
Other feel-good measures mentioned in the closing agenda are getting the countries to promote the region with a ‘Destination South Asia’ campaign and pledging to work together on disaster management and free flow of capital. Again, these pledges are unobjectionable. It is just that the fear lingers that once the delegations return home from the Maldives, they will forget all about the document they just signed and agreed upon, as has happened so often in the past. This is not to say that the Saarc summit had no value. The region is fraught with tension, particularly in the Indian subcontinent, and so any chance for the leaders of these countries to hold discussions in an informal setting should not be scoffed at. A meeting on the sidelines between Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and his Indian counterpart Dr Manmohan Singh was followed by positive comments from both sides. However, we have seen this happen many times in the past as well, such as when then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee came by bus to Pakistan in early 1999 and met his counterpart, then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif. That was followed by Kargil, a few months later! So the security establishments of both nations need to respect the words and intentions of their civilian leaders for there to be a durable peace.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 13th, 2011.
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