International Marxist Group Archive

Magazines, bulletins and booklets of the IMG and its forerunners, 1961–1984

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The Week Vol. 6, No. 20, 3 December 1966 · p. 8 of the scan · 496 words

The scan: The Week v6 no20.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Tesseract OCR) from a scan of a stencilled typescript and has not been corrected. Expect misread words; titles in particular are often garbled where the issue printed no contents list. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: large-type headline; heuristic; title from the OCR of the heading.

BAST PAKISTAN - « COLONY The following leaflet was distributed by Kast Pakistani Progressives on the occasion of the visit of Ayub Khan to this country: The President of Pakistan, Field Marshal ayub Khan, has arrived on a state visit to Britain. A crowd of people, organised and financed heavily by the Pakistan High Commission in London dutifully 'received' him at the airport. The President broke his schedule and waved to them but he was not smiling. In spite of the cheerful programme before him the President looked pale and gloomy. .The spectre of discontent at home haunted him. The country he left behind is seething, boiling and bubbling with indignation and discontent. The chain reaction against the Ayub regime has set off. In fact it is a reaction against the system concealed beneath the slimy letters of the Constitution Ayub forced down the throat of millions. The Ayub Constitution is a strange hybrid of the French, the British and the imerican Constitutions. It retains the Parliament without the parliamentary sovereignty, the american Presidential system without the congressional checks and balances, the pontifical authority of De Gaulle without any provision for referendum on vital issues. There are even inroads by which the Army can sneak into the back corridors of power. The Defence Minister has to be a person who either holds or held the post of at least a Brigadier. The very fact that the country's new capital is being moved to a place only a few miles away from Pakistan's military headquarters is a pointer to the Army's determination to canopy the civil administration for ever. The most grotesque feature of the Ayub regime, however, is the continued exploitation of East Pakistan. East Pakistan, with its jute, tea and hides and skins, provides most of Pakistan's foreign exchange. Factories and settlements, however, spring up on the barren deserts of west Pakistan. Poor East Pakistan is not only a happy hunting ground for raw materials but also a market for commodities produced in West Pakistan. The classical role of colonisation is complete. In short, East Pakistan earns money and West Pakistan spends it, to cite an example: the major portion of Pakistan's budget is spent on defence. The bulk of defence expenditure, in its turn, is being constantly percolated into West Pakistan. In September fighting last year, West Pakistan was strong enough with eight divisions to combat Indian aggression. East Pakistan, which accounts for the majority of the population was left in the hurch with an ill-equipped division only. The development of Pakistan depends on the development of its azriculture. The greatest bottlenecks in this respect are, in the West; water-losging and -galinity, and in the East;cyclone and floods. In 1960 the Ayub regime signed a treaty with India for allocations of huge resources for the development of the Indus basin. In East Pakistan, Krugg's Mission's recommendations on flood, draught and irrigation were at first ignored, then finally consigned to the scrap heap ..... ...

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