The 22nd Heads of State Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is scheduled to take place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on15-16 September 2022. Being the host country, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev will be the chairperson of the SCO meet. The meeting is likely to be attended by the heads of most of the member countries. As India has very good relations with most of the SCO countries, including Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Sri Lanka, and also enjoys wide acceptance in today’s world order, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the key person and likely to take center stage among all leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese Premiere Xi Jinping, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif.
The SCO is a permanent international intergovernmental organization. It was announced on 15 June 2001 with People’s Republic of China, Russian Federation, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Kazakhstan, Republic of Tajikistan, the Republic of Uzbekistan, while it came into force on 19 September 2003. India obtained observer-ship in 2005. India and Pakistan had become permanent members during the SCO Astana summit in June 2017. As on date, the SCO has nine permanent members, including recently inducted Iran. Other than permanent members, Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia are three Observer States interested in acceding to full membership, whereas six countries, including Nepal, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey and Cambodia, are dialogue partners. These countries may be upgraded as permanent members in future.
The heads of state council (HSC) is a supreme decision-making body of SCO. The SCO Headquarter Secretariat in Beijing and Executive committee of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) in Tashkent are permanent bodies of SCO. Chinese and Russian languages are official languages of SCO. The SCO has the singular aim to established interstate, internal functional mechanism based on the principles of equality, mutual trust and consultations respect for cultural diversity, and a desire for common development, to promote their effective cooperation in trade, politics, research, the economy, technology, and culture, education, transport, energy, environmental protection, tourism, and other areas. It also aims to make joint efforts to maintain and ensure security, stability, and peace in the region with the ultimate aim of moving towards the establishment of a democratic, rational, and fair new international economic and political order with inherent principles of non-targeting and non-alignment in terms of conduct of external policy.
The ensuing SCO meet is very significant as it is the first in-person meet of Heads of SCO following the Covid-19 pandemic. The last in-person summit of the SCO was held in Bishkek in June 2019. SCO meet will also face challenges to find a way forward to recover from economic recession owing to Covid pandemic. In addition to Covid, the emergence of Taliban forces in Afghanistan, rise in the activities of extreme fundamentalist religious groups, growing influence of terrorist organizations like ISIS, Al-Qaeda Lashkar-e-Taiba are the major and common concerns among SCO member countries. However, the most crucial and difficult aspect of the SCO meet will revolve and converge upon the Ukraine-Russia military conflict, strange Taiwan-China relations, the Indo-China conflict on LAC in Ladakh, the Azerbaijan and Armenia dispute, and Chinese aggression in South China Sea and the Asia Pacific region. These burning issues are likely to be major focus of deliberations and may be dominate directly or indirectly during diplomacy on the sideline. The SCO meet should feel the pulse of concern of member countries, especially on severe and dangerous after waves of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R) policy of china that has grossly affected economy and sovereignty of few countries in recent past like in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, as well as in Tajikistan a few years ago.
India, under the present and strong leadership of Prime Minister Modi, has gradually emerged as a key player in the functioning of the SCO. The growing status of India in the world order in all spheres of business transactions—whether in terms of economic growth and attaining the status of being the fifth largest economy in the world, significant industrial growth, long leap in the field of cyber, IT, space research and military power, and above all, unflinching commitment towards democratic norms, mutual growth and support during crisis—has established India as a trustworthy partner. India has identified its goal to make SCO more effective and meaningful by full thrust on promoting and strengthening trade, as well as economic and cultural cooperation. Ample stress has been given on capacity building by startups and innovation, as well as exchange of science and technology and traditional medicine, among member countries. Countries like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka have been highly benefitted by the Indian approach of mutual understanding and cooperation among SCO countries. India has established highly significant strategic and trade partnership with SCO countries in Central Asia like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The PM’s visit to Samarkand will definitely enhance our relations with these countries. Uzbekistan is a very firm supporter of India to attain permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Uzbekistan has huge amount of natural resources like coal, plutonium, and gold that may help India to pursue its nuclear energy programme for domestic and industrial purposes. In turn, India has profusely supportedUzbekistan in the field of infrastructure development, medical, pharmaceuticals, higher education and military training capabilities.
On a similar vein, India has established very strong cultural, industrial, trade, tourism and strategic relations with Tajikistan. India is a major source of medicines, pharmaceuticals and contributor to the IT sector in Tajikistan. India is the fourth nation after the US, Russia and Germany to have a military base in Central Asia. India has established a military hospital in southern Tajikistan. The hospital with as capacity of 50 beds has been providing medical aid to military personnel as well as civilians.
Despite ideological differences, India had extended massive humanitarian aids to developed and underdeveloped countries like USA, European countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Covid crisis. The SCO has huge potential and strength to decide the world order in future. It covers more than 45% of the global population, nearly 22% of the global GDP and of the world’s land mass. The demographic, geographical significance knitted with huge work force and rich natural resources enable the SCO to play a strategically important role in Asia and counter the influence of western countries in the region.
Despite being geographically close, the rich diversity in members’ history, backgrounds, language, national interests and forms of government, wealth and culture make the SCO decision making process challenging. Member countries are facing security challenges of combating terrorism, extremism and separatism, illegal immigration, as well as of drug and weapons trafficking. Hence, the SCO meet has to find a suitable way of effective functioning as per the ethos of SCO in consideration to global and regional challenges, rapid realignment of strategic, military and diplomatic ties as an emerging newer world order.
Maj Gen J.K.S. Parihar, SM, VSM, is former Additional DG (AFMS) and is an expert in defence, international Strategies and current affairs.