Fayez Hoda, Pune
The Ministry of External Affairs informed on Friday that S. Jaishankar, the Minister of External Affairs, will lead India’s delegation to Pakistan for the Council of Heads of Government meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on October 15–16.
August saw the announcement that all SCO heads of state, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had received invitations to the next summit in Islamabad. Pakistan is now serving as the SCO CHG’s rotating chairperson.
After nine years, this is the first time an Indian minister of external affairs has visited Pakistan. Sushma Swaraj made the final visit, leading the Indian team to the Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference on Afghanistan, which took place in Islamabad on December 8–9.
Along with seeing Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan at the time, Swaraj also had discussions with Sartaj Aziz, her counterpart. A joint statement from India and Pakistan on December 9th proclaimed the start of a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue, marking the conclusion of the meetings. Later that year, on December 25, after traveling through Afghanistan to return to Russia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unexpectedly visited Lahore to meet with Nawaz Sharif.
The country of Pakistan is experiencing political unrest as protests by those who back imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan continue, and this is reflected in the impending SCO summit in Islamabad. To stop Khan’s supporters from organizing a protest for his release, the Associated Press revealed on Friday that officials had placed shipping containers in the way of important routes leading to Islamabad and had turned off mobile service.
In addition, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by Khan, refused to call off the rallies, so Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s administration, according to the AP, closed schools in Islamabad and the neighboring city of Rawalpindi and deployed paramilitary forces.
Following the repeal of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, which removed Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, Pakistan’s relations with India worsened. Prior to the Balakot airstrikes that followed the Pulwama terror attack, relations had already strained earlier that year.
The first visit by a Pakistani foreign minister to India in about a decade occurred in May 2023 when Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the country’s foreign minister at the time, traveled to Goa for the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting.