Can SAARC succeed despite itself?

The theme of the recently-concluded 18^th SAARC Summit in Kathmandu was timely—‘Deeper Integration for Peace and Prosperity’. Expectations were high that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will use the summit platform to build on his invitation to SAARC leaders for his swearing-in ceremony in May—widely seen as an early reaching out to neighbouring countries. But the outcome did not match these expectations.

Although a framework for energy cooperation was eventually signed at the summit, other agreements on the agenda, related to regulating passenger and cargo vehicular traffic, and building regional railway connectivity, could not be concluded because Pakistan took the extraordinary position that its internal examination of the agreement processes was incomplete.

Even the more realistic expectations about the agreements were belied by the perennial India-Pakistan dissonances. Additionally, Pakistan and Nepal pushed for China, which has the status of observer in SAARC, to be given a bigger role, knowing well that India’s reservations about China will preclude any possibility of a positive outcome.

What the failed summit has clarified is that Modi’s ambitions for speedier and greater connectivity will have to be restricted to India’s north (Nepal and Bhutan), east (Bangladesh) and the south (Sri Lanka and the Maldives). Unfortunately, that will leave Afghanistan physically disconnected from the other SAARC countries. This is an appropriate admission of the difficulties inherent in Pakistan’s stubborn rivalry with India, such that it repeatedly sacrifices its own economic interests for an illusory equality with a country seven times larger.

Expectations of what SAARC can achieve are often accompanied by unfavourable comparisons between SAARC and other regional associations such as the European Union or ASEAN. But perhaps these comparisons are misplaced because they ignore several important differences between these groupings. This results in unrealisable hopes from SAARC summits, even though most meetings so far have invariably ended in deep disappointment and recriminations.

The relative cohesion and success of both the EU and ASEAN are located in their very origins. Their inception was shepherded by the U.S. in the shadow of fear from a perceived common external security threat—communism, emanating from the Soviet Union (in the case of EU), and from China and Vietnam (in the context of ASEAN).

In contrast, South Asian countries feel threatened from within: India by its neighbours, and the neighbours, to varying degrees, by India. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Jammu and Kashmir, and engage in frequent border skirmishes; India intervened militarily to assist in the independence struggle of Bangladesh; it foiled a coup against the Maldivian government, and sent peacekeeping forces into Sri Lanka against the LTTE. In each case, it did not seek territorial advantage and withdrew its forces, but India’s neighbours remain uneasy about its very size and military capabilities.

All eight SAARC member countries are democracies. In South Asian democracies, nationalism and distrust of the other are exacerbated by the absence of mutually-agreed on borders, and all the daily problems that border management creates. This is as true for the India-Pakistan militarised border as it is of the populated India-Bangladesh land and riverine borders.

Most other regions—Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa are no longer contesting borders, so they can work together less contentiously.

Religious differences, which were the basis of the malign British-drawn partition of the subcontinent, also continue to add to the tensions. SAARC has four avowedly Islamic nations, two Buddhist majority nations, and two Hindu majority nations. All of them have experienced inflamed identity politics fed by cross-border ethnic-religious communities, separatism fed from across the border, and in some cases state-supported terrorist activities. So surcharged can the animosities be at times that it is difficult to conceive of what should otherwise be natural—religious tourist circuits for the region’s Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus, all of whom have shrines spread across the region.

SAARC is hamstrung by other complications as well. One of these is the unprecedented economic growth of China and its growing military prowess, which it no longer hides under slogans of a peaceful rise. At the same time, China is helping massively to build infrastructure in South Asian countries—except in India—and in the process encouraging smaller neighbours to challenge India and promote its ambitions to dominate SAARC either as a member or with a greatly enlarged participatory role as an observer, and ultimately, as a member.

Like its biggest member, India, other SAARC countries suffer from an absence of well-developed institutions; SAARC is prolific on promises but poor on implementation. Many plans, programmes, and agreements are detailed but not implemented because of an absence of political will to create the necessary institutions.

This is best exemplified by the failure to deal with the common challenge of terrorism. A Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism was signed in 1987. An Additional Protocol to deal with the financial aspects was signed in 2004, but no country has passed enabling laws and created the institutions to deal with terrorism, which is not even an extraditable offence within SAARC.

It is hoped that the ‘Vision Statement’ by the South Asia Forum (of “eminent personalities” from all member countries, which was discussed at the 16th SAARC Summit in Thimphu in 2010), when formulated, will set out a minimum vision for SAARC as a zone of self-confident democracies with freer movement of people; as an economic union and free trade area with a unified transport network that can move beyond viewing a statistical increase in trade as a goal in itself and see it instead as a means to benefit communities; and finally as a shared ecological space with a connected energy market and best practices to share and conserve water resources.

Since SAARC is unable to extricate itself from bilateral problems, perhaps the way forward lies in thinking big. At the macro-level this could include member countries collectively leveraging their status as energy importers to bargain for better prices at a time when oil prices are falling. Similarly, as labour exporters to West Asia at a time of a global shortage of skilled labour, they can bargain for better terms.

Viewing the grouping from Mumbai, the vision of SAARC, in addition to connectivity, must have the micro-level nuts and bolts of economic and commercial collaboration—it must become profitable to do business within SAARC. Unfortunately, while corporates in Mumbai have an EU strategy, investments in Eastern Europe, and even a vision of Myanmar as a stepping stone to ASEAN, no company has a SAARC strategy.

Until the government as well as the business sectors of all the member countries recognise these macro and micro opportunities, tap into and build on them, SAARC will continue to stumble along aimlessly.

Ambassador Neelam Deo is Co-founder and Director of Gateway House. She has been the Indian Ambassador to Denmark and Ivory Coast with concurrent accreditation to several West African countries.

An abridged version of this article was published by the Economic Times.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

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