No Perceptible Thaw in India-Pakistan Ties

While Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s recent visit to Pakistan did not result in a breakthrough or even a perceptible thaw in bilateral relations, it has prompted the beginnings of hope.

During his visit, Jaishankar not only addressed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit that Islamabad was hosting but also, he met with Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister on the sidelines of the summit over lunch and dinner.

Unlike the SCO meeting in Goa in May 2023, there were no acrimonious exchanges between the two sides. Nor were there any references to Kashmir or India’s revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy.

However, there were no ice-breaking comments at Islamabad either.

As is wont in India-Pakistan relations, Jaishankar’s travel plans stirred media speculation about whether the visit – the first by an Indian foreign minister to Pakistan since 2015 and the first by any Indian minister since 2016 – would introduce a thaw in ties.

Ahead of his Pakistan visit, Jaishankar himself quelled speculation of any bilateral interaction with his hosts that would lead to an unfreezing of India-Pakistan ties.

“I’m not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I’m going there to be a good member of the SCO,” the minister said at an event in New Delhi.

Relations between India and Pakistan have been tense, particularly since February 2019, when a Pakistan-based terrorist group carried out an attack in Kashmir’s Pulwama region that killed at least 40 paramilitary personnel. India retaliated with cross-border airstrikes on a terrorist training camp inside Pakistan. Ties deteriorated further in August 2019 when India revoked the special status (that of limited autonomy) conferred on the part of Jammu and Kashmir administered by it.

Jammu and Kashmir is claimed in its entirety by both countries but administered by each in parts. Neither country has an ambassador in the other since 2019 though they do have functioning embassies run by deputy ambassadors. Pakistan expelled India’s ambassador in 2019 in the wake of the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.

“The era of uninterrupted dialogue with Pakistan is over. Actions have consequences,” Jaishankar said at a book launch event in New Delhi in July this year. The comments were about Pakistan’s use of terrorism against India and New Delhi’s reaction to such provocation. India was not interested in dialogue with Pakistan if the process was punctuated by Pakistani provocations.

Given this context, it was surprising when India announced earlier this month that Jaishankar would travel to Pakistan for the regional SCO meeting in Islamabad.

For many, the unanswered question is why Jaishankar chose to visit Islamabad at all – especially when India has indicated that normalizing ties with Pakistan is not a priority – at least not until it ceases terrorist activity directed against India.

The visit can be explained in a number of ways.

For one, Jaishankar’s came close on the heels of India’s successful completion of assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir – the first in a decade and the first after the revocation of Kashmir’s special status. The voter turnout at 63.8 percent in the September-October assembly election was higher than the 58 percent recorded during national polls in April-May this year. And a new government has taken office there.

Besides, Jaishankar’s visit could be India reciprocating a gesture by then Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari who visited India for an SCO meeting last year. India was the chair of the SCO in 2023 and the leaders’ summit it hosted in July last year was organized in a virtual format with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif making an online appearance.

More importantly, the SCO is a regional organization that includes many landlocked Central Asian countries. And Jaishankar’s visit helped underline the importance India accorded to ties with Central Asian states. India has been looking to deepen trade with Central Asia for decades, but it is handicapped by the lack of viable connectivity routes. The shortest route is through Pakistan and Afghanistan. But relations with Pakistan are fraught and with Afghanistan, New Delhi shares uneasy ties since the Taliban took over the country in 2021. India is exploring an alternative route via Iran’s Chabahar port but the West Asia conflict has complicated the operationalization of the port contract.

Another key reason for Jaishankar’s Pakistan visit can be explained by the fact that the SCO is a platform formed at Russia’s joint initiative with China. India and Russia share historical linkages dating back to the Cold War days. Jaishankar’s absence may have sent a negative signal to Russia that India was not taking the SCO seriously enough. This, when Russia’s ties with the West are majorly strained over Ukraine.

The conflict with Ukraine notwithstanding, India hasn’t set aside ties with Russia; nor has it condemned what Western countries have termed as the invasion of Ukraine. New Delhi has however nudged Moscow by saying that this was not an era for war and that there were no solutions to be found on the battlefield. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Moscow in July for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the first since 2022 when Russia began its Ukraine assault.

