Kamola Talipova, Intern of the Russian National Committee on BRICS Research – special for InfoBRICS
Many observers have stated that Central Asia’s landlocked status is an obstacle to economic development. However, the region has the advantage of being surrounded by dynamic economies, with three of the BRICS as close neighbors – Russia, India and China; Japan, the Republic of Korea, and ASEAN rather more distant neighbors in Asia. The three main players of BRICS have a strong presence in this region and functioning through different kind of international organizations. One of the most relevant and active one is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) performed several tasks for its members – China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan (and also India, Iran and Pakistan as observers). Originally a regional forum to discuss the demilitarization of borders, it has broadened in tandem with the increasing relevance of some of its members, the BRICS to promote cooperation in several issue areas – non-military issues, such as energy, finance, and commerce, consolidate its relevance for regional and global patterns of power.
Defense and security remain, though, top agenda items. From Islamic extremism in Central Asia to fears of ethnic separatism in western China and crisis in Ukraine, SCO become more than a talking shop for regional security issues. The goal of this analysis to provide insights on the role of the three BRICS members in SCO – China, India and Russia. The SCO was chosen as space where China, India and Russia as BRICS members represent the agenda and goals of organization improving by this cooperation between countries and expand the influence to compete Western interests and strengthen ties between two organizations.
To begin with, it is important to give limitations of terms that will be used here. Security has a wide range of meanings and so there are numerous problems in this field. Security threats can be distinguished between ‘traditional’ (threats to the state sovereignty and integrity, military threat to the government, etc.) and ‘non-traditional’ problems; even though this division is somewhat artificial, it is still widely used in literature. ‘Non-traditional’ security threats usually refer to the international threats, which appeared in the developing countries, including the Central Asian region. They include energy and environment security, drugs trade, human trafficking, terrorist activity, religious extremism, etc. The specifics of the Central Asian region is that both traditional and non-traditional threats are interconnected and linked to the international situation and conditions.
Migration issue has always been a highly discussed topic. The history of it takes us to the Geneva declaration and European Union regulations to prevent high migration flows from developing countries. Existing international organizations play a role of sources of information, investigations, experiments and connections with local government units and NGO, often such great powers as European Union uses international organizations in their own interests to influence policy decisions. As it can be seen further from the paper there are various examples when functions of organizations start to go beyond their mandate, intervening into fields that are not related, by this formatting competition among IOs in various regions. Especially the case of Central Asia is highly interesting one due to the locking policies of countries and its regimes, that are an obstacle for well - functioning of IOs.
In the new post-1991 geopolitical and security realities, the international community raced into post-Soviet Central Asia with several projects designed to contribute to economic, political and developmental reforms in the region. However, according to Jackson, the majority of these projects were overshadowed by a new focus on state security issues, especially since the events of 11 September. The US and EU after the terrorist attack were highly interested in preventing any conflicts in the area. However, most attention was paid to the areas of border management and policing, that led to missing other threats. Also there is a tendency to unite all five states into one region and implement projects that were successful in other parts of the world without a clear understanding of background. For instance, international organizations were trying to promote a Philippines program in Tajikistan to regulate migration flow, but overall it did not bring good results.
What is important to mention is that flow of migrants can be a cause for high levels of clandestine transnational activities. Jackson covers the topic of the recent problems in Central Asia region: narcotic, arms and human trafficking. Drawing a clear picture of the core problem addressing two questions to the reader: what the perceptions of the international community are and why is it negative; and does an effective strategy exist in order to prevent clandestine transnational activities.
Usually when the main three problems in the region are revised, the illicit arms and narcotic trade, more attention was focused on the issue of small arms and light weapons. Here the fear is not really about it, but rather future increase of distribution of nuclear powers to terrorist groups. Speaking about narcotic trafficking, here the important thing that was said is lack of control, high level of corruption and just impossibility to control ways of transferring drugs. Another clandestine activity that is also very discussed nowadays is human trafficking. To compare with arms and narcotic trafficking this activity is not considered as a serious danger to the West. “This relative lack of direct impact on Western states and the fact that the numbers trafficked from Central Asia seem to be comparatively small, partly explains the international community’s relative neglect of human trafficking (compared to other types of trafficking) in post-Soviet Central Asia”.
However, the problem is that there is no official data, people, victims of human traffic do not report to organizations. International organizations that are related to this region should construct its perceptions, instead of being just negative and concentrating on one way of strategy, more concerned with the development of links between trafficking, illegal drug transportation and its impact on the life of the Central Asian population. In fact, the most focus is paid on border management and law enforcement concerns by the UN, OSCE and EU. It seems that a broad international consensus that there should be international action to combat ‘clandestine transnational actors’ in Central Asia, there is less agreement over how this should be done. Most of the activities are focusing on border control and keeping and returning migrants to their home states.
Moreover, there is a lack of sharing knowledge and cooperation between local governors and international organizations workers. However, it seems that BRICS members achieved pretty good results in implementing other projects together. Such as within Shanghai Cooperation Organization it has been introduced the concept of ‘three evils’, they are separatism, terrorism and Islamic extremism. SCO can be seen as one of the most effective organizations in the field; it created a Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure, a framework for intelligence gathering and sharing and counterterrorism; it was based first in Bishkek and then in Tashkent.
Of course, counterterrorism is not the only agenda of this institution, it is targeting all of ‘three evils’. For example, it contributed greatly to the arrest of Hizb ut-Tahrir members. In 2006 RATS also led the raid on extremist mosque Kara-Su in Kyrgyzstan and assassinated its religious leader. In the 2011 CSTO also announced the creation of the common database of terrorist and extremist organisations, following the example of RATS. United Nations and OSCE participate in the anti-terrorist activity in the region as well, for example in 2004 the Vienna declaration was adopted, which listed the actions, needed for terrorism prevention in the world.
Moscow has been the dominant security partner for the countries within the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization framework and has been the largest supplier of arms. Russia remains the main security backer of Central Asia, accounting for 62 percent of the regional arms market, while its economic dominance dropped from 80 percent of the region’s total trade in the 1990s ($110 billion) to just two-thirds that of Beijing ($18.6 billion). Lately there has been a trend of China becoming a security player, too. China is also increasingly engaged in military drills with Central Asia states besides economically cooperate with them.
Beijing’s arms transfers through donations and sales to the regional countries, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, were modest until 2014 according to Wilson Center report and then started to increase.
Terrorism and religious extremism are one of the most relevant security problems in today’s agenda, and one of the most active players in the region is China, Russia and India, which were able to create functioning cooperation to fight terrorists and extremists with a help of other organizations. SCO's and BRICS main goal is to have stable relations with Central Asian republics and to achieve it, China invests into economic development rather than military one. We clearly can see that for now Central Asia seems to be the main interest between China and Russia. Both states have much impact in the security sphere, developing projects and regulating conflicts. Moreover, there is a strong presence of Russia in media and education of Central Asian states. The same tendency connected to education and students exchange can be said about China. Nowadays it has become a popular destination for high scholarship and bilateral projects. This tendency can bring positive impact to create a dialogue between those BRICS members that do not have close borders to Central Asian region with the help of main players in the face of China, Russia and India.
