NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad is unlikely to thaw frosty relations between India and Pakistan as both countries struggle with their domestic issues, experts said on Monday ahead of the first such trip by a high-level Indian official.

The Ministry of External Affairs confirmed last Friday that Jaishankar will be leading the Indian delegation to attend the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — a 10-member trans-regional economic and security body established by China and Russia — from Oct. 15 to 16 in the Pakistani capital. 

Jaishankar has said he will not discuss bilateral relations during the visit. 

India has fought three wars with its nuclear-armed neighbor, including two over control of the disputed Kashmir region in the Himalayas.

India controls Jammu and Kashmir, which is part of the larger Kashmiri territory that has been the subject of international dispute since the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Both countries, which claim Kashmir in full and rule in part, further downgraded their diplomatic ties in tit-for-tat moves in 2019, after India unilaterally stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its limited constitutional autonomy. In protest, Pakistan also suspended all bilateral trade. 

“It would contribute in certain ways in thawing the relationship that has been frozen for the last 10 years and may provide an opportunity for India to construct, begin conversation with Pakistan,” Sanjay Kapoor, analyst and political editor, told Arab News. 

Yet Pakistan’s political instability and security challenges are also a drawback to potential bilateral engagements, said Prof. Harsh V. Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. 

“Pakistan is in such a febrile that who to talk to is a big question,” he told Arab News.

“The way political challenges are rising for the Pakistani government, they are quite substantive and there is no way in which a unified machinery exists … even if India wants to have a conversation with Pakistan and take that conversation forward.” 

Unless “something fundamental shifts” in Islamabad concerning its approach to regional security and terrorism, Pant said that India will not be “very incentivized to engage with Pakistan.”

Cross-border terrorism was a top-of-mind issue for the Indian government, said Manish Chand, president of the think tank Center for Global India Insights. 

“Pakistan has not done anything tangible, concrete” to address Delhi’s concerns over the matter, he told Arab News, adding that any dialogue with Islamabad also depended on the Indian public perception and mood, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party lost its absolute majority in parliament in June. 

“This government, the BJP, does not want to be seen as soft on Pakistan or cross-border terror, so they don’t want to take a political chance because that would mean that it could be they will face cracking political scrutiny,” Chand told Arab News. 

Despite the challenges, Jaishankar’s trip should still be seen as a “very positive gesture” that may lead “to a slight improvement” in bilateral relations, which “may eventually lead to some tangible move leading to reengagement at some level or revival of the dialogue process,” he said. 

But Prof. Siddiq Wahid, a Srinagar-based political analyst, said engaging with Pakistan is not a priority for the Indian government. 

“The current Indian government is hampered by itself-image of India in the world. That self-image is of a major global player. As a result it thinks that time is on its side and it does not have to deal with Islamabad,” he told Arab News.

“Meanwhile, the regional rivalry between Delhi and Islamabad continues to fester.” 

KARACHI: Seven Pakistani fishermen reunited with their families in the southern port city of Karachi on Monday after languishing for years in Indian prisons, a Pakistani charity said.

The charity organization, Edhi Foundation, was handed over these fishermen by Pakistani authorities last Friday to facilitate their return to Karachi, according to Muhammad Ameen, an official at the Edhi Foundation.

The charity covered transportation costs for the fishermen from Lahore, where they had arrived from India, and gave each one of them Rs10,000 ($36) for household expenses upon arrival in Karachi.

Indian and Pakistani fishermen are routinely detained by both maritime agencies on charges of illegally entering each other's territorial waters. The nuclear-armed nations’ borders are not clearly defined in the Arabian Sea and many fishing boats lack the technology to steer clear of any intrusion. 

“Whether it’s Indian or Pakistani fishermen, they are all poor,” said 26-year-old Allah Bachayo, who spent nearly four years away from his family after his boat drifted into Indian waters due to a malfunction in 2020.

“If both sides can come together to release Pakistani fishermen in India and Indian fishermen here, it would be a great kindness.”

Another fisherman, Ghulam Mustafa Shah, 19, was reunited with his mother, Shehrbano Bibi, and two younger siblings after having spent nearly three years in an Indian prison.

“I begged for alms to feed my children,” Bibi told Arab News at the Edhi Foundation office in Karachi, adding that Shah was her eldest son and the family’s main breadwinner, whose imprisonment forced her to ask others for support.

“I am very happy. It is a greater occasion than Eid for me,” she said, warmly embracing her son.

Shah, who had accidentally crossed into the Indian waters along with nine other fishermen in Jan. 2022, described his prison time as "painful," recalling that his requests to speak with his family were denied multiple times.

“I missed my mother a lot,” he said. “I would cry the whole day, but no one would listen to me. I banged my head [against the walls], but no one accepted my request.”

Ameen, the Edhi Foundation official, said that another 79 Pakistani fishermen were incarcerated in India, urging authorities to make efforts for their release too.