On July 26, while celebrating the Maldives’ 61st Independence Day, its President Mohamed Muizzu called for the revival of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and volunteered to mediate to resuscitate the grouping.
By doing so, the Maldives has become the latest South Asian nation to demand the revival of the organisation, which has been defunct without a summit for more than a decade. These pleas and insistence, if at all successful, could perhaps lead to another summit but that will not resolve the deeper structural issues that go beyond India-Pakistan tensions, namely its members prioritising domestic interests over mutual regional interests.
With no end in sight to India-Pakistan tensions, other members will have to now take the responsibility of building mutual interests, and try to make SAARC a functioning organisation.
Genesis and progress
First proposed in the 1970s by the then Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman, SAARC was formally established in 1985. Originally composed of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the grouping saw its expansion in 2007 with Afghanistan’s induction. It was created to unlock the region’s potential and promote stability and resilience at a time when the world was witnessing bitter Cold War rivalry.
SAARC aimed to promote welfare and quality of life; accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural development; strengthen collective self-reliance among members; contribute to mutual trust, understanding, and appreciation of each other; promote collaboration and mutual assistance in economic, social, cultural, technical, and scientific fields; and cooperate with other developing countries and international and regional organisations with common interests.
However, domestic politics and interests have influenced SAARC from its initial days. Smaller countries like Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh saw the grouping as a platform to increase their leverage against India through collective bargaining and gain equal decision-making powers, regardless of asymmetries in size and strength.
Pakistan saw it as an opportunity to be on an equal footing with India and keep its influence under check. Yet, it remained cautious of India strengthening its position in the region through the grouping. On the other hand, India was apprehensive that the grouping might become a means for South Asian nations to counter and challenge it.
To overcome these differences, bilateral issues were declared off limits for SAARC, and unanimity was made mandatory for all decisions. And to strengthen its political weight, it was decided that summits would be an annual affair.
Missing regional interests
The grouping, which has four specialised bodies and five regional centres, does have a few success stories to its credit. However, with just 18 summits in its 40 years of existence, it remains highly politicised and has performed below its potential. In fact, it has been 12 years since the last summit took place, and 10 years since the 19th summit was called off in 2016 following Pakistan’s role in terror attacks against India in Uri. SAARC has been on ventilator since then.
But it was not the first time that a SAARC summit was postponed or cancelled. Of the 18 summits in the last four decades, 11 were postponed for various reasons. For instance, in the late 1980s, Sri Lanka refused to host the SAARC summit until the Indian Peace Keeping Force completely withdrew from the country.
The Maldives and Bhutan postponed hosting or attending the summits on multiple occasions because of political instability, financial difficulties, resource constraints, or even inadequate infrastructure and logistics. Political instability in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal also led to delays and postponing of summits, sometimes because of their own decisions and sometimes as a result of India’s reluctance to engage with these governments.
Regional cooperation and interests have thus been at the mercy of domestic interests, trust deficit, unresolved bilateral issues, and political and economic vulnerabilities. In fact, little has been done to bridge regional and domestic interests, especially following the initial years of building SAARC and shaping its charter.
For instance, the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) that was signed in 2006 has not helped the region get rid of its “least-integrated region of the world” label, with intra-regional trade accounting for less than 5 per cent of the group’s total trade. The fact that South Asian economies are protectionist by nature and are competitors with similar production bases has continued to undermine cooperation.
Furthermore, SAFTA continues to be undermined by exhaustive sensitive lists. Issues such as non-tariff barriers, corruption, administrative delays, excessive tax and processing fees, slow processing, extortion, supplementary or regulatory duties, port and airport levies, and so on have also continued to impact intra-regional trade. The situation has been exacerbated further by inadequate border and trade infrastructure and highly securitised and militarised borders.
At the end of the day, domestic lobbies, interests, and protectionism have undermined regionalism.
The absence of regional interest is also quite evident when it comes to people-to-people engagements. The number of South Asian students studying in India has continued to decline. Nationals of Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh still need visas to travel to India, and visa services for the last two countries resumed only recently after the change in their governments.
Even consider Bhutan, where Indians, Maldivians, and Bangladeshis have to pay a sustainable development fee (SDF) of around Rs.1,500 per day, while the rest of the SAARC nationals have to pay $100 per day.
