Rough End of Exports

hijacking of the PIA boeing was masterminded by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) inside the country and its supporters abroad with a view to weakening the regime, the outcome of the hijacking, at least for the present, appears to have served precisely the contrary ends. For weeks before the hijacking took place, the country had been racked with protests, strikes and demonstrations, and large-scale arrests of political workers. Schools and colleges all over the country had been ordered to be closed. The very day the hijacking took place, reports spoke of the whole country being paralysed by a general strike, called by the nine-party Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MHD), a more credible combine than the one hastily sought to be put together by a desperate PPP leadership last August.