S.C.O. ‘SET TO FOCUS ON COMBATING TERRORISM’
Following recent attacks in Russia and Pakistan, emphasis will be put on fighting extremism when China chairs security bloc in July, observers say
Two deadly terror attacks last month – one at a concert hall in a Moscow suburb and the other a few days later in Pakistan where five Chinese workers died in a suicide bombing – have sounded alarms in Russia and China, both key members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a Eurasian security bloc.
With China set to chair the SCO from July, analysts expected Beijing to place greater focus on combating terrorism in the region, catalysing further security cooperation among member states.
The attacks could also draw Russia and China closer as they look to dispel foreign forces that they believed intended to destabilise the region, analysts said.
While counterterrorism has always been high on the SCO’s agenda, the recent attacks would possibly “focus attention back onto that challenge”, according to Ian Hall, professor of international relations at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.
The SCO – set up in 2001 by China, Russia and several former Soviet republics to ease border tensions – has traditionally emphasised battling the “three evils” – terrorism, separatism and extremism.
As the group expanded to include India, Pakistan and most recently Iran, its scope has broadened to include issues such as economic cooperation.
The attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, where gunmen opened fire, killing at least 140 people, was the deadliest assault in Russia in two decades.
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to punish those behind the attack, for which Islamic State Khorasan (Isis-K), an Afghanistan-based affiliate of the militant group Islamic State, has claimed responsibility.
In northwest Pakistan, less than a week later, a suicide bomber killed five Chinese workers, the latest in a string of terror attacks in the South Asian country that appeared to target Chinese interests. No claim of responsibility has been made in that attack.
Russia, Pakistan and Iran – each a member of the SCO – have now all seen attacks by Isis-K within their borders.
“Officially, anti-terrorism will be the headline theme” of the SCO, said David Arase, resident professor of international politics with the Hopkins-Nanjing Centre for Chinese and American Studies.
“If an actor beyond Central Asia like Russia has been attacked, so could China and its interests in Central Asia be targeted next,” Arase said. “Isis-K epitomises China’s nightmare, the ‘three evils’ of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism, because [it] seeks an Islamic state under radical theocratic rule.”
Following the two attacks in Russia and Pakistan, the bloc might seek to strengthen antiterrorism cooperation through joint training exercises or step up intelligence sharing and coordination against armed groups such as Isis-K, Arase said.
But “amid conflicting interests and abiding distrust” deciding who did what within the organisation could be difficult, Arase said, adding that tensions between some member states had increased.
India and China, for instance, still tangle over conflicting border claims and Beijing’s belt and road infrastructure projects. India’s relations with Pakistan have also remained strained.
Thomas Wilkins, associate professor at the University of Sydney, agreed that counterterrorism would be a “major theme” of the SCO and “salient” in its agenda – “at Moscow’s behest”.
The terror attack in Russia perpetrated two of the “three evils” that the SCO was established to tackle, ticking the boxes of terrorism and religious extremism, he said.
The SCO already had a regional anti-terrorism structure for information sharing, and resources had been activated in response to the Moscow attacks, Wilkins said.
But even as the SCO seeks to do more to fight terrorism in the region, member states might see little reason to go all out.
Hall, from Griffith University, said it was unlikely that member countries would gamble on an “intervention”, such as sending armed police or military contingents into Afghanistan or Pakistan. “I don’t think either China or Russia has the appetite for risky interventions in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where Isis-K and a range of other militant Islamist groups are based,” he said.
“Such action could lead to a lot more attacks on Chinese and Russian targets in Central Asia and beyond. Neither country really wants to see that – and especially Russia, given the cost of its ongoing war in Ukraine.”
While both Beijing and Moscow had maintained reasonably warm ties with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the government in Pakistan, Hall said there were no indications that either country would welcome foreign intervention in their internal affairs.
“Perhaps both [China and Russia] could use the SCO to pressure Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the organisation lacks leverage, to be blunt,” Hall said. “What will it use to create that pressure?”
Apart from prompting a response from the SCO, the recent terror attacks could also draw countries within the bloc closer as they resisted what they believed to be actions backed by the West, analysts said.
President Xi Jinping has also, on multiple occasions, urged SCO countries to work together to prevent foreign powers from destabilising their countries by inciting uprisings.
“We must be highly vigilant against external forces fomenting a ‘new Cold War’ and creating confrontation in the region, and resolutely oppose any country interfering in internal affairs and staging a ‘colour revolution’ for any reason,” he said last year.
Wilkins said while the SCO was established with the aim of resolving border disputes, it subsequently developed into an institution – led by Moscow and Beijing – to offer security governance in Central Asia, where threats of terrorism existed and could spill over into Russia and China.
“But more than its institutional functions – the SCO serves the purpose of keeping Western powers, such as the US, at arm’s length from Central Asia, and creating a common platform against ‘Western hegemony’,” he said. “Since its ongoing expansion, it forms a geopolitical bloc covering most of Eastern Eurasia, somewhat in counter to Western Eurasia’s Nato bloc.”
The SCO was formed partly with the aim of preventing “colour revolutions”, Wilkins said, adding that members continued to work to minimise such possibilities.
“Moscow and Beijing want security and stability in supporting other authoritarian governments in their Central Asian ‘backyard’,” Wilkins said. “It is not inconceivable that if a Central Asian government was endangered by a popular uprising or some form of coup, that Moscow and Beijing at least would provide material sustenance to an endangered regime, or even perhaps deploy SCO structures to intervene to prevent it.”
If an actor beyond Central Asia such as Russia has been attacked, so could China DAVID ARASE, STRATEGIC ANALYST