In the Maldives, Bangladeshi labour has been facing grave systemic discrimination and has been the target of violation of labour laws, which the government is not unaware of. Similarly, the Maldives continues to face increasing scrutiny and visa restrictions from Sri Lanka following the Easter attacks of 2019, leading to a significant decline of Maldivians staying in that country. Similarly, Pakistan has expelled over 2.3 million Afghans in recent years citing security reasons, demonstrating a scant sense of regionalism.
Hobbled by tensions
In the absence of regional interest, India, by virtue of its size and being the the only nation bordering all SAARC countries barring Afghanistan, was expected by its neighbours (besides Pakistan) to keep the group active. But despite India’s attempts, the grouping has not been free of inter-state tensions. Pakistan has undermined India on multiple occasions by vetoing key initiatives such as the SAARC Motor Vehicles Agreement and the satellite launch project.
The situation became even more complicated following the Uri attack, when India decided to not attend the 19th SAARC summit in Islamabad. Motivated by their interests and relations with India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Bhutan also withdrew from the summit and blamed Pakistan for promoting terrorism.
Since then, subsequent escalations between India and Pakistan have only hindered hopes of conducting the summit, especially with India’s plan to isolate Pakistan and its policy that “terror and talks cannot go hand in hand”. Even the slightest hope of revival was undermined by Pakistan during the virtual COVID-19 meeting when it raked up the Kashmir issue and initially opposed the COVID fund initiative.
Following Operation Sindoor in May 2025, this revival seems to have become even more difficult. Pakistan has continued to portray India as the hurdle to the revival and has been upping its ante to overcome its isolation. New governments in Bangladesh and the Maldives have further emboldened this approach.
By asserting that “regional priorities cannot and should not be held hostage to anyone’s rigidity”, Pakistan is exploring new alternatives to SAARC with the help of China in the form of trilaterals.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during the closing session of the 18th SAARC summit, in Kathmandu on November 27, 2014.
| Photo Credit:
NIRANJAN SHRESTHA/AFP
In this regard, the next summit in Islamabad will increase political costs for India and undermine the policy of isolating Pakistan. By delaying a revival, India would thus prefer to keep Pakistan isolated and leverage the pre-condition that its neighbour stop sponsoring cross-border terrorism.
The road ahead
Instead of SAARC, India has preferred promoting regionalism and regional cooperation bilaterally, and with alternative institutions such as BIMSTEC, BBIN, and CSC.
Nonetheless, South Asian countries remain insistent on reviving SAARC without any reforms. For member-states, relying on India and Pakistan no longer serves their cause. The solution is not in mediation but in building regional interests. In other words, they should integrate regional interests with their domestic interests.
This does not mean trying to resolve the differences between India and Pakistan but embracing shuttle diplomacy to build regional interests, have honest conversations and convince other members to build consensus, and explore other ways (beyond summits) to keep the SAARC spirit and the grouping alive. And this would require enjoying goodwill from all members, including India and Pakistan.
While Bhutan has often sided with India on SAARC, the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan have a partisan policy that fluctuates from siding with New Delhi to maintaining neutrality, depending on the government of the day.
In addition, other challenges persist with these countries, like the Taliban’s lack of diplomatic recognition; the Maldives’ economic difficulties and the strained relationship with India; and Bhutan’s lack of ties with Pakistan, scant economic resources, and limited agency with India when it comes to key issues, including China-related issues.
Bangladesh, which has been at the forefront of SAARC revival, does not yet enjoy India’s trust, especially after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster in 2024. New Delhi’s suspicion of Bangladesh’s normalisation of ties with Pakistan is also a disadvantage for Dhaka.
Nepal and Sri Lanka have consistently been neutral. Nepal, which is home to the SAARC secretariat, has limited relations with Pakistan because of its geography. Furthermore, political instability and the new government’s inexperience and lack of foreign policy priorities put it at a disadvantage.
Sri Lanka has maintained close ties with both countries, though. In fact, it played a remarkable role in reversing Pakistan’s decision to boycott the T20 World Cup match against India in Colombo. And during Cyclone Ditwah, it managed to seek assistance from India and Pakistan, underscoring its ability to talk to both sides.
Being an island nation, a tourist centre, and a port/trans-shipment hub, Sri Lanka seems to be best positioned to embrace this role, even though economic resources place it at a disadvantage.
SAARC member-states should should now cultivate regional interests and embrace shuttle diplomacy to make SAARC a functioning organisation. This will, of course, come with economic and political costs. Also, they have largely depended on India to do the heavy lifting, but that model seems to be faltering thanks to deepening rivalries.
Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy is an Associate Fellow, Neighbourhood Studies, Observer Research Foundation.
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