KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Last week, Pakistan hosted leaders from China, Russia, India, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Iran and Belarus for the 23rd Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. While the lead-up to the summit highlighted the constraints that Pakistan’s internal troubles place on its ability to play an active role in global diplomacy, Islamabad was able to sidestep any serious diplomatic faux pas. India’s attendance may have left a door cracked to dialogue between Pakistan and its neighboring rival.
The SCO is a regional platform for cooperation and a vehicle for China to extend its leadership and influence into continental Eurasia via Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia, and most recently, Belarus. The SCO summit came just a week ahead of the annual BRICS summit, held this year in Russia. Both groups are important platforms for China’s effort to build alternatives to the U.S.-led international order. As such, the SCO deserves a watchful U.S. eye even if it does not yet represent an immediate threat to U.S. interests.
USIP’s Daniel Markey and Amna Rana look at what hosting the SCO summit means for Pakistan, the noteworthy outcomes of the summit and what it demonstrates about China’s influence.
Before the summit, there were many questions about Pakistan’s ability to ensure safety for the international leaders visiting the country amid surging militant violence and political unrest. Pakistan faces increasing internal security threats as it continues to recover from last year’s economic crisis and the aftershocks of this year’s polarizing election. These multiple sources of instability have drawn much of the government’s focus to domestic rather than foreign policy, and hosting the summit presented a unique opportunity for Pakistan to — in the words of retired Pakistani diplomat Maleeha Lodhi — boost its “diplomatic standing and show that it is an active player in multilateral forums.”
Pakistan is grappling with two major insurgencies, primarily in its western provinces. According to a report by Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, militant attacks in the country increased by 70 percent and deaths due to militant violence increased by 81 percent between 2022 and 2023. Since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover of Afghanistan, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has waged a tenacious war against the Pakistani state. In the country’s southwest, the Balochistan insurgency, fueled by grievances against the Pakistani state and demands for independence, has also ramped up its fight, particularly targeting Chinese investment projects. Just one week ahead of the summit, the Baloch Liberation Army attacked a convoy carrying Chinese staff outside Karachi airport, killing two Chinese nationals.
Pakistan’s surging militant violence deters international activity, such as investment projects and diplomatic engagements, in large swathes of the country and even raises questions about Pakistan’s ability to ensure safety for high-profile international visitors in major cities.
Additionally, the domestic political situation remains unstable after elections earlier this year. Since the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in May 2023, his supporters have staged numerous protests demanding his release. In the lead up to the SCO, Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), announced protests on the summit’s opening day citing concerns about “independence of the judiciary” and Khan’s lack of access to doctors and lawyers. Critics slammed the protest as “political terrorism,” a deliberate attempt to sabotage the summit, and “self-destructive” for Pakistan’s international credibility. In the run up to the summer, the government cracked down on pro-PTI protesters, banned the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement that has been highly critical of the army and the government, and inked new laws that curb protests in the capital.
For Pakistan, hosting the SCO was in itself a significant moment of international diplomacy. To ensure safety for the SCO meeting, the government employed a host of measures to prevent political and militant violence during the summit. In the end, PTI called off its protest on the eve of the summit after the government permitted a medical checkup for Khan.
Despite these obstacles, the SCO summit successfully projected Pakistan as a relevant player on the regional and global stage and showcased the SCO’s growing ability to facilitate regional dialogues, including between rivals like India and Pakistan and India and China. Perhaps the greatest achievement of this summit was the high-level participation by all member states, reflecting the utility of the SCO as a platform for multilateral dialogue.
Ahead of this summit, there were concerns that India might not participate due to persistent tensions over the disputed region of Kashmir. As recently as last month, at the SCO’s trade ministers’ meeting also held in Pakistan, India’s trade minister opted for virtual attendance. Ultimately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not join his counterpart leaders at the SCO but instead sent India’s minister of external affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, whose visit to Pakistan was still remarkable for being the first by an Indian minister of external affairs in nearly a decade.
Jaishankar’s visit, not initially guaranteed, indicated a marginal softening in bilateral tensions after months of India’s hawkish election-year rhetoric and persistently high tensions over Kashmir. That said, the minister of external affairs did not hold back in his critique of Pakistan. He took a clear swipe by blaming it for cross border violence, stating, “If activities across borders are characterized by terrorism, extremism and separatism, they are hardly likely to encourage trade, energy flows, connectivity and people-to-people exchanges in parallel.” Notably, Jaishankar did not attend any bilateral meetings with Pakistani leaders. Even so, if only because it broke Jaishankar’s nine-year pattern of avoiding Pakistan altogether and did not feature any especially inflammatory rhetoric by either side, his visit may have opened new space for India-Pakistan dialogue moving forward.
The SCO is riddled with intricate regional dynamics, complicated further by its expansion into Europe. The bloc does not pose any immediate threat to the West, as its members are only loosely unified even on matters that have been at the heart of the organization since its founding, like counterterrorism. Moreover, whereas SCO members like Beijing, Moscow and Tehran are full-throated in their critique of the Western-led world order, India more gingerly characterizes the SCO (and the BRICS as well) as “non-Western” venues rather than explicitly anti-Western ones. That said, India’s decision to participate in the Islamabad summit reflected New Delhi’s perception of the SCO’s relevance amid heightened geopolitical tensions in an increasingly multipolar world.
The SCO also provides a venue for fostering relations between states that find themselves at the margins of other international groupings. Russia and Pakistan offer one example. For very different reasons and to different degrees, Islamabad and Moscow face diplomatic isolation from the West. Pakistan lost most of Washington’s trust over the war in Afghanistan. Moscow now labors under Western sanctions imposed after its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The two now appear to be exploring the potential for closer ties with each other. The SCO summit marked the first visit to Pakistan by a Russian prime minister since 2007. In a meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, both sides agreed to step-up bilateral cooperation in fields such as trade and energy, and vowed support for each other in multilateral forums, including the U.N. and BRICS. Notably, Pakistan is also bidding for a formal BRICS membership.
China is clearly the driving force behind the SCO and sees the group as a means to expand its influence in areas where the U.S. is less engaged.
China is clearly the driving force behind the SCO and sees the group as a means to expand its influence in areas where the U.S. is less engaged, like South and Central Asia, and to develop narratives on the global order that favor China. Beijing used the Islamabad summit to advance its narrative and promote its economic initiatives. The joint communique signed by the attendees directly called out “unilateral sanctions” and “protectionist actions” referring to various Western sanctions on China, Russia and Iran. The statement also included an acknowledgement of support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative by recipient countries. In addition, China capitalized on the summit by announcing enhanced cooperation with other member states. On the sidelines, China agreed to increase its focus on the China-Russia-Mongolia economic corridor and announced joint trade and investment collaborations with Russia. China and Pakistan proudly showcased their partnership by launching the Gwadar International Airport, a flagship China-Pakistan Economic Corridor investment project, though the novelty value was dimmed by a virtual inauguration due to security concerns.
Despite the absence of any breakthrough agreements, the Islamabad summit was a modestly successful endeavor for China and its partners like Russia, Iran and Pakistan. Their diplomatic investment in the SCO — and even India’s willingness to play along — gradually advances China’s effort to build alternatives to the Western order, shape the global narrative to its advantage and strengthen one of Beijing’s platforms to promote its regional economic agenda.
Amna Rana is a research analyst for the South Asia team at USIP.