SCO from modest beginnings to multi-lateral organization

Government heads of the world's fastest growing regional group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or SCO, gather together in the Russian city of Sochi on November 30 to try and set a common agenda for its eight disparate members, who make up the largest and most important states on the Asian continent.

Attending will be prime ministers of Russia and China -- the organization's original core -- joined by leaders of four ex-Soviet central Asian states and, for the first time, new members India and Pakistan. It's a daunting task to focus such a diverse group's attention. But organizers say that issues of economic cooperation, especially China's ambitious Belt and Road initiative which aims to develop and integrate regional infrastructure, will predominate.

The SCO is a work in progress. It has grown from its modest beginnings to become the largest multi-lateral organization of states by territory and population in the world. It's also the only such alignment of nations in which neither the US nor any other Western power plays a direct role.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Nov. 29, 2017.

It has its roots in a Russian and Chinese-led group, the Shanghai Five, founded 21 years ago and mainly devoted to settling long-standing border disputes and establishing terms of military stability in volatile post-Soviet central Asia. The group's creation symbolized one of the most remarkable diplomatic achievements of recent times, as Russia and China moved progressively after the Soviet collapse to resolve territorial issues that had vexed relations between the two for decades, and transitioned from a relationship of acrimony to one with great possibilities for future cooperation.

In those early days, they also staked out a common geopolitical position that has held to the present, in favor of a "multi-polar" world order that represented a certain push-back to US post-Cold War notions of Western "global leadership."

With border issues largely solved, and much closer relations between Moscow and Beijing established, the SCO was officially founded in 2001 with a focus on economic cooperation in post-Soviet central Asia. That has widened fast in the intervening years, with growing Chinese investment in the region and the apparent aspiration of more states, including Mongolia and Iran, to join the organization. Russia has since created its own common market, the five-member Eurasian Economic Union, which could set a pace for expanded regional economic ties as Russia itself turns increasingly eastward in its own geopolitical and economic orientation.

A Kyrgyz military band performs at the opening ceremony of the "Fanfare for Peace - 2017 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Military Tattoo IV" in Shanghai, east China, Aug. 26, 2017. The military tattoo was held in Shanghai on Saturday with the participation of six military bands from China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia and Tajikistan.

With US-led NATO intervention in Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, regional security issues rapidly found a place on the SCO's agenda. Although some press reports labeling the group as a kind of "NATO of the East" sound far-fetched -- nothing like that is ever likely to materialize -- the group has become a major sponsor of regional military drills and anti-terrorist exercises.

The China-hosted "Peace Mission 2014" war games held in Inner Mongolia were of unprecedented scope, bringing together 7,000 troops from five SCO countries, plus a range of modern air and ground weaponry. Subsequent joint military drills have been smaller in scale.

The SCO also spearheaded demands for the removal of US military bases that were established in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the wake of American intervention in Afghanistan. Under pressure from the organization, mainly driven by Moscow and Beijing, the last US troops withdrew from Manas airbase, in Kyrgyzstan, three years ago.

Chinese State Councilor Guo Shengkun meets with heads of delegations attending the 31st session of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's Regional Anti-Terrorism Agency in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 17, 2017.

Afghanistan is likely to grow into an urgent SCO concern in coming years. Though the Trump administration has extended the US military mission there indefinitely, most Russian security experts believe it is bound to end in failure and US withdrawal eventually, leaving a power vacuum at the heart of central Asia that threatens to be filled by militant Islamist forces.

The addition of India and Pakistan to the SCO's ranks earlier this year brings two countries with a great interest and considerable influence into the only organization that will be left with any ability to contain the danger. A major expansion of the SCO's military and security role is to be expected.

But can the organization find a unified voice and the means to carry out concerted actions, especially as more states with very diverse national interests enter its ranks? We might have a better idea about that following this week's gathering of its leaders in Russia's Black Sea resort center of Sochi.

(CGTN)