BRICS vow to tackle global terrorism, enhance security
BRICS leaders have vowed to strengthen cooperation to fight terrorism, a move that experts say will expand the influence of the bloc beyond the economic sector.
The five countries participating in the BRICS summit in Xiamen, East China’s Fujian Province, vowed to cooperate on international events to face current global security challenges, but will uphold national sovereignty and equality among the countries, they said in their Xiamen Declaration on Monday.
“Stressing counter-terrorism shows that the BRICS summit, which started from business cooperation, has expanded its cooperation to a more comprehensive level,” said Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
BRICS leaders deplore all terror acts worldwide and
condemn terrorism in all forms and manifestations, according to the Xiamen Declaration released at the ninth BRICS summit Monday, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
“We reaffirm that those responsible for committing, organizing, or supporting terrorist acts must be held accountable,” it said.
In the section entitled “Global Peace and Security,” the declaration named a number of organizations that caused “violence.”
“We, in this regard, express concern on the security situation in the region and violence caused by the Taliban, ISIL/DAISH, Al-Qaida and its affiliates, including the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-eMohammad, TTP and Hizb ut-Tahrir,” the declaration reads.
This is the first time that the Pakistan-based organizations of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-eMohammad were listed along with the Taliban or Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement.
According to Reuters, Lashkar-e-Taiba is a militant group based in Pakistan which India blames for being behind cross-border attacks, including the 2008 assault in Mumbai in which 166 people were killed. Jaish-e-Mohammad was blamed for a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.
“China is also a victim of terrorism and is firmly against any kind of terrorism, and that’s the main reason that the organizations are named in the declaration,” Hu said.
Song Zhongping, an expert on international relations, told the Global Times that terrorism could impact the BRICS mechanism.
“The organizations are already defined as terrorists by global society, and have threatened the security of the world and BRICS countries,” Song noted. The leaders called upon all nations to adopt a comprehensive approach in combating terrorism, and are committed to preventing and countering the growing spread of terrorist narratives, and to tackle all sources, techniques and channels of terrorist financing, it said.
Additionally, the leaders stressed that the fight against terrorism must be conducted in accordance with international law.
Intelligence forum
According to the declaration, the leaders also noted Brazil’s proposal to establish a BRICS Intelligence Forum as an effort to enhance security cooperation.
“The BRICS nations have named the organizations as the first step, and the next steps are to share information and build a security mechanism,” Song said.
“In the future, sharing intelligence, building a drill mechanism and normalizing these actions are the methods that the BRICS should refer to on counter-terrorism cooperation,” Hu noted.