India-Pakistan row casts shadow on the 19th SAARC summit

The continuing India-Pakistan row over the border and other issues is casting a shadow on the 19th Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

The SAARC charter decrees that a summit of the regional cooperation initiative is to be held once a year. But in practice, the average spacing has been about 18 months and no summit was held between 1998 and 2002. That four year gap was also due to an India-Pakistan row.

The 19th summit was to have been held in November 2016 in Islamabad, but was postponed indefinitely after India and several other countries boycotted the event.

India complained of attacks by Pakistan-based terror groups on Indian military bases in Pathankot and Uri. Other members like Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives followed suit for their own reasons.

This time round too, India-Pakistan bilateral issues appear to be plaguing Pakistan’s efforts to hold the summit.

It is the country’s turn to hold the summit and while Pakistan insists that it is the legitimate venue, India has a major issue with that claim because, in its view, there has been no halt in cross-border terrorism sponsored by Pakistan since 2016.

And if India decides to boycott the summit, it cannot be held because the charter requires the representation of every member State.

But Pakistan, looking for a role in South Asia, is working assiduously but quietly, to garner support for holding the summit in its capital.

On Thursday, at the Pakistan National Day function in Colombo, High Commissioner, Dr. Shahid Ahmad Hashmat gave primacy to SAARC in his speech.

Stressing the need for member States to pool in efforts to strengthen SAARC, he said: “SAARC is needed for political and economic cooperation in South Asia.”

JANJUA’S VISIT

Significantly, Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary, Tehmina Janjua, chose to visit Sri Lanka first after taking over the post at the end of 2017. At her meeting with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, Janjua extracted a promise that Sri Lanka would support Pakistan’s stand on the Summit.

Janjua said that Pakistan was grateful to Sri Lanka for sending its cricket team to play in it after a long gap. There had been no visit by a Sri Lankan side to Pakistan since the terrorist attack on it in 2009.

“We are delighted that the Sri Lankan team is visiting Lahore. Pakistanis will cheer the Sri Lankans as much as their own team,” Janjua said, immensely pleasing her Sri Lankan audience.

Subsequently, during President Sirisena’s meeting with  Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi earlier in March this year, Abbasi urged the Sri Lankan President to “play his role for the early convening of the SAARC Summit in Islamabad.”

Though it is not clear if the Sri Lankan President assented to the Pakistani request (the press communiqué gave no clue), it is likely that he would make the necessary efforts given Sri Lanka’s traditionally friendly ties with Pakistan.

But diplomats caution that often, in such matters, Colombo finally tends to look to New Delhi for the cue, as ties with India are far more important to it.

INDIA’S STANCE HARDENS

Meanwhile, India’s stance on Pakistan has hardened. Only recently, there had been a row over the surveillance mounted on their diplomats.  The Pakistani Ambassador had even left New Delhi in a huff indicating growing discontent.

With the Indian parliamentary elections due in May 2019, the hardline Bharatiya Janata Party-led government could tweak its anti-Pakistan posture further in the hope of getting the Hindu   nationalistic vote in a closely fought election.

During the Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh State Assembly elections, BJP leaders had dubbed the rival Congress Party a “stooge” of Pakistan and declared that the latter’s victory would be “Pakistan’s victory”.

But India too has been cultivating the Sri Lankan leadership. President Sirisena was given a prominent place in the international solar summit held in Delhi on Mar 11.

PROBLEMATIC NEPAL

While close allies Afghanistan and Bhutan are expected to go along with India on the SAARC issue, Nepal is likely to exercise independence, given the fact that communist Prime Minister KP Oli and his Maoist ally, Pushpa Kamal Dahal “Prachanda” are not as well disposed towards India as the traditionally pro-India Center-Left party, the Nepali Congress.

SOFTENING MALDIVES

The Maldives could have gone the Pakistan way, given its contradictions with India since Abdulla Yameen became President in 2013. But Maldives -India relations have recently improved with Yameen trying to reach out to New Delhi, and New Delhi’s pledging not to militarily intervene in the Indian Ocean archipelago where Yameen is locked in a no holds barred conflict with the opposition.

BANGLADESH IMPLACABLE

Bangladesh is expected to oppose the location of the summit in Islamabad because Sheikh Hasina’s regime in Dhaka continues to be bitterly anti-Pakistan.

Parliamentary elections are to be held in Bangladesh in December. With the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) likely to contest and not boycott as it did the last time, Sheikh Hasina could well queer the anti-Pakistani nationalistic pitch.

In fact, on Mar 25, “Genocide Day”, Hasina told a rally that “those Bangladeshis living in independent Bangladesh who love Pakistan should be punished.”

DANGERS IN BLOCKING CONTINUOUSLY

But the question that remains to be answered is: Can India continue to block the SAARC summit being held in Islamabad, without losing its moral authority in the grouping which its neighbours consider useful and important ?

Some observers feel that the current crisis will blow over, as the 1998-2002 crisis did. The four year gap between the 1998 and the 2002 Summits created by an India-Pakistan row, did not destroy SAARC. And SAARC made significant progress when the wheels of cooperation started moving again.

Others say that SAARC has already been downgraded by India which is now looking to have closer links with regional organizations which do not have Pakistan as a member, such as ASEAN and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).

But there are commentators who decry downgrading SAARC. As a former Sri Lankan diplomat said: “SAARC has a lot of achievements to its credit, in as much as, it has been the only all South Asian forum in existence since the 1980s. It has brought people and technical experts of the region together to work towards common goals. BIMSTEC on the contrary is yet to take off though it has been in existence since 1997.”

“And wrecking SAARC through the continuous postponement of the summit will only further alienate India from its South Asian neighbours.”