THE South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, widely known as SAARC, is now almost inactive. All the eight-member nations have apparently failed to gear up the activities of this regional forum and even couldn’t hold a summit in the last five years since 2014. The SAARC Council of Ministers, comprising Foreign Ministers of the Member Countries, and the Standing committee, comprising Foreign Secretaries, also did not meet in the last two years. As per Kathmandu Declaration-2014, the SAARC member countries should hold meetings regularly; whether in ministerial level and head of state or head of government level. What surprising is that, most of the commitments made by the member nations remain unfulfilled.
The SAARC, a very much political organization, was formed to increase regional connectivity among the Member Countries in South Asia. The main focus of SAARC was to promote economic development among the countries. Besides, building and upgrading roads, railways, air links, waterways infrastructure, energy grids, smooth cross-border flow of goods, services, capital, and technology exchange among the Member Countries were also the mottos of the SAARC. Not only that, the concept of South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) did not proceed due to the failure of SAARC Preferential Trading Arrangement. The iconic archaeological site Mahasthangarh in Bogura was declared the cultural capital of SAARC. But Dhaka had to stop in the last minute in January 2017 from arranging the launching programme.
Though SAARC was created aiming at building better relations on politics, social and cultural issues within the South Asian nations, it’s an open secret that SAARC couldn’t fulfil its goal due to hostility mainly between India and Pakistan. It’s the only regional body in which both India and Pakistan, which were engaged in armed conflicts in 1965, 1971, 1999 and in January this year, are members.
When tension is running high in this region centering the air attacks between India and Pakistan over Kashmir issue; at that time an effective SAARC could play a vital role. We must say the leaders of the SAARC nations need to rethink about the platform seriously.
