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'Shanghai Five' expands to combat Islamic radicals
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| 19 July 2001 |
By JTSM contributor John Daly
Russia's President Vladimir Putin, President Jiang Zemin of China and the leaders of four former Soviet Central Asian states signed a declaration on 15 June creating the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO).
The original 'Shanghai Five' of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan has expanded to include Uzbekistan as a new member. Uzbekistan's membership changes the orientation of the organisation; while it does not have a border with China, it does have a frontier with Afghanistan, and its Islamic dissident elements are the most active in the region.
The organisation is a diplomatic innovation for China, traditionally isolationist and wary of multilateral alliances. The original 'Shanghai Five' was formed in 1996 as a forum to resolve old Soviet-Chinese border disputes. Under Putin, China and Russia have grown much closer, bound by their mutual distrust of US hegemony and their perceived need to promote a multipolar world. The republics of Central Asia have been caught between the two regional giants while facing immense internal problems of economic stagnation and growing political unrest.
The organisation has the capacity for expansion. Pakistan has already expressed an interest in observer status, and Mongolia and India are considering future membership as well. According to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Iran and Turkmenistan have also expressed an interest in the organisation's activities. According to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, even "the USA would like to join the Shanghai group". Should India, Pakistan and Mongolia enlarge the organisation, more than half the population of Eurasia, from the Baltic to the Pacific, will be arrayed in a loose political, economic and military alliance.
Western powers snubbed
The losers will be the United States and Turkey, whose tepid regional policies have convinced the Central Asian leadership that their immediate security concerns are better met by Moscow and Beijing. Zemin is due to visit Moscow in July to sign a pact of friendship and co-operation, further cementing the Sino-Russian partnership. The co-operation builds on the demilitarisation of the 4,600-mile long border begun under the 1997 treaty on reducing military forces in border regions. The heads of state of the member nations will meet once a year, with government officials meeting on a regular basis to co-ordinate activities. For Kyrgyzstan, the benefits were immediate; on 18 June the Kyrgyz defence minister, Esen Topoev, announced that China was giving Kyrgyzstan 8 million yuan (US$970,000) in military support.
United by Islamic dissident threat
What all members have in common is a growing unease with the Islamic fundamentalism seeping out of Afghanistan and inflaming their discontented populations. For the members, the common vector of fundamentalism remains Afghanistan. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev remarked at the gathering: "The cradle of terrorism, separatism and extremism is the instability in Afghanistan."
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