Recent developments across South Asia have exposed the region’s fragile security and governance structures, with renewed tensions between Pakistan and India, political turmoil in Bangladesh, and shifting regional alignments posing fresh challenges to cooperation, said foreign affairs expert Muhammad Mehdi.
The events of last May, which sharply escalated Pakistan-India tensions, have shattered the long-held belief that the two nuclear powers would avoid direct confrontation. He says the ambiguity over conventional military supremacy has vanished, yet India’s internal politics under the BJP leave little room for dialogue with Pakistan. This deadlock has further dimmed hopes for reviving regional forums such as SAARC, he said at IAS-SANPA international conference 2025 on South Asian Countries and Evolving Geo-political Landscape.
Observers in Islamabad believe the crisis has influenced public opinion in India and could affect its upcoming elections. They argue that restoring people-to-people contact, trade, and travel-such as the Samjhauta Express and Dosti bus service-is essential before any meaningful regional dialogue can resume.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s violent student movement has underscored the growing frustration among the educated youth facing rising unemployment, says Mr Mehdi. Despite claims of economic progress, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government is accused of suppressing political dissent, leaving little democratic space for peaceful protest. While other South Asian countries face similar job crises, democratic mechanisms elsewhere may help prevent unrest of this scale.
He says smaller South Asian nations, too, are feeling uneven effects of regional shifts. While Bangladesh’s tilt toward Pakistan appears to be growing, tensions between Islamabad and New Delhi continue to ripple across Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and the Indo-Pacific. He warns that without efforts toward collective cooperation, military posturing will only deepen instability.
At the same time, growing foreign influence on South Asian bureaucracies has limited their ability to implement meaningful reform. Despite vast resources, the region remains mired in economic chaos, spending billions on imported weaponry while failing to address poverty and governance issues.
In West Asia, Iran’s recent confrontation with Israel has subtly realigned regional relations. Tehran’s disappointment with New Delhi’s cautious stance and its warming tone toward Islamabad have been notable, though energy projects like the Iran-Pakistan and TAPI pipelines remain stalled by sanctions and Afghanistan’s instability, opines Mr Mehdi.
With SAARC inactive since 2014, bilateral ties among member states continue to evolve, but mutual mistrust-rooted largely in the unresolved Kashmir dispute-prevents genuine regional cooperation.
He concludes that whether in Dhaka or Delhi, the underlying issue remains the same: economic injustice and poor governance. Until South Asian governments address unemployment, corruption, and inequality through transparent and merit-based systems, unrest will continue to simmer beneath the surface. Prof Dr Rabia Akhtar, Dean Faculty of Social Sciences
The May 2025 crisis was not just another flashpoint, it was a demonstration of how much Pakistan’s crisis-governance capacity has evolved since Pulwama-Balakot 2019. In 2019, we were reactive; in 2025, we were prepared. What unfolded was not accidental restraint, but institutionalized readiness.
Pakistan’s response this time reflected maturity in three domains: information management, operational control and inter-institutional coherence.
The state managed to keep its messaging unified in real time, military briefings were transparent, consistent, and professional, directly countering disinformation before it spiraled. This was a significant break from the 2019 experience, where information vacuums allowed the other side to shape the narrative internationally.
From a governance standpoint, the episode also revealed how the state has absorbed the logic of hybrid warfare into administrative planning. Managing information ecosystems, anticipating digital manipulation, and engaging with social media influencers as part of strategic communication are now embedded in crisis playbooks. This is a remarkable evolution in bureaucratic adaptability.
And yet, the lesson is not only about capacity, it’s also about opportunity. The crisis reaffirmed that dialogue in South Asia will not begin through idealism; it will begin through risk management. The more both sides professionalize their crisis management, the closer we get to building mechanisms for risk reduction. That could mean joint notification protocols, parallel briefings to prevent misinterpretation, or even cooperative fact-checking arrangements in future crises.
Dr Meezanur Rehman is Secretary to the Government of Bangladesh and Secretary to South Asian Netwrok of Public Administration. Dr Meezan stresses that bypassing security and political challenges, the low hanging fruit, such as climate change, energy, and poverty alleviation, must be harvested. He said that the bottom-up approach should be used and people to people contact needs to be increased within South Asian nations.
On this event, Dr Amjad Magsi of Punjab University and Dr Shariful Alam Sb, retired secretary to the Government of Bangladesh and now Professor of Public Administration, Dhaka University also delivered speeches.