What India Pakistan Joint Statement Means Two Years Since Balakot

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…