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| Shanghai Cooperation Organization |
Eric Walberg
As the Western elite gathered in picturesque St Moritz to grapple with pressing
world crises, the outsiders met in the bleak steppes of Central Asia.
Last week’s 10th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the Kazakh capital Astana highlighted how the major rivals to empire, led by Russia and China -- themselves rivals, are trying to fashion an alternative to US hegemony.
The SCO is the only major international organisation that has neither the US nor any close US ally among its members, and its influence is growing across Eurasia. Leaders of member states Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan were joined by leaders from observers Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Mongolia. Belarus and Sri Lanka have been admitted as dialogue partners, and prior to his arrival in Astana to attend the summit, Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Ukraine.
With a Chinese rhetorical flourish, the Astana Declaration stressed the goal of combatting the "three forces" of "terrorism, extremism, and separatism". The summit called for a "neutral" Afghanistan (read: no permanent US bases), supported by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, even as the US is actively discussing a post-2014 strategic partnership agreement with him. The prospect of permanent US military bases in Afghanistan lies at the core of current US-Pakistan tensions. India has indicated its aversion to "new cold war" tensions appearing in the region.
Russia and China fear that the US plan is to establish permanent bases in Afghanistan and to deploy components of its missile defence system. The SCO meeting supported Russian criticisms of the planned NATO missile defence shield underway in Europe . Plans by "a country or small group of countries unilaterally and without restriction to deploy an anti-missile system could undermine strategic stability and international security".
The summit also called for Afghanistan’s neighbours to play the leading role in improving security and helping to rebuild Afghanistan, rejecting a purely military solution. "It is possible that the SCO will assume responsibility for many issues in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of coalition forces in 2014," said Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev, echoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s call "for more intensive and deeper cooperation between the SCO and Afghanistan".
Both Beijing and Moscow are already rebuilding their influence there, China in mining, and both countries in infrastructure projects and cooperation with Western forces to combat drug trafficking. "Afghanistan was the main reason the SCO was created 10 years ago, even before 9/11 forced the Americans to recognise the threat," says Duma deputy Sergei Markov. "The threat of radical Islamism being exported into our region is something we’re very familiar with. And a resurgence of that threat has got to be a major concern."
During the conference, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) signed an accord with the SCO to promote cooperation in fighting drug trafficking, organised crime, human trafficking and international terrorism. UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said, "Countries such as Kazakhstan are on the frontline of the flow of Afghan heroin headed towards the West. The work in countering organised crime and drug trafficking, which I am pleased to see is increasingly taking on a cooperative approach." The most urgent issue is heroin trafficking from Afghanistan via Tajikistan which surged after the 2001 US invasion.
Security cooperation and economic development were described as the "two wheels" of the SCO by its General Secretary Zhang Deguang. China’s People’s Daily noted, "Among other concrete moves is the construction of a railway, highway and pipeline network linking landlocked Central Asia and its rich natural resources to the global economy." Currently a natural gas Pease Pipeline is under construction which could eventually link Iran, Pakistan, India and China, helping to overcome India-Pakistani animosity and integrate the entire region on the basis of mutual interests, carefully shepherded by China.
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