With the cancellation of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit scheduled to be held in Islamabad, a defining moment in the life of this 30-year institution may have been reached. The first Saarc summit was hosted by Dhaka in December 1985. Following that, heads of government of member countries were expected to meet every year. However, in the past three decades, one of three Saarc summits has been cancelled. The previous host (that is the host of the last summit held before any cancellation) has stayed on as Saarc chair for an extended term. The country that suffered the cancellation has had to miss its turn and wait for the next cycle. While many of the cancellations have been due to India-Pakistan problems, other issues — the civil war in Sri Lanka, a coup in Pakistan — have also interfered.
Having said that, there is a sense that this cancellation of 2016 is not a usual one. Something fundamental has changed in the dynamic within the subcontinent. From a passive acceptance of Saarc’s irreplaceable role as a platform for economic integration and developmental cooperation in the region, the Narendra Modi government has changed India’s approach. It has created a sub-regional “fast track” in the form of BBIN — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal. BBIN is now the fulcrum of a new regional policy that is autonomous of the Saarc trap. Separately, the bilateral relationship between India and Afghanistan, generally strong since 2001, has just weathered its greatest challenge in 15 years. This too will leave its impact on suspicions of Pakistan and the willingness, in Kabul and New Delhi, to waste time on a Saarc that Islamabad is determined to reduce to sub-optimal outcomes.
The birth of BBIN itself was caused by Saarc’s failure in 2014 to conclude a motor vehicles and road connectivity agreement. This was due to a Pakistani veto. It led to BBIN agreeing to such a motor vehicles arrangement to facilitate overland trade. Separately India began speaking to BBIN partners about energy projects and the broad aspiration for a common power grid. In September 2016, as part of this BBIN framework, the first truck from Dhaka arrived at the Inland Customs Depot in Patparganj, east Delhi. It had travelled close to 2,000 km. Its cargo comprised garments and textile products for the British retailer Marks & Spencer. Consider the irony. A free-trade and open-borders zone that vanished as the British left in 1947, leaving behind a legacy of political divisions, was now being encouraged to integrate, at least symbolically, by a British client.
The idea of BBIN is ripe for expansion. In October, India hosts the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Goa. Every Brics summit host is allowed to invite guests from its near-neighbourhood. India has chosen to invite its Bimstec partners. Bimstec (the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) is made up of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal, besides India. Five of Bimstec’s seven members are also founders of Saarc. Bimstec has a long history, going back to the 1990s. It was intended as a bridge between Asean/Southeast Asia and South Asia. Yet, it has done less well than it may have wanted to, largely because infrastructure projects that can connect these two great regions have been delayed. A renewed Bimstec thrust is a natural corollary to BBIN. Achieving meaningful results with Bimstec will also strengthen India in its negotiations within the China-incubated BCIM (Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Forum for Regional Cooperation).
China is the infrastructure provider of Asia today and the economy with the greatest capacity to execute massive, regional and sub-regional connectivity projects. Yet, China’s ambitions, packaged together as “One Belt, One Road” are rarely in sync with India’s needs — except perhaps in the intersection of BCIM, Bimstec and BBIN. Here India can use Chinese infrastructure in a potential win-win, presuming that Chinese behaviour will be reasonable, aimed at economic gains and not politically hostile. A robust Indian ownership of Bimstec will only shore up India’s baseline position. Other than Pakistan, only two Saarc countries are outside the ambit of Bimstec: Afghanistan and the Maldives. India’s engagement with them will have to be bilateral, though the Maldives and India are part of an Indian Ocean maritime security troika with Sri Lanka. The setback to Pakistan in recent times has come from Afghanistan.
When President Ashraf Ghani was elected to office in 2014, he was regarded as an American-backed technocrat, the antidote to President Hamid Karzai who the United States no longer trusted and who the Pakistanis insisted was too close to India. Mr Ghani began by studiously ignoring New Delhi and reaching out to Islamabad and Beijing. Despite being a head of government, he retreated on protocol by calling on Gen. Raheel Sharif, the Pakistan Army Chief, at the latter’s office in Rawalpindi. Subsequently the generals in Pakistan repeatedly stabbed the Ghani regime in the back (or even the front). Part of the US impatience with Pakistan is because the Americans are angry that Islamabad and its proxy jihadists have sabotaged their candidate in Kabul. Indeed,
Mr Ghani is now one of Pakistan’s most bitter and most credible critics. In response, the US has urged India to provide weapons to and enhance military cooperation with Afghanistan, unmindful of Pakistani sensitivities. All this has served to give India more diplomatic room in recent days. It was useful as New Delhi planned the counter-terrorism operation across the Line of Control. A collateral victim is Saarc, now reduced to a subcontinental version of the League of Nations — in the grey zone between coma and death. A cultural rejection of its South Asian identity has long been a feature of the Pakistani military and political elite. Today, this has been answered by the rest of South Asia politically rejecting Pakistan. As such, Pakistan finds itself mentally in West Asia — though not accepted as an ethnic equal or even a reliable security partner by several major Arab states. Simultaneously, almost by a gradual Finlandisation, it is becoming a vassal state of China. Saarc’s successor organisations will not miss it.
