internal class struggle can be waged. One of the biggest limitations facing movements for transformative change is their outright dismissal of the importance of a united front—an infantile disorder.
Yet within this framework lies a risk: in treating imperialism versus anti-imperialism as the principal contradiction, we risk forgetting that it is only half the story. The dialectical relationship between anti-imperialist unity and internal class struggle demands that the left hold both imperatives simultaneously—recognizing that today’s necessary alliance may contain a non-antagonistic contradiction that could become antagonistic in the future, and that even within the united front itself, the internal class struggle does not pause but continues alongside it, provided that it does not obstruct resistance to the existential external threat.
Pakistan does not face an imminent threat of U.S. imperial aggression today, but this is largely because it has remained within the orbit of U.S. interests. The moment Pakistan seriously attempts to delink from exploitation by the imperial core and/or from the capitalist law of value, it will almost inevitably attract the kind of onslaught that Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba are currently facing. The united front therefore serves a dual purpose: first, as the political vehicle for delinking the country economically, and second, if and when that delinking provokes imperial retaliation, as the force capable of confronting it.
We can take comfort in the fact that the HKP has a clear understanding of this dialectical relationship. The party understands that any such alliance with the state, should one form, would be temporary and purpose-bound, ending once the principal contradiction at a given point in time has been addressed. The HKP is also fully aware of the many acute secondary contradictions the country faces internally, and has been tirelessly fighting against them.
I will admit that I, like many on the left, have a tendency to get overexcited and overoptimistic when I see any serious effort by vanguardist elements in the Global South to confront neocolonialism and imperialism. In our defense, this tendency is not without good reason. It stems from desperation with the current world order. We have truly had enough. This optimism is also intentional, in the sense that such instances rarely become historic on their own; it is the people who assign meaning to them. Viewed in isolation, the conference may not itself be a phenomenal event, but it can be interpreted and used in ways that make it so. Events become historic when people recognize their possibilities, organize around them, and transform them into something larger. Whether this conference ultimately proves consequential remains to be seen, but its significance lies precisely in the possibilities it imagines and opens.
Notes
[1] Lahore Declaration, Haqooq-e-Khalq Party, May 2025, https://haqooqekhalq.com/international-antimperialist-conference/the-lahore-declaration.
[2] Hamza Alavi, “The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh,” New Left Review I/74 (July–August 1972).
[3] Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, The Politics of Common Sense: State, Society and Culture in Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Kamran Asdar Ali, Surkh Salam: Communist Politics and Class Activism in Pakistan, 1947–1972 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2015).
[4] “Pakistan Escorted Iran Negotiators Home amid Israel Concerns,” Dawn, April 18, 2026, https://www.dawn.com/news/1992758; “Iranian President Praises Pakistan’s Role for Regional Peace amid Stalled U.S. Talks,” Arab News, May 17, 2026, https://www.arabnews.com/node/2643933/pakistan; “Tehran Thanks Islamabad for Extending ‘Strong Solidarity’ with Iranian Govt, People Facing U.S.-Israeli Aggression,” Dawn, March 16, 2026, https://www.dawn.com/news/1982648.
[5] “U.S.-Israel Attacks on Iran: Death Toll and Injuries Live Tracker,” Al Jazeera, March 1, 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/1/us-israel-attacks-on-iran-death-toll-and-injuries-live-tracker.
[6] Ayesha Malik, “Economic Self-Determination, the IMF, and Pakistan,” Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, 2023, https://pide.org.pk/research/economic-self-determination-the-imf-and-pakistan/.