The theme of the 15th SAARC Summit that was held in Colombo in August 2008 was ‘Partnership for Growth of Our People’, but editorials in the South Asian newspapers hardly saw the regional grouping working together to enhance this objective. The only paper which touched on this theme was The Daily Star in Bangladesh, which continued to emphasise the need to enhance people-to-people cooperation in the region. Other editorials focused on the theme of terrorism, with the natural tilt towards specific terrorist related act of national concern.

The Daily Mirror in Sri Lanka went as far as to say that the 15th Summit would be judged by how ‘effectively and expeditiously’ the Summit decision on terrorism is implemented. The Indian and Pakistani press linked the outcome of the Summit with the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the firing that then took place on the Line of Control (LoC) between the countries just before the Summit. Dawn in Pakistan noted that ‘explosive accusations being traded between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan’ on terrorism diverted the focus away from the key issues of trade, while the pre-Summit editorial in The Times of India suggested that India's primary interest in the Summit was to ‘rein the ISI’ and to ensure that the LoC becomes the ‘line of trade and not the line of conflict’.