Have Back Channels Been Successful in Achieving a Thaw?
Two years on after Balakot however, back channels have been successful in achieving a thaw of sorts, as Thursday’s joint statement demonstrates. The Special Advisor to the Prime Minister Moeed Yusuf was crowing about the ‘win’ and hinting that India had been pressured into this position.
With domestic politics in a roil, and all opposition parties having joined hands in the shape of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) to remove the general’s ‘selected’ government, this accord certainly provides some breathing space he was desperately looking for. But with the economy in a shambles (negative GDP for the first time in fifty years), skyrocketing inflation due to IMF dictated increasing indirect taxation, rising unemployment, and an acute awareness in the public that the military’s intervention and installation of an entirely inept and corrupt gang at the helm of affairs is responsible for its plight, will this space be enough to keep him and his hybrid regime afloat is a question mark.
In the recent spate of by-elections — eight out of nine seats — some provincial and some national, have been won by opposition parties. The result of the upcoming election in the upper house, the senate, will also be an indicator of which way the wind is blowing.
(Gul Bukhari is a Pakistani journalist and rights activist. She tweets @GulBukhari. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
(The Quint is available on Telegram. For handpicked stories every day, subscribe to us on Telegram)