Given India’s ongoing tensions with China and the “no limits” partnership between Beijing and Moscow especially since the start of the Ukraine war, New Delhi has been keen to ensure there is no rupture of ties with Russia. This is especially so given that India is heavily dependent on Russia for spares and the upkeep of its military hardware.

Yet another reason for Jaishankar’s Islamabad visit is that India has always supported a multipolar global order and being part of SCO allows New Delhi the latitude to engage with multiple partners in a world that is in major flux. New Delhi is wary of a China-dominated world order emerging with the U.S., distracted by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East besides domestic political preoccupations, is in retreat.

“Those of us who are members of clubs, its very rare to be a member of a single club. Lot of us like to go to different clubs, each club has its own special points … if we have the ability to go to more clubs, I think I would say it’s good for us,” Jaishankar said at an event in New Delhi earlier this month. The comments were made in the context of India being a member of both the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) grouping of emerging markets and the QUAD which brings together the U.S., Japan, India and Australia. But they are equally applicable to India’s participation in the SCO.

Another compelling reason for Jaishankar’s visit would be to underline India’s message on the need to combat terrorism and extremism. Article 1 of the SCO charter explicitly states that a key task of the grouping is to jointly combat “terrorism, separatism and extremism in all their manifestations.” While India is unhappy with Pakistan’s use of terrorism against India, New Delhi is also upset with Beijing’s continuous shielding of Pakistan, for sheltering anti-India terrorists, at fora like the United Nations.

In his speech to the SCO at Islamabad, Jaishankar reminded members of their promise to work together to end terrorism, separatism and extremism in addition to “strengthen[ing] mutual trust, friendship and good neighborliness.”

“If we fast-forward from the inception of the Charter to the situation today, these goals and these tasks are even more crucial,” Jaishankar said. “If trust is lacking or cooperation inadequate, if friendship has fallen short and good neighborliness is missing somewhere, there are surely reasons to introspect and causes to address. Equally, it is only when we reaffirm our commitment most sincerely to the Charter that we can fully realize the benefits of cooperation and integration that it envisages,” he added.

The comments were a veiled call to Pakistan to introspect on its actions – without mentioning the host by name or leveling accusations.

There was a message for Pakistan’s all-weather friend China as well.

Pointing to the re-ordering of the international system underway, Jaishankar said that this had created “many new opportunities in terms of trade, investment, connectivity, energy flows and other forms of collaboration. There is no question that our region would benefit immensely if we take this forward.”

But for this to happen, “cooperation must be based on mutual respect and sovereign equality. It should recognize territorial integrity and sovereignty. It must be built on genuine partnerships, not unilateral agendas,” Jaishankar said.

India has been riled by China undertaking projects in Kashmir-administered Pakistan under the China-Pakistan-Economic Corridor (CPEC) program. As stated above, India says all of Jammu and Kashmir is part of India — something reiterated by the Indian foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal this week. The CPEC is a strand within China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that India sees as a project aimed at strengthening Chinese hegemony in the world.

And of course, these comments would also apply to China’s attempts to pressure India in the conflict over their unsettled common border.

With the Jaishankar visit now over, what next for India-Pakistan ties?

Pakistan’s former prime minister and brother of the sitting prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was of the view that India and Pakistan should bury the hatchet. “We can’t change our neighbors, neither can Pakistan nor can India. We should live like good neighbors,” he told Indian journalists in Lahore.

For India, the yardstick for good neighborliness is Pakistan giving up on the use of terrorism against it. And also desisting from the use of harsh rhetoric against India and Indian leaders. The latest such incident took place last month when Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif addressed the UN General Assembly where he compared the people of Kashmir to those in Palestine. The remarks drew a sharp response from Jaishankar who was at the UN General Assembly session, representing India.

With the levels of mistrust high between the two sides, it will take time and effort to bridge the deficit. As of now, India has said there were no talks even on a game of cricket between the two.

Those hoping for a visible thaw from the Jaishankar visit will have to wait a while longer.