Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar travels to Islamabad for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, Canada accuses six Indian diplomats of involvement in threats and attacks against Sikh separatists, and Bangladesh’s foreign secretary visits Washington.
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Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar traveled to Islamabad this week for a high-level Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit—marking the first time an Indian foreign minister has traveled to Pakistan since 2015 and the first time any Indian minister has visited the country since Defense Minister Rajnath Singh in 2016.
During his roughly 24-hour visit on Tuesday and Wednesday, Jaishankar participated in meetings and other activities with Pakistani officials present, but there were no bilateral engagements. That is no surprise: Jaishankar’s trip was intended to signal India’s commitment to the SCO, not to strengthen ties with Islamabad.
Prior to his trip, Jaishankar said he wouldn’t do any one-on-one meetings with Pakistani officials. The visit comes a month and a half after he declared that the “era of uninterrupted dialogue with Pakistan” was over. New Delhi’s position is firm: Until Islamabad deals with terrorist groups on its soil that threaten India, there can be no talks.
India has doubled down on this stance since January 2016, when militants attacked an Indian Air Force base days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Pakistan—the last time an Indian minister traveled to Pakistan solely for bilateral reasons.
That Jaishankar visited Pakistan despite these tensions reflects the importance that India attaches to the SCO. New Delhi values its membership in several minilateral groupings—including the SCO, BRICS, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, among others. They enable India to amplify its support for multipolarity and reflect its strategic autonomy.
The SCO is especially important for India because its membership and focus emphasize Central Asia—a region where New Delhi is keen to ramp up ties but faces an inherent constraint with its outreach. India lacks direct land access to Central Asia because Pakistan—itself looking to expand ties there—denies it transit trade rights. This elevates the importance of any opportunity for Indian high-level engagement with the region.
In recent years, Modi has convened dialogues with Central Asian leaders to signal India’s commitment to partnership—and New Delhi sent Jaishankar to Islamabad to amplify that message.
However, Jaishankar’s visit does show a degree of stabilization in India-Pakistan bilateral ties. The relationship plunged to a new low in 2019 following another terrorist attack in India carried out by Pakistan-sponsored militants, a brief military crisis, and New Delhi’s decision to strip Indian-administered Kashmir of its autonomy. But in 2021, India and Pakistan signed a new truce along their disputed border, easing tensions.
Though still fraught, bilateral relations have since remained relatively calm, with both countries seeking to minimize tensions so that they can direct more attention to other challenges: for India, competition with China, and for Pakistan, internal problems, especially economic stress. This sufficiently calm environment allowed Jaishankar to make this week’s trip, which has also given a boost to people-to-people ties, with several Indian journalists crossing the border to cover it.
The trajectory of India-Pakistan relations remains shaky. Each country’s core concern about the other currently stands to intensify: A recent spike in militant attacks in Kashmir deepens India’s anxieties about Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, while New Delhi’s continued refusal to reverse its 2019 decision to make Kashmir an Indian union territory rankles Islamabad.
Jaishankar’s visit to Pakistan should be seen for what it was: an effort to convey India’s commitment to a regional organization critical for its interests. New Delhi was willing to dispatch its top diplomat on a rare visit to Islamabad to underscore that commitment.
India-Canada rift. On Monday, Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner (equivalent to an ambassador), saying that they were involved with a campaign of threats and attacks against Sikh activists in Canada. Canadian police later released a statement alleging that Indian agents engaged in “serious criminal activity” in Canada, including “homicides and violent acts.”
In retaliation, India expelled six top Canadian diplomats, including the acting high commissioner and the deputy high commissioner.
New Delhi also issued a blistering statement rejecting Ottawa’s allegations in the strongest terms. Bilateral relations have long been strained over Sikh activists in Canada who seek an independent state—which they call Khalistan—in India. (There are more Sikhs in Canada than anywhere outside of India, but most of them reject the Khalistan movement.)
This week marked a rare example of Canadian officials releasing details about allegations against India. Tensions boiled over last year, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused the Indian government of involvement in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a pro-Khalistan figure based in British Columbia.
Now, it seems as if relations have hit rock bottom. Each country will likely double down on its core accusation: Canada says India is sponsoring illegal acts on Canadian soil, from interference to outright violence, while India says Canada is sheltering anti-India extremists. But shattered relations with Ottawa would be a striking outlier for New Delhi, which has strengthened ties with the West in recent years.
Meanwhile, the Hindustan Times reported on Tuesday that India arrested an individual who organized an unsuccessful assassination plot against a Sikh separatist in New York last year while working for the Indian government, according to a U.S. indictment. An Indian team investigating the plot is reportedly meeting this week with U.S. officials, who are “encouraged” by India’s steps.
India’s response to the U.S. allegations has indeed differed markedly from its reaction to those of Canada. It hasn’t lashed out and is apparently willing to cooperate with the United States. This can be attributed to several factors: U.S.-India relations are stronger, and Washington has said little publicly about its allegations while still putting more evidence in the public domain to back them up.
Bangladesh’s foreign secretary visits Washington. Last Friday, Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary Md. Jashim Uddin met with officials across government agencies in Washington. They included two high-ranking State Department officials, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard Verma and acting Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs John Bass, along with others.
Uddin also met with Lindsey Ford and Brendan Lynch, South Asia-focused officials at the National Security Council and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, respectively. It’s unusual for a Bangladeshi foreign secretary—who is junior to the foreign minister—to have meetings with such an array of senior U.S. officials. This is likely a reflection of how committed the Biden administration is to helping Bangladesh’s interim government.
These meetings were important for Dhaka: They can help maintain momentum after interim leader Muhammad Yunus’s visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meetings last month. Yunus secured pledges of support from a variety of actors, but Bangladesh will want to follow up to formally lock in new assistance.
An Israeli strike wounded two Sri Lankans working with the U.N. peacekeeping team in Lebanon last Friday. The incident prompted a joint statement from the countries that contribute to the 10,000-strong U.N. force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, condemning “recent attacks” on peacekeepers.
The countries that contribute to UNIFIL include India, which provides about 900 peacekeepers in Lebanon, as well as Sri Lanka. Both countries have close relations with Israel. Colombo received Israeli military support during the Sri Lankan civil war and has participated in the recent U.S.-led operations against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea.
In this regard, the participation of Indian and Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Lebanon presents a delicate diplomatic dilemma. New Delhi’s and Colombo’s initial responses to last Friday’s strike were relatively subdued; Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry focused most of its public comments on the bravery of its soldiers.
However, the two countries did endorse the joint statement—though India was not listed as a formal signatory. Both India and Sri Lanka are keen to maintain their peacekeeping presence in the Middle East, but cascading instability will complicate their effort to balance these roles with their relations with Israel.
In the Express Tribune, economist Talat Anwar argues that Pakistan can ease its economic crisis by trading more with fellow member states in the SCO. “Pakistan can come out of its debt repayment crisis by realising its exports potential of $15 billion to SCO countries,” he writes.
An editorial in the Hindu warns of possible threats to India’s robust economic growth. “[T]here are clear signs of a cooling in economic activity in the first half of this year, with stuttering car sales reflecting weaker urban consumption and industrial output slipping into contraction in August,” it argues.
In Prothom Alo, Dhaka University professor Shafi Md. Mostofa argues that his university—one of Bangladesh’s most prestigious—can strengthen its global reputation with more foreign institutional cooperation. “The university must actively pursue collaborations with international institutions, industries, and scholars to enhance its research impact, academic reputation, and teaching quality,” he writes.
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