Saved by a handshake

Whilst doubts have been expressed about the utility of Saarc or even its necessity, it has once again provided an opportunity for Pakistan and India to take tentative steps in a peaceful direction — and for that reason alone Saarc may be able to justify its existence and cost. As a result of informal interactions in the closing hours of the Saarc moot, there were indications that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan had decided to shelve their very obvious low-key hostility in favour of something a little warmer. Whether this was a decision mutually taken or something pushed upon them by their respective teams of officials we will never know, but it is welcome nonetheless. There was a real danger that yet another Saarc moot would be tainted — indeed rendered irrelevant — by the toxic relationship between India and Pakistan, but sanity appears to have prevailed.



Turning a brief interaction at a conference in Nepal into diplomatic reality is not going to be easy. It is almost — but not quite — back to square one. First order of priority is to restore the ceasefire along the Line of Control and the working boundary. That done, move on to a meeting of foreign secretaries. Both goals are easier described than scored. March 2015 may have been floated as a possible date for the foreign secretaries to meet. Both countries suffer from chronic shortages of electricity, hindering development, both economic and social. The signing of an electricity pact may improve cross-border trade, but the failure to sign the pacts on road and rail connectivity is an indicator of the limitations of Saarc, particularly in terms of its collective ability to apply game-changing pressure on India and Pakistan by the other six members. None of the other states collectively or individually punch in the same division as India and Pakistan, which is not going to change in the foreseeable future. The next Saarc summit is going to be in Islamabad in 2016. The consortium is home to vast untapped resources both human and mineral. Let it be hoped that the electricity pact will energise it.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2014.

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