The SCO and the Conflict Between India and Pakistan - Valdai Discussion Club

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Moreover, the dialogue on a number of issues, which had previously been successfully held within the SCO, has practically stopped, for example, on the fight against terrorism: if before, all interested parties effectively cooperated within the framework of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, now its work, if not paralyzed, then in any case has become significantly difficult. SCO rules require the Indian and Pakistani sides to exchange intelligence data in order to improve the fight against terror. This is quite difficult to do. It’s not even that Indian and Pakistani forces along the Line of Control in Kashmir exchange artillery strikes on an almost-monthly basis. Indians accuse the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of training and inserting militants in Kashmir to attack Indian soldiers and police officers, blow up government offices and shoot loyalists. The Pakistanis, in turn, claim that numerous Indian intelligence services, most notably the Research & Analytic Wing (R&AW), are conducting subversive activities in Balochistan, supplying the Baloch rebels with weapons and means to continue their guerrilla war. In theory, ISI and R&AW should exchange valuable information to prevent the growth of a terrorist tumour; it is clear that practically each side provides information in very limited doses and only on secondary issues, and mutual distrust is only growing.

In general, the situation has worsened. When India and Pakistan were admitted to the SCO, relations between them were far from ideal, but now they even resemble a sluggish conflict. To make matters worse, there have been problems on the Indo-Chinese track. In 2018, after Narendra Modi’s visit to Wuhan to meet with President Xi Jinping, the Indian media started talking about the “Wuhan spirit” of trust in New Delhi-Beijing relations. Xi’s return visit to Mahabalipuram seemed to strengthen this mutual understanding, and a few months later, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar announced that India plans to resolve the long-running border problem with China in the near future for mutual benefit. But literally six months later, not a trace remained of the “Wuhan spirit”: clashes took place in Ladakh in which dozens of people were killed. Although neither India nor China is interested in further confrontation – for India, the conflict with China will mean the end of a carefully cherished strategic autonomy, for China it means the opening of a southern front, and additional forces and resources will have to be spent, diverting them from the main Pacific theatre, – they cannot retreat without losing political points.

In principle, until the last moment the situation did not look particularly critical: there still are border conflicts between countries, including the SCO countries. After all, when the organisation was just being formed, territorial disputes between China on the one hand and Tajikistan and Russia on the other, for example, had not yet been resolved; agreements were reached only a few years later. The border between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan has not yet been completely delimited; there still are regular clashes. That is, the SCO, in principle, manages to function successfully despite conditions when territorial disputes persist between its members.

The problem is that the Indian leadership, after the clashes in the Galwan River Valley, radically changed its position on the settlement of the territorial conflict with China. For decades, the Indians insisted on the formula “first, the settlement of territorial disputes, then normalisation and rapprochement in other areas.” Under Rajiv Gandhi, this formula changed: Rajiv believed that before solving difficult issues, it was necessary to increase mutual trust, and as a result, the border problem was left for later. But the present Indian leadership, amid the excitement of the masses in the midst of the pandemic and the growth of patriotic sentiments, has declared that business as usual was no longer possible and returned to the old formula. If earlier India and China could conduct a full-fledged dialogue within the SCO, gradually overcoming (at least as the politicians hoped) mutual distrust, now this will have to be forgotten; this refusal of the Asian giants to engage in dialogue because of the bloodshed on the shores of the Galwan River is one of the biggest challenges for the SCO.

Organisations don’t exist on their own; they consist of participants, and their success or failure is determined by the extent to which the goals of these participants coincide, to what extent they are ready to yield, and how they build interaction with each other.

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The SCO and the Conflict Between India and Pakistan - Valdai Discussion Club
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