Unintentional SAARC-asm
By Paul Belden

So the 23rd session of the Council of Ministers of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) came to an end Thursday, and the usual flurry of end-of-session questions from the press ensued.

Questions such as: "Was the meeting a success?"

Answer: "No, of course it wasn't."

Not the official answer, of course. But that's beside the point. In fact, it's not even the right question.

SAARC is an organization whose major powers - Pakistan and India - were at the brink of open war just two short months ago amid a hailstorm of terrorism and suicide bombings that continues to this day. In such circumstances, certainly the better closing-ceremony question would have been: "Did everyone survive?"

Answer: "Fortunately, so far, yes."

Honestly, who could hope for anything more from an association whose members regularly accuse one another of the worst crimes against humanity and yet whose charter precludes the inclusion of "contentious issues" in its platform?

Okay, sure, Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who opened the meeting, did voice "concern" over the resurgence of terrorism in new forms and call for "redoubling" of efforts to "individually and collectively combat this scourge in all its manifestations". And yes, the SAARC foreign secretaries, hearing this call to arms, did manage in the end to recommend that a "protocol" be worked out to "supplement" the council with a "meeting of ministers" to "discuss" the "issue".

But really, what's the point? Despite the fact that SAARC contains, besides India and Pakistan, five other states (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka), everyone knows who the stars of this show are. "Conflict between India and Pakistan is the biggest hurdle SAARC has faced ever since its inception," former Nepali prime minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai said. And he's right.

That's why perhaps the most notable aspect of the meeting just ended was the fact that neither Yashwant Sinha, India's new foreign minister, nor Inamul Haq, his counterpart in Pakistan, also new in the job, openly insulted each other in the manner of their respective bosses in January. At that time, during a meeting of the SAARC heads of state in Kathmandu, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf derisively forced the ailing Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to rise from his seat to shake hands. (But that was only after Vajpayee, by prohibiting the use of Indian airspace to Pakistani flights, had forced Musharraf to travel to Nepal by way of China.)

Such fun. If it didn't have entertainment value, there wouldn't be much reason for SAARC to exist. Because of the prohibition on "contentious" issues, what ends up happening is that any real work that gets done by SAARC happens on the sidelines. As such, the meetings may sometimes serve as useful conduits for direct contacts between players who otherwise wouldn't get within a thousand miles of each another, much less sit in the same room. (Indeed, it was Vajpayee's refusal in 1999 to share the platform with Musharraf that delayed the January Kathmandu summit by three-and-a-half years.)

But that's about all the meetings are good for. And everybody knows it. As for the notion of "multi-lateral discussion of regional issues", India is so much the largest player in SAARC that it naturally views the association as something nefariously cooked up by its smaller-fry neighbors to provide a legal context in which to try to gang up on the big guy.

Of course, that's not what the other members of SAARC say. As the world heads into globalization, they say it's only through such forums as the World Trade Organization, the European Union and SAARC that individual countries can present their cases effectively. The prospect of no regional cooperation is fraught with "instability, violence and war", says Yadavkant Silwal, Nepali diplomat and former SAARC secretary general. "There is no quick escape route."

India's reaction? Nice try. Won't work. "Countries of the SAARC should not misjudge [India's] rightful dominant role in the region as a pivotal power," wrote K K Bhargava, Indian diplomat and another former SAARC secretary general in a book titled South Asia 2010.

India knows it's better off dealing with its neighbors one on one, which is why it blatantly sabotages SAARC every which way it can. Just to give the most recent example, India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), is widely believed to have been behind the arrest in January, just as the SAARC meeting was getting underway in Kathmandu, of Pakistani embassy officials by Nepali police on charges of counterfeiting Indian and US currencies. (Unfortunately for India, Sher Bahadur Deuba then apologized to Musharraf, and a crisis was averted.)

But what about next year? Pakistan is scheduled to host the 12th summit in early January 2003, and India might well refuse to attend. It hasn't much to lose. And it isn't committing itself. "We have not yet taken any decision on the matter," Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Nirupama Rao said on Wednesday.

Without India, SAARC might as well disappear. What would be the point? "Needless to emphasize, an impotent organization cannot be expected to last long," Nepali diplomat Madhab Prasad Khanal said this week.

At the close of ceremonies of the foreign secretaries' meeting on Wednesday, SAARC spokesman Pushkar Mansingh Rajbhandri mentioned the subject on everybody's mind these days, terrorism.

"SAARC has a common position," he said. "Everyone is opposed."

There was no obvious sarcasm in his voice. But given New Delhi's belief that Pakistan supports near-daily cross-border terrorism into Indian-administered Kashmir, it could be forgiven for being not entirely convinced that he was serious.

Additional reporting by Dhruba Adhikary in Kathmandu, Inter Press Service

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