South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established to create regional cooperation between the nations, but unfortunately, it has yet to build up great interaction, and growth between the countries. The cancellation of the 19th summit, which supposed to happen in Islamabad, has risen more doubts on its efficiency, future policies and geopolitical unity in this region. SAARC’s core aim was to have borderless friendship in the economic and cultural zone as they all share almost similar culture, ethnicity, and same long interrelated history of British imperialism and its consequences. But this history of togetherness has made the present and future messed up.
Nonetheless, SAARC regrettably has to develop into a conflict-mediating or conflict-resolving institution both on multilateral and bilateral issues but in Article X(2) of the charter, mandates that decisions, at all levels in SAARC, are only of multilateral issues, and only those issues are for inclusion in the agenda in a SAARC summit meeting on the basis of unanimity. The SAARC platform thus cannot be used to resolve bilateral issues; this has undermined the scope and potential of SAARC.
SAARC compromises 3% of the world’s area, 21% of the world’s population and 9.12% of the global economy. To make SAARC a successful organization in global politics, it needs to look over some issues, which need to resolve. One of the main problems of SAARC is its regional politics. Regional differences have kept it pulling in more than one direction, leading to the failure of a number of initiatives and policies. Conflict theorists always stated, that India always kept the tension alive by interfering in internal economic and political matters of other countries, which led a geopolitical conflict as their rival neighbor Pakistan keeps an alliance with Russia & China. However, because of Indo-China conflict, China is engaging separate dialogues with discrete members to maintain its hegemony. As other countries have more trade with China vis-à-vis SAARC, so they put more interest in there, which hinders the spirit and functioning of SAARC.
Another major issue of SAARC is terrorism. It’s spreading like cancer largely in the countries Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, but as all the countries are neighbors, so other countries are also at risk. A join force like NATO can be formed to fight terrorism. Nevertheless, the joint security force can also be used in the border area to prevent smuggling and cross-border illegal trafficking with terrorism. Another purpose of SAARC is to have a borderless region, which will promote tourism and cultural ties. This will also help to build a tariff-free zone, which will endorse economic and regional development by the free movement of goods and people.
Moreover, as the members of SAARC are considered as poor countries, so its challenge is also to combat poverty. The ongoing implementation and operationalize of SAFTA, SAARC Development Fund, SAARC Food Bank are examples of SAARC emerging as a dynamic economic grouping. It also needs to develop its infrastructure like European countries to increase inter-trade.
Concisely, to be an effective global power like EU, the SAARC countries need to work together, but the reformation of charter needs to be done in the first place. The head of the states should come forward for their own sake to fight terrorism and poverty make SAARC work.
By Akib Tanvir, Tanjina Afrin Ethean, and Najmul Hossain Sajal
