A fresh push by China and Pakistan to redraw the map of South Asian cooperation risks stumbling at the first hurdle, with analysts saying India remains key to future regional cooperation given its economic heft and crisis management credentials.
According to sources cited in Indian media, discussions between Islamabad and Beijing on a potential replacement for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) are at an advanced stage – a move observers interpret as a broader geopolitical play by China to sideline India in its own neighbourhood.
Bangladeshi officials reportedly attended a meeting on June 19 in Kunming, China, about the new bloc, but Dhaka played down any political implications. “We are not forming any alliance,” foreign affairs adviser M. Touhid Hossain was later quoted as saying.
Saarc, formed in 1985 by seven founders including India and later joined by Afghanistan in 2007, has been largely inactive since 2016. A planned summit that year collapsed after India withdrew, citing Pakistan’s alleged support for militants who attacked an army base in Kashmir.
Since then, the group has met only in a limited capacity, according to Swaran Singh, a professor of international relations at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
“The hiccups remain inherently driven largely by India-Pakistan geopolitics,” he said, adding that any regional grouping excluding Delhi would likely leave Islamabad as the de facto leader.
