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SCO plays bigger role in regional security

来源:China Military Online 责任编辑:Li Jiayao
2021-09-15 17:09:43

By Ding Xiaoxing

Russian media reported that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit will be held on September 16-17 in Dushanbe. Since the SCO was founded 20 years ago, its members, upholding the “Shanghai Spirit” of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and pursuit of common development, has promoted security and development through cooperation and played an important role in boosting security and stability and economic development in the region.

Founded to address traditional security issues, the SCO has always taken security cooperation as its top priority. It adopted the Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism at its first summit when the organization was officially formed in June 2001. Even before the 9/11 attacks, SCO had begun to pay attention to non-traditional security issues in the region, especially terrorism and extremism.

In the past 20 years, security cooperation has remained the centerline of SCO and yielded remarkable achievements. The organization has done a lot of work in this area.

It has released several basic legal documents and established a sound legal system, laying a solid foundation for the members’ effective security cooperation;

Upholding the new concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, it believes that regional security must be maintained through cooperation and one country’s security shall not be at the expense of other countries’ security;

It has established a sound cooperative mechanism to facilitate information exchange and coordinate law enforcement actions among member states, thus deepening their security cooperation;

It has formed a dedicated anti-terror agency to coordinate and promote information exchange and anti-terror actions among member states, largely contributing to their security cooperation;

It has held regular anti-terror exercises, which have effectively deterred terrorists and fortified the organization’s counter-terrorist capabilities;

It has intensified border defense cooperation and pushed member states to carry out joint border defense actions and share intelligence.

SCO has achieved tangible results in security cooperation in the past 20 years. According to data from its regional anti-terror center, from 2013 to 2017, relevant agencies of SCO members stopped more than 600 terrorist criminal activities, destroyed more than 500 militant training bases, and seized more than 2,000 international terrorist organization members.

Thanks to SCO’s effective security cooperation, a “Middle Eastern” trend, as some western academics predicted, has not emerged in Central Asia, where the situation is generally under control despite some potential security risks. This is the greatest feat in security that SCO has accomplished in the past two decades.

As the COVID-19 pandemic is still rampaging all over the world, major-country competition is escalating, and international situation enters an undulating period of changes, the regional security situation is faced with new challenges and problems.

First, the situation in Afghanistan remains highly uncertain after Taliban takes power, and it may impact regional security. Surrounding countries are all paying close attention and those in Central Asia worry about the overflow of terrorism.

Second, the pandemic has incurred a spate of consequences for SCO members, such as economic slowdown, prominent social problems, and the spread of extremist thoughts. There is a mounting risk of social turmoil in certain countries.

Third, for geopolitical competition, some countries may take steps that are bad for regional stability and will rock the regional situation. These new problems have posed new requirements for SCO.

With all its members being Afghanistan’s neighbors or nearby countries, SCO serves as an ideal platform for dialogue to resolve the Afghan issue. It can coordinate the member states’ stance, have them jointly promote peace and stability in Afghanistan, and organize them to provide anti-pandemic supplies and humanitarian aid to the country and participate in its economic reconstruction.

(The author is head of the Institute of Eurasian Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations)

Editor's note: This article is originally published on huanqiu.com, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.