Islamabad, Pakistan – It was a brief and formal exchange.
On March 5, two days after Shehbaz Sharif became the 24th Prime Minister of Pakistan, his Indian counterpart posted a 13-word message on social media platform Minister of Pakistan,” the Indian Prime Minister said. he wrote.
It took Sharif two days to respond. “Thank you @narendramodi for the congratulations on my election as Prime Minister of Pakistan,” he wrote on March 7.
Modi's congratulatory message and Sharif's response raised questions, including at a U.S. State Department briefing, about the prospect of detente between the nuclear-armed subcontinental neighbors who have barely functional diplomatic relations. The State Department weighed in and said it looked forward to a “productive and peaceful relationship” between New Delhi and Islamabad.
But even though Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's older brother has a long history of seeking progress with India – including Modi – analysts on both sides of the border say the direction of ties can only be assessed after India's next national elections, scheduled to take place in April and May.
Maleeha Lodhi, a retired Pakistani diplomat who served as ambassador to the United Nations, the United States and the United Kingdom, said managing relations with New Delhi will be the “most vexing” foreign policy test for the current government.
“It is true that the previous PMLN was willing to collaborate with India, but it used to be reciprocal,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN), the Sharif brothers' party. “But today there are many obstacles to normalizing ties that are not easy to overcome.
“As India goes to the polls this year, any meaningful commitment will have to wait until after the elections.”
The enigma of Kashmir
Arguably the biggest obstacle to any move towards normality between the neighbors remains the issue of the Kashmir Valley, the picturesque but contentious Himalayan region over which they have fought multiple wars since gaining independence from British rule in 1947. The region is claimed in full. by both, but each only governs parts of it.
New Delhi has accused Islamabad of backing armed Kashmiri rebels fighting for independence or a merger with Pakistan. Islamabad has denied the allegations, saying it is only providing diplomatic support to the region's fight for the right to self-determination.
Relations between India and Pakistan worsened further in 2019 when Modi's Hindu nationalist government revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which used to grant partial autonomy to Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
Kashmir is at the heart of differences between India and Pakistan, and is an issue where each neighbor has set conditions for talks that are unacceptable to the other. India insists that the status of Jammu and Kashmir is an internal matter of the country. Pakistani leaders, on the other hand, including the Sharif brothers, have linked progress in ties with India to a reversal of New Delhi's 2019 decision.
Former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Sharat Sabharwal said that if the goal is to improve relations, the ball is in Pakistan's court, adding that it was Pakistan that suspended trade and downgraded diplomatic representation.
“He has since made engagement with India conditional on India reversing its decision to end the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under the Indian Constitution. This is just not going to happen,” he told Al Jazeera. “It is up to the Pakistani government to take a more pragmatic and constructive view if we want to move things forward.”
The Sharif touch
However, despite tough stances from both sides, some analysts are cautiously optimistic about the possibility of a new attempt by the two governments to improve ties, largely due to the history the Sharifs share with Modi. and his Bharatiya Janata Party.
In February 1999, then-BJP Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee crossed the border by bus to Lahore to meet Nawaz Sharif, then in his second term as prime minister.
Nawaz and Vajpayee signed a treaty that was seen as a historic step forward in building confidence between the two countries, less than a year after both conducted nuclear tests that had escalated tensions in the region.
However, three months after the treaty, the two countries became involved in a war in Kargil, Indian-administered Kashmir. India accused Pakistani soldiers of infiltrating territory it controlled. Nawaz blamed his then military chief, General Pervez Musharraf, and other top commanders for orchestrating the raid behind his back.
Just a few months later, Musharraf carried out a military coup in October 1999 in which Sharif was removed from power, just two years after taking office as prime minister.
A year after Nawaz finally returned to power in 2013, the BJP also returned to power after a decade in opposition, this time with Modi as prime minister. Nawaz joined leaders from across South Asia in traveling to New Delhi for Modi's swearing-in ceremony.
Then, on Christmas Day in December 2015, Modi surprised both nations with a surprise visit to Lahore to attend Nawaz's granddaughter's wedding. The Pakistani government said the two nations would restart formal dialogue and announced a meeting of senior diplomats in January 2016.
