Peace and Pakistan

The besieged country looks for a breather

Pakistan army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa’s recent call for “extending the hand of peace” to India needs to be viewed with circumspection. Coming less than a month after both countries’ directors general of military operations agreed to honour the 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) and after he and Prime Minister Imran Khan had made similar qualified statements at functions three days apart in February, it is clear that Islamabad’s moves stem from urgent internal compulsions. For one, its economy had slowed sharply before the pandemic with gross domestic product growth sliding from a decade-high of 5.8 per