The hoarse bleating and the paranoia unleashed by the media and the intelligentsia in Pakistan complaining about the US operation in Abbotabad as a “breach of sovereignty” is mindboggling to say the least. When did Pakistan ever have genuine and complete sovereignty in its history?

Thirty two years ago on the night of 3^rd and 4^th April 1979, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was assassinated on the gallows in Rawalpindi jail. This was probably the most significant political murder in the history of the country. A terrified state, headed by the country’s most brutal and vicious dictator Zia ul Haq carried out this harrowing act.

After tolerating draconian work conditions, with many workers on day wages, [i.e. workers who turn up each day and wait to see if they get a day’s work], suddenly the wrath of the workers spilled over and they downed tools. The response of the boss has been a lock-out. The struggle continues.

The episode of Raymond Davis’s release has exposed the reality of justice, the myth of sovereignty and the character of Pakistan’s ruling classes. As Hegel once remarked, “Necessity expresses itself through accident”. The whole incident highlights the economic, diplomatic and military crisis the largest imperial power in history is experiencing in this epoch of the senile decay of capitalism on a world scale.

In less than a day after the exorbitantly cruel price hike of petroleum products and the announcement of the home minister that a major terrorist network had been busted in Islamabad, the federal minister for minorities, a Christian, was gruesomely assassinated in front of his mother’s house in the very same city.

The general rottenness of world capitalism and the brutal economic measures adopted by the PPP government has led to widespread misery and anger among the Pakistani masses. The Pakistani working class has been made to bear the brunt of this catastrophe. Just like other parts of the world there is a new awakening within the Pakistani proletariat, which could be felt in the struggle and victory of the KECS workers and now in the strike by the PIA workers.