Daily Times

Shanghai Cooperation Organization or Shanghai Pact is a Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance. Its creation was announced on June 15, 2001, in Shanghai, China, by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Formally establishing the organisation, the SCO Charter was signed in June 2002 and entered into force on September 19, 2003.

The original five nations, with the exclusion of Uzbekistan, were previously members of the Shanghai Five group, founded on April 26, 1996.

Since then, the organisation has expanded its membership to eight countries.

India and Pakistan joined the SCO as full members on June 9, 2017, at a summit in Astana, Kazakhstan.

There are four countries with observer status, Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia.

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey have the status of dialogue partners.

The guest attendance includes the ASEAN, the CIS, the UN and Turkmenistan.

Heads of State Council is the supreme decision-making body in the SCO.

It meets once a year and adopts decisions and guidelines on important matters.

Military exercises are regularly conducted to promote cooperation and coordination against terrorism and external threats and maintain regional peace and stability.

The SCO is widely regarded as the Alliance of the East, due to its growing centrality in Asia-Pacific and has been the primary security pillar of the region. It is the largest regional organisation in the world in terms of geography and population, covering three-fifths of the Eurasian continent and nearly half of the human population.

The SCO has three main components, political, economic and security. It is considered an answer to the EU and the NATO with the US in the leadership role. The US applied for observer status in the SCO. The request was rejected in 2005.

At the Astana Summit in July 2005, with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq foreshadowing an indefinite presence of the US forces in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, the SCO requested the US to set a clear timetable for withdrawing its troops from SCO member states.

Shortly afterwards, Uzbekistan requested the US to leave the K-2 air base.

The SCO has made no direct comments against the US or its military presence in the region. However, some indirect statements, in the past summits, have been viewed by the Western media outlets as “thinly veiled swipes at Washington.”

However, Western observers comment, “Institutional weaknesses, a lack of common financial funds for the implementation of joint projects and conflicting national interests have prevented the SCO from achieving a higher level of regional cooperation.”

The just-concluded (June 12 to June 14) SCO Summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, has demonstrated SCO as a reinvigorated regional alliance ready to face the ominous military threat due to the US and its Allies’ military build-up in the Gulf with a focus on Iran, but with ramifications for the whole region.

Pakistan is playing a key role in the realisation of the greatest Chinese economic and security connectivity programme, the Belt and Road Initiative

The US paid heed to its former national security advisor and political scientist, Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski’s book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives that termed the landmass of Eurasia as the centre of global power and formulated a Eurasian geo-strategy for the US focus on the exercise of power on the Eurasian landmass in a post-Soviet environment, making good use of Halford J Mackinder’s Heartland Theory.

In particular, he wrote, “It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger should emerge capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of challenging America’s global pre-eminence. According to Berezniki, “whosoever controls Eurasia landmass, will dominate the world: and key to Eurasia is Central Asia.”

That explains the US and allies’ invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and SCO’s evolution in the same year.

While the US regards China as a leading global economic competitor, resurgent Russia remains her primary military challenge on the global horizon.

China-led SCO and Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation gradually got good traction as an effective counterbalance to American Asia Pivot renamed Asia-Pacific Rebalancing policy, which had given India strategic primacy in the region to take care of China and Pakistan.

Pakistan is playing a key role in the realisation of the greatest Chinese economic and security connectivity programme, the Belt and Road Initiative, involving more than 60 countries and an investment of over a trillion dollars.

I had the singular honour of being the first representative of Pakistan in the SCO Security Forum held in Beijing in early 2005 that had paved the way for Pakistan’s invitation at the summit-level in the later part of the same year.

From 2007 to 2010, I had the honour to be the Defence Advisor in Central Asian Republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan). This not only helped develop very strong and cordial military-to-military relations with all CARs and Russia but also helped develop and project a greater understanding of the SCO and CSTO’s potentials. It urged the Government of Pakistan to make serious efforts to become permanent member of both organisations for comprehensive security and economic interdependence and mutual pursuance of a common regional as well as a respective national security interest.

It is a matter of great satisfaction that consistent efforts led by military diplomacy, and followed by political diplomacy, have yielded positive results. Pakistan has now become a permanent member of the SCO, and the membership of the CSTO is round the corner, with the just-concluded outreach by Pakistani prime minister to Russian president for security cooperation and purchase of arms.

Needless to say, both the SCO and the CSTO not only provide a joint security umbrella to the member countries but also present greater opportunities for regional connectivity, cooperation, interdependence, conflict resolution, economic interaction, especially in the fields of science and technology, defence production, energy, education, agriculture, sports and tourism.

Pakistan has been blessed by Almighty Allah with infinite natural resources; four seasons; resilient people and, above all, great geo-strategic location. A sincere and visionary leadership can take the country to the path of long-awaited prosperity and comprehensive security.

The writer is a retired army officer with rich experience in military and intelligence diplomacy