But just a week later, four attackers attacked an Indian Air Force base, killing at least eight Indians, including security personnel.
India again blamed Pakistan for the incident and demanded that it arrest the perpetrators of the attack. In September 2016, after armed fighters attacked an Indian army outpost in Kashmir, Indian soldiers crossed into Pakistan-administered territory to attack what New Delhi described as “militant launch pads.”
Three years later, in February 2019, just before India's last national election, tensions soared again, after 46 Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. The Indian Air Force responded with an attack inside Pakistani territory, saying it was targeting fighter training camps.
In turn, Pakistani planes entered Indian airspace the next day. An Indian Air Force plane chasing Pakistani aircraft was shot down and its pilot captured. The standoff calmed down after Pakistan returned the pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman, two days after his arrest.
This complex history of steps towards talks that have often fallen apart before any significant progress was made is evidence, to many observers – and to Indian diplomats in particular – of the influence of the Pakistani military on the relationship between the two countries. Some Indian analysts have accused the Pakistani military of sabotaging past peace initiatives.
But for others, the February 2019 skirmish underscored how Pakistan figures in Indian electoral calculations. Modi's popularity benefited from the episode, which his party framed as a show of force against Pakistan. The BJP returned to power in May that year with an even larger mandate than in 2014.
Signs of a change?
Despite a formal diplomatic cooldown, the two countries found some common ground in February 2021, when they renewed a two-decade-old ceasefire pact along the 725-kilometer (450-mile) Line of Control, the border de facto dividing Kashmir between the two nations. .
Then in 2022, when Shehbaz Sharif became prime minister for the first time following the ouster of Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) through a parliamentary no-confidence vote, Modi congratulated him and said he was looking forward to work. together to bring “peace and stability” to the region.
Radha Kumar, a New Delhi-based foreign policy expert, also detects a change in the Pakistani military's attitude toward India.
“I would say there appears to have been some change in the mentality of the Pakistani military to the extent that hostilities have been relatively contained over the last few years. But we don’t know how far the containment has gone due to the tight security measures on the Indian side,” he told Al Jazeera.
However, considering the political instability in Pakistan and the country's continuing economic crisis, other analysts say Shehbaz and his government – which only came to power after forging an alliance with traditional political rivals – have little room for manoeuvre.
Muhammad Faisal, an Islamabad-based foreign policy expert and researcher, said New Delhi has realized that it can manage its regional foreign policy more effectively while “ignoring” Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government will need an internal consensus before engaging with India.
“The government needs the express support of its ruling partners, as well as the military, to explore any rapprochement with India. Rival parties, especially the opposition, will oppose any engagement with India; It is a test of Prime Minister Sharif's political skill if he can build a political consensus,” he told Al Jazeera.
Kumar, who is also the author of Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir, acknowledged the political challenges. But, he said, leaders who risk trying to improve ties could find popular support.
“Like India, Pakistan is in a state of high political polarization. In Pakistan, opposition politicians will take advantage of anything that can be considered 'soft' towards India, and in India BJP politicians will take advantage of anything 'soft' by the opposition towards Pakistan,” he said. “So if the leaders of both countries want to commit to peace, they will have to be decisive. “I think both will get support from important sections of the public.”
Vivek Katju, a former Indian diplomat, said Pakistan also needed to open its trade borders with India to restore its economic health.
“Pakistan is at a critical point, something the new prime minister acknowledged in his speech. But it cannot be transformed unless it reviews its approach and relationship with its neighbours, particularly India, and brings a new and objective mindset, namely, Jammu and Kashmir,” he told Al Jazeera.
However, Aizaz Chaudhry, who was Pakistan's foreign secretary during Modi's 2015 visit, said any gesture by Pakistan was unlikely to be “reciprocated” by India at this time.
“The Indian leadership pursues the goal of Hindu nationalism and has followed a policy of no contact with Pakistan,” he told Al Jazeera. “The government should wait until Indians change their minds and show that they want peaceful relations with Pakistan.”
