Islamabad — Leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of Eurasian countries gathered in Pakistan Tuesday for an annual, two-day meeting to discuss ways to enhance regional security, stability, and development cooperation.
Authorities have placed Islamabad under a security lockdown for the SCO gathering, deploying thousands of forces, including troops, in and around the Pakistani capital to protect the high-profile event due to a recent surge in deadly militant attacks.
China and Russia established the SCO in 2001 as a way to counterbalance Western alliances in the areas of security, politics, and economics. Other members of the 10-state alliance are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, India and Iran.
Officials said that Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin are among several heads of government who will attend the meeting, which will be presided over by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the organization’s current chair.
Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and the first vice president of Iran will represent their respective countries at the meeting. Jaishankar is the first Indian foreign minister to visit Islamabad in nearly a decade.
Pakistan and India have both ruled out the possibility of bilateral talks during Jaishankar’s visit, emphasizing that the SCO is a “multilateral” gathering, and neither side has requested such a meeting.
Officials stated that Sharif would host a welcome dinner for SCO delegates on Tuesday. The summit proceedings will commence on Wednesday morning.
On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that Premier Li “will have an in-depth exchange of view” with leaders of the participating countries on advancing the SCO’s “practical cooperation,” among other issues.
“China believes that this meeting will produce positive outcomes and give a stronger boost to the security, stability, and development of regional countries,” Mao told reporters in Beijing.
Analysts remain skeptical whether the SCO meetings have produced outcomes that would address concerns of member states, noting that Western alliances like NATO or the European Union offer members privileges such as mutual defense and economic integration.
Security concerns surrounding Tuesday’s SCO meeting in Pakistan stem from a recent surge in militant attacks in the country. However, the deadly violence has primarily affected southwestern Balochistan and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces bordering Afghanistan.
The Pakistani government has declared a three-day public holiday in Islamabad and the adjoining garrison city of Rawalpindi as part of security measures.
Last week, two Chinese engineers were killed and another was injured when their convoy was hit by a suicide car bombing in Karachi, the capital of southern Sindh province. A separatist group from Balochistan claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.
The slain foreigners were staff at a Chinese-funded coal-fired power plant under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure development bilateral collaboration stemming from Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative.
Despite the deadly attack, Premier Li arrived in Islamabad Monday and held wide-ranging bilateral talks with Sharif before participating in the SCO meeting.
The leaders also virtually inaugurated a CPEC-funded airport in Balochistan’s coastal city of Gwadar, which also houses a Chinese-run deep-water port on the Arabian Sea. Security concerns reportedly prompted the virtual inauguration of what officials described as Pakistan’s second-largest airport, which China gifted.
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