This week a news item was flashed on font pages of almost all the newspapers in Pakistan. The news was about the possibility of creation of an alternate organisation to replace the dysfunctional regional organisation SAARC

. The idea of creating this alternative organisation is probably built on the premise that over the years India-Pakistan tensions have stalled and made SAARC dysfunctional so an alternate organisation be created that should exclude India.

If this premise is right - which I think is so - then it leads to many pertinent questions that must be first correctly answered. Currently, China is a SAARC observer and not a member country but the core of the alternative SAARC organisation being proposed is anticipated to be built around the two nuclear powers in the region, China and Pakistan.

SAARC has a South Asian identity whereas China is not in South Asia but East Asia. China shares a very long border with India and borders with Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan and Afghanistan but geographically China is not part of South Asia. So, to start with, any imaginative alternative organisation led by China that is being considered as a replacement to SAARC will represent a geographic space that can be called anything but representing South Asia. ASEAN, Arab League, OIC and EU are organisations that represent ideological and geographic identities.

Attainment of regional peace, economic cooperation and non-interference in internal affairs are the core concepts around which these organisations are structured and on the basis of which they operate. The ideal goal for all of them is to promote and achieve Arab, South East Asian, Muslim and........

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