The End of SAARC?

• Regional organizations in South Asia will fail to reach full potential in the absence of higher levels of trust and regional community-building among participants.
• The South Asian states are largely victims of the activities of violent non-state actors in the region.
• The SAARC as a regional organization failed to provide peaceful settlement of disputes, fighting against common issues such as cross-border terrorism and climate change.
• Rise of extremism and cross-border terrorism and the emergence of multilateral arrangements in the region may lead to the end of SAARC

Regional organizations have contributed immensely to regional integration, development, and governance in the globalized world. The regional institutions influence states to enter a regional cooperation framework to enhance assistance and reduce regional apprehension. They are important to explain self-organizing efforts to solve regional problems. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is a very significant regional organization in the region, which is created to promote economic growth, social and cultural development, and mutual trust between states in the region.

South Asia is the worlds’ most densely populated region in the world. As a region, it consists of eight countries, namely, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bhutan, Nepal Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. The British imperial experience prevented countries in the region to emerge as independent states and prevented them from developing their regional governing institutions for themselves.

Geographical connectivity, common history, civilization, culture, and language have not helped the South Asian countries to evolve a common identity. The idea of regional integration in the South Asian region first appeared only in the 1980s.

Regional organizations play a very important role as regional security governance providers. There has been a remarkable rise of regional organizations in peace processes in the past twenty years. Regional organizations like AU, ASEAN, SCO, NATO, EU, and OAS are considered to be very crucial for the security of the specific region. These regional organizations have gradually promoted peace, security, and conflict prevention methods. All the regional organizations adopted different aims, strategies, and principles based on their geographical situations. In this regard, they founded SAARC in 1985.

However, SAARC failed to achieve its objectives, even today, the South Asian region is characterized by political instability, underdevelopment, poverty, natural disasters, border conflicts, river conflicts, civil war, human rights violations, and rivalry between member countries. Despite several problems in the region, three major factors may lead to the end of SAARC in the future:

• Pakistan’s rivalry and conflictual relationship towards India
• Rise of extremism and cross-border terrorism
• The emergence of multilateral arrangements in the region

Since the beginning of Independence in 1947, both India-Pakistan relations are shaped by tensions, suspicion, and competition. Both are developing economies and emerged as two power poles with nuclear capacities in the region. The multi-faced conflicts based on water (Indus River), border (Kashmir), religious and geo-political competition spoiled the regional integration process in South Asia. Due to the conflictual relationship, both India and Pakistan developed strong bilateral relations with non-south Asian countries. China-led BRI has involved all the countries in the region except India and Bhutan. Further, the Pakistan-China partnership in CPEC and Chinese involvement in the region lead to more misunderstanding and mistrust between India- Pakistan. 

The South Asian states are largely victims of the activities of violent non-state actors in the region. The religious differences, ethnic conflicts, underdevelopment, inequality, poverty, secessionist, and autonomous movements are the primary sources for the emergence of extremism in the region. State-sponsored cross-border terrorism and terrorist groups like LeT (Lashkar-e- Toiba), JeM (Jaish-e- Mohammad Mujahideen E-Tanzeem), TJP (Tehreek-e- Jaferia Pakistan) have repeatedly targeted Indian citizens and soldiers promoting insurgency endangering stability and security of the region. The recent Pulwama terror attack and India’s response through surgical strikes further worsened the relationship between India and Pakistan. India has repeatedly mentioned that talks and terror can’t go hand in hand. The re-emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan created more political instability and uncertainty in the region.

The emergence of new multilateral organizations and grand strategies in the Asian region weakened and undermined the regional organizations such as SAARC, the South Asian Sub-Regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC), and the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) Initiative. India’s membership into IBSA, BRICS, G4 Nations, and G20 undermined its interests in the neighbourhood and adversely affected the integration process. Similarly, Pakistan’s integration into the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and Coffee Club can be considered as challenges to SAARC’s existence. India and Pakistan’s admission into Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) further damaged the regional institutional mechanism in the South Asian region. 

The SAARC as a regional organization failed to provide peaceful settlement of disputes, fighting against common issues such as cross-border terrorism and climate change. SAARC is the least unified among other regional organizations. Regional organizations in various parts of the world, except in Europe (EU), were not very successful. PM Modi said the full potential of SAARC can’t be realized until terror ends. The degree of success of a regional organization depends on the willingness and commitment of independent sovereign states to share their sovereignty.

Regional organizations in South Asia will fail to reach full potential in the absence of higher levels of trust and regional community-building among participants. India’s domination in the region, the rise of China, India-Pakistan membership to Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), heightened terror activity, and religious fundamentalism can be the major reasons for the end of SAARC in South Asia. Perhaps, India as a regional leader can show the same effort as building alliances with the western powers as opposed to keeping its neighbouring nations together and look to revive and restore SAARC as successful regional cooperation.  

Author Information:

Dr. Karamala Areesh Kumar, teaches International Relations and World Politics at the Post Graduate Centre, Department of Political Science, St. Joseph’s College (Autonomous), Bangalore, India.

Niranjana R Nair is a Research Student from the Department of Political science, St. Joseph’s College (Autonomous), Bangalore, India.

Lalitha. S is a Research Student from the Department of Political science, St. Joseph’s College (Autonomous), Bangalore, India.