Both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif are to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Though not yet confirmed, this proximity may lead to a meeting of the two on the sidelines of the Summit, which would thus become the venue for their first ever encounter. It is not as if they have never met before, for when Mr Sharif’s elder brother Nawaz was Prime Minister, Mr Modi dropped in on a family wedding in Lahore in 2015. Mr Sharif was then Punjab CM.
However, now there are several developments in the region, and in the bilateral relationship, in the half-decade since, with the unilateral change in the status of Indian Occupied Kashmir perhaps the most visible. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan is perhaps the next, and there are the sides that both India and Pakistan are being forced to pick, as they pick their path very gingerly about where to position themselves in the new Cold War that is developing between the USA and China.
Considering that the interaction between the two countries has been very limited, to the extent of not existing in public at a senior political level, and even routine technical meetings proving opportunities for one side or the other to score points, any SCO meeting would prove an opportunity to silence the kind of hawks on either side whose dominance had taken both countries down the path of confrontation during the Balakot face-off. Someone, somewhere, was made to realize in Delhi that a conflict between the two countries could lead to nuclear conflict, which would not only be disastrous for them, but also for the entire world. Therefore, the SCO summit sidelines meeting would provide an opportunity, not for peace, nor a settlement, but a beginning, a foundation which would allow the building of a durable peace.
