The Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) celebrates its fifth anniversary with a
summit of member states' leaders in Shanghai on
Thursday.
Last year's summit, in
Kazakhstan, was notable for a declaration asking
members of the "anti-terrorist coalition" to
provide a time frame for the withdrawal of
military forces from SCO territory. The SCO
comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
It was a
pointed reference to US military bases in
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Only two weeks later,
Uzbekistan evicted the United States from its
Karshi-Khanabad air base.
This year, the
summit will open against a backdrop of reports
that
Iran,
which currently holds observer status in the SCO
(along with India, Mongolia and Pakistan), is
looking to become a full-fledged member. India has
sent its influential oil minister, Murli Deora.
'OPEC with bombs' Iranian
Deputy Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mohammadi set
the speculation rippling in April when he said
that Iran hoped to join the SCO in the summer. The
foreign ministers of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan
subsequently played down the possibility, citing a
lack of formal mechanisms to accommodate new
members.
But the gambit, coming in the
context of Iran's strained relations with the West
over Tehran's nuclear program, drew notice. The
Washington Times quoted David Wall, professor at
the University of Cambridge's East Asia Institute,
as saying that "an expanded SCO would control a
large part of the world's oil and gas reserves and
[a] nuclear arsenal. It would essentially be an
OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries] with bombs."
As it emerged that
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad would attend
the SCO summit in Shanghai for a one-on-one
meeting with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao on
the sidelines, US Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld also addressed the issue of Iran's
potential membership of the organization, the New
York Times reported on June 4.
Singling
out Iran, Rumsfeld remarked that it was "passing
strange that one would want to bring into an
organization that says it is against terrorism one
of the leading terrorist nations in the world".
SCO secretary general Zhang Deguang
quickly retorted, Associated Press reported on
June 7, firing back: "We cannot abide by other
countries calling our observer nations sponsors of
terror. We would not have invited them if we
believed they sponsored terror."
Mutual
support Three points follow from the
reactions to the SCO's Iranian gambit. First, the
SCO represents an approach to multilateral
relations and an understanding of terrorism that
do not, in fact, define Iran as a sponsor of
terror and would permit Iran's accession. Second,
it is unlikely that Iran will join the SCO in the
near future. And third, even if Iran joined, the
SCO would have a long way to go before becoming a
genuine "OPEC with bombs".
The SCO's
charter helps to explain why member states -
primarily China and Russia - do not consider Iran
a sponsor of terrorism. While the charter's "aims
and objections" list "joint opposition to
terrorism, separatism and extremism in all their
manifestations", its first principle is "mutual
respect for states' sovereignty, independence, and
territorial integrity and the sanctity of borders,
non-aggression, non-interference in internal
affairs, the non-use of force or the threat of
force in international relations, and renunciation
of unilateral military superiority in contiguous
areas".
The crux of the matter is that,
for SCO member states, "terrorism, separatism and
extremism" are viewed not as distinct abstract
phenomena with global relevance to be dealt with
globally, but rather as a single phenomenon that
is locally defined by the ruling elite and left to
sovereign states to combat by any means they see
fit.
For Russia, it is Chechen separatism;
for China, Uighur "splittism"; for Uzbekistan,
religious extremism. The task of SCO member states
is to support one another as they combat perceived
threats to existing power relations, as Russia and
China did when Uzbekistan labeled May 2005 unrest
in Andijon "terrorism" and crushed it with maximum
force.
It is the locally bounded
definition of terrorism that leads SCO member
states to reject the labeling of Iran as a sponsor
of terror, and the globally defined emphasis on
sovereignty and non-interference that makes them
amenable to granting Iran membership.
Iran
does not support Chechen separatists, Uighur
"splittists", or Uzbek "religious extremists". The
SCO's understanding of terrorism is not based on
globally applied principles - hence the inclusion
of the fight against "terrorism, extremism and
separatism" in the charter's aims and objectives.
So if Iran chooses to support individuals and
groups it defines as "legitimate resistance" in a
theater outside the SCO region, that is Iran's
business.
But absolute sovereignty and
non-interference are global principles to the SCO
(hence their inclusion in the charter's
principles), which are thus sympathetic to
Tehran's plight as, in their view, a sovereign
state that is the target of outside interference.
Tehran overreaching That said,
Iran remains an unlikely candidate for full
membership in the SCO. The possibility of Iranian
membership has raised the organization's profile
on the international arena. But actual Iranian
membership could significantly reduce the leeway
that leading members China and Russia have until
now enjoyed in the diplomatic jockeying over
Iran's nuclear program.
As Yevgeny Morozov
put it in a June 8 commentary on TCSDaily, Moscow
and Beijing don't want to be responsible for
"Iran's loony statements about Israel or its
nuclear program". RIA-Novosti political
commentator Dmitry Kosyrev made a similar point in
an Outside View opinion piece for United Press
International on June 8. Kosyrev argued that Iran
"will not join in the foreseeable future" because
the SCO is having trouble coping with a flood of
new initiatives and needs to put its current house
in order before expanding.
Yet even if
Iran were to join the SCO, would it strengthen or
weaken the organization? Today, the solid common
ground in the SCO is its emphasis on
non-interference - a not-so-subtle expression of
unhappiness with Western cajoling on rights and
reforms. Beyond that, individual members have
their own concerns. For Central Asian governments,
any forum that allows them to balance Chinese and
Russian interests holds obvious attraction.
For Beijing, the primary significance of
the SCO appears to be as a vehicle for managing
China's growing commercial and energy interests in
Central Asia. For Moscow, it is an
eastward-looking body that goes beyond the borders
of formerly Soviet space.
Furthermore, the
SCO's four Central Asian members share numerous
unsettled scores of their own. And specific
Russian and Chinese interests in the region have
the potential to diverge significantly, especially
if China starts pushing for expanded access to
Central Asian energy resources currently exported
through Russia.
On the military front,
while Russia and China held war games in August
under the SCO aegis and the organization plans
counter-terrorism exercises in Russia next year,
Russia still handles the bulk of its military
involvement in Central Asia through the Collective
Security Treaty Organization.
Iran surely
shares the SCO's particular understanding of
non-interference. But beyond this common ground,
it has a host of its own concerns - most of them
bound up with the politics of the Middle East, not
Central Asia. It is difficult to see how the
addition of those concerns to the SCO's already
disparate mix of Chinese, Russian, and Central
Asian interests would lend the organization
greater cohesion or clout.
Nevertheless,
the SCO represents two tendencies that are likely
to become increasingly pronounced in international
affairs. The first is the natural resistance of
entrenched domestic elites to outside pressures
that they perceive as a threat to their hold on
power. The second is a desire to turn that common
ground into a platform for greater global
influence in the face of what the secondary and
tertiary powers see as the primary power in the
current world order.
As an expression of
these rising tendencies, the SCO is noteworthy
whether it expands or contracts.
Daniel Kimmage is the Central
Asia regional analyst with RFE/RL Online and
editor of the "RFE/RL Central Asia Report".
(Copyright 2006 RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with
the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington,
DC 20036.)
