SCO's blind eye to cross-border terror: Should India stay or go?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the intergovernmental organization founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to combat terrorism and promote border security, and having 9 Member States (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iran), 4 Observer States (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia) and 9 'Dialogue Partners' (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia), has enlarged into a significant and powerful global group.

Enhancing its importance is the fact that since its formation, it has established partnerships with several UN bodies, including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and the UN Office on Counter-Terrorism. However, in recent years, the SCO appears to have deviated from its original goal of promoting border security, with Russia and China trying to build it up as a counterpoint to the powerful blocs forged by the West.

On the other hand, even smaller nations like Pakistan have succeeded in wresting the backing of a majority of SCO Member States, thereby having a strong say in how the ultimate joint communique issued by the group is phrased. This has been reflected in the joint statement issued at the end of the recent SCO Defence Minister's summit held in China.

It may be noted that this document deliberately omitted to mention the killing of 26 tourists by cross-border terrorists at Pahalgam in April, even though it mentioned militant activities in Balochistan. Thus, India has taken the correct decision of refusing to sign the joint statement as it did not reflect the country's concerns on terrorism.

Not only did India blame Pakistan for sheltering the militant group responsible for the attack, it had also launched calibrated strikes on terrorist camps within that country, inducing it to retaliate even as it rejected the allegations.

There can be little doubt that India's perception of the joint statement as being "pro-Pakistan" is a correct one, and its displeasure at the direction the SCO was taking was asserted by India's Defence Minister Rajnath Singh when he urged the group to hold the perpetrators of cross-border terrorism accountable. He bluntly told the gathering, "Some countries use cross-border terrorism as an instrument of policy and provide shelter to terrorists.

There should be no place for such double standards. SCO should not hesitate to criticize such nations." The patently one-sided joint statement, in the light of developments such as SCO's Member States attempting to bring about paradigm shifts in that group's objectives, makes it dubious what purpose might be served in India continuing to be in the SCO, given that reversing the trend might be an uphill task.