Priyanjali Narayan
Muhammad Yunus, the head Bangladesh’s caretaker government, met Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif and sought help to revive Saarc, a south Asian grouping where India is the key player. Pakistan had also spoken about Saarc’s revival, but India shot down the idea.
Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s caretaker government, met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and sought Islamabad’s help in reviving Saarc, a regional grouping where India plays a crucial role.
Pakistan itself has been batting to revive the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation grouping, but India hasn’t warmed up to the idea. Pakistan’s harbouring and export of terrorism to India was the main reason why India put the regional grouping on the back burner.
However, the post-Sheikh Hasina Bangladesh government taking up Saarc revival with Pakistan adds an interesting twist to the chapter.
Saarc is a regional intergovernmental organisation of eight countries of South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It was established on 8 December 1985, and has its secretariat in Kathmandu.
Without naming Pakistan, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar specified why India wasn’t keen on a Saarc meeting. India will not tolerate a situation where “terrorism happens by night and trade happens by day”, Jaishankar said in June last year.
Saarc is again in discussion as Yunus and Sharif met on September 25 and discussed bilateral relations between the two nations and the revival of Saarc, according to a report in the Dhaka Tribune.
“Bangladesh is enlisting Pakistan’s support to revive the Saarc. India can’t be pleased,” remarked Derek J Grossman, national security and Indo-Pacific expert at RAND corporation on X.
However, there is a reason why India can stay away from Saarc, but Bangladesh and Pakistan are too keen on reviving it. Before getting to that, we need to know when and why India pulled out of Saarc summit.
INDIA STAYED AWAY FROM SAARC AFTER 2016 URI ATTACK
While Pakistan has pushed for a Saarc revival multiple times, India has stood its ground that it will continue its withdrawal from the Saarc.
This tussle began in 2016 when the 19th Saarc summit was supposed to be conducted in Islamabad.
India raised concerns about Pakistan’s support of terrorism after an attack on an army camp at Uri in Jammu and Kashmir in 2016. Nineteen Indian soldiers were killed in that attack.
India withdrew from the summit after the attack, and Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka followed.
“India has conveyed to current Saarc Chair Nepal that increasing cross-border terrorist attacks in the region… have created an environment that is not conducive to the successful holding of the 19th Saarc Summit,” the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement in 2016.
Hereon, India has said time and again that it cannot be a part of “terrorism by day, trade by night”.
One of the areas that Saarc gives a boost to is trade.
Pakistan even pushed for a Saarc summit in 2022 but without any success. It had also asked India to join virtually in 2022 but India declined.
“The Saarc is in trouble basically because — how do you have a regional organisation when one member does not hide the fact, in fact, sometimes proclaims the fact that they undertake, I am using the most neutral word possible, violent actions against other members,” Jaishankar said in 2023.
Though both India and Pakistan have stuck to their ground, there is a change in Bangladesh’s stance after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government.
Bangladesh, which under PM Sheikh Hasina had withdrawn from the Saarc summit in 2016, didn’t make efforts to revive the grouping. But now, a lot has changed. Under Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh is trying to revive the grouping.
Sharif and Yunus met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting at the UN headquarters in New York on September 25. They discussed the need to revitalise the relations between the two nations. The talk of reviving Saarc came up in that discussion.
Yunus has been talking about resurrecting Saarc. Within 20 days of taking charge, he first spoke about it.
