BILATERAL IMPEDIMENTS TO SAARC : THE INDO-SRI LANKA CRISIS OVER IPKF WITHDRAWAL

This article examines how the dispute between India and Sri Lanka over the timetable and modalities of withdrawing the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) spilled into the regional arena and hampered SAARC's already cautious cooperation. It traces the origins of the IPKF mission, the evolution of ground realities, and the political pressures on both governments. The analysis shows that bilateral mistrust crowded out agenda space for trade facilitation, public health coordination, and counter-terrorism legal harmonization that SAARC members broadly supported. By reconstructing summit diplomacy, working-level meetings, and media narratives, the paper argues that the controversy heightened perceptions of asymmetry and revived fears that regional forums could be instrumentalized for major-power preferences. The study concludes that without credible guardrails for bilateral crises, South Asian regionalism remains vulnerable to issue-linkage and deadlock.

The body situates the IPKF episode within a framework of regional institutional design. First, it analyzes commitment problems: domestic audiences in both countries demanded visible wins, shrinking room for compromise on sequencing withdrawal, devolution arrangements, and security guarantees. Second, it maps information problems: battlefield reports, casualty figures, and allegations of partisanship fed competing narratives that hardened positions. Third, it assesses distributional tensions: smaller states worried that SAARC procedures might be bent by the preferences of the largest member, while India feared that inaction would embolden spoilers. Drawing on communiqués and timeline reconstructions, the paper details how technical committees on health, agriculture, and transport paused or avoided ambitious proposals during peak tensions. It then outlines institutional fixes—firewalls between political disputes and functional cooperation, rotating convenorship with procedural protections, and crisis de-escalation protocols—to preserve cooperation during bilateral shocks. The article closes by arguing that SAARC's resilience depends on insulating its technical agenda from episodic rivalries while creating trusted channels to manage them.