A research-to-practice conference “The Shanghai Cooperation Organization Activity in Counteraction of New Challenges and Treats in the Sphere of Regional Safeguarding” that was held in Moscow became a follow-up of preparations for the forthcoming June summit in Yekaterinburg. Security problems are still pressing both on a regional and global basis, and the current financial and economic crisis has only added one more item to today’s agenda. For SCO that was initially created just for counteraction of today’s world dangerous realities such as transboundary crime, drug trafficking, terrorism and extremism, its role in opposition to universal evil from year to year becomes more and more considerable and significant.
This meeting convened on the initiative of the Security Council of Russia, gathered in the conference hall of the capital President Hotel a wide range of participants – about one hundred specialists from 11 countries. Representatives of Administration of the RF President, the SCO Secretariat and the CIS Executive Committee, Russian parliamentarians, heads of diplomatic missions of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member and observer states are among them, as well as leading Russian and foreign scientists, experts on the SCO problems and regional security.
Opening the conference, Secretary of the RF Security Council Nikolai Patrushev emphasized that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is gradually turning from a regional structure into an international organization and plays more and more active role in the worldwide policy. “SCO has amassed a wealth of political experience, strong organizational, intellectual and personnel potentials, which allows to actively cooperate with UN and CSTO, not only secure their countries but also take the lead in solving of many global problems of today,” he noted. “SCO is seeking the establishment of a wide inter-civilization dialogue between the states and nations in the spirit of tolerance and mutual respect of interest.”
At the same time Secretary of the RF Security called this organization member states to increase the practical cooperation for the suppression of terrorist financing, the struggle against drugs, nationalism and extremist ideology in the SCO space. In addition, according to him, it is also important today to strengthen counter-terrorism protectability of unfrastructure objects of critical importance.
National security is a wide and multi-aspect notion, and it depends not only on the power of defense and protectability against extremist of various kinds. That is why, according to the rapporteur, nowadays the ensuring of food, energy, transport and information security are also among other burning problems worth great attention. And, of course, Patrushev could not bypass the most vital issue of our time– the crisis raging through the world. SCO can make here its opinion known on. According to Secretary of the RF Security, “the wide use of the international regional organizations’ potential requires to put questions to overcome the negative impact of the world financial crisis.”
“The international relations system is now going through a deep transformation,” Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexei Borodavkin highlighted in his speech at the conference. “The world has entered into a new stage of development and it would be appropriate to characterize it as an equation with many unknown quantities. One thing in this equation can be considered as a constant – the world can not be unipolar. A flush of illusions of world supremacy after the end of the cold war lead to the dangerous unbalance of international relations. Today’s task is to restore the controllability of the world development on the ground of the international law and to strengthen multilateral diplomacy, ensure peace and stability by means of collective will and equal cooperation.”
It also relates in full, as Borodavkin underlined, to the SCO vast region and its adjoining spaces – Afghanistan, Southern and Western Asia. In point of fact, it won't be an exaggeration to say that many problems, challenges and threats, the world community faces, show up especially sharply there. By this, they are aggravated by the global crisis that did not pass the SCO countries as well. The struggle against it will require not only decisive actions at the national level, but also close cooperation, mutual support of the organization member states. “The SCO region,” Deputy Minister summed up, “can typify how these general humanitarian vectors of development materialize at the regional level.”
Predictably, the global financial and economic crisis was one of the major subjects at the conference. Thus, the member of the Research Council under the RF Security Council, Director of the Far East Institute of RAS, Academician Mikhail Titarenko noted that the crisis has essentially affected the SCO member economies. The economic growth shifted into low gear, the banking area has been confronted with serious difficulties, inflation continues at high levels, unemployment increases and, as consequence, social tension is intensifying.
All the countries of the regions have worked out special programs of crisis and its consequences negotiation. And the measures taken have similar nature at that. However, said Academician, within the framework of SCO there is no joint anti-crisis program so far. The matter of its appropriateness was actively discussed as far back as on September in Beijing at the meeting of the ministers responsible for foreign-economic activity, and at the October council meeting of heads of government in Astana. But unfortunately, consensus was not obtained so far.
Head of the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight against Terrorism of the Federal Security Service of Russia Colonel General Alexey Sedov notified that global crisis is capable to lead to growth of the manifestation of extremism and terrorism in Russia and other countries of the world. He said, particularly: “It is necessary to take into consideration consequences of global financial crisis, as a catalyst of possible activization of terrorist activity and growth of manifestations of extremism, including violent forms on the part of “dissenting” parties of various kinds, non-systemic opposition, especially youth and the students. Drastic contraction of labour-market can affect labor migration flows, particularly typical for the Central Asia region.”
According to the representative of the Federal Security Service, growth of economic difficulties is traditionally accompanied by a crime wave, illegal migration, contraband, other unlawful acts, and he believes that “the global economic crisis can become an additional factor contributing to escalation of terroristic and extremist activity to various regions of the world. A case study: recent developments in a number of the West European and Baltic countries, constant hotbed of tension in Somalia and the Horn of Africa countries.”
Speaking about today’s acutest challenges, the Shanghai Organization countries faces too, Alexey Sedov especially highlighted the situation around Afghanistan. According to the Russian special services, the al-Kaida terrorist network has restored its positions there: “Analysis of the international situation, particularly in the Central Asia region, testifies the further growth of terroristic threat. In spite of measures taken by the anti-terrorist coalition in Afghanistan, terrorist groups could restore their potential under the guise of al-Kaida that has increased its role as a basic structure of the international terrorism coordinator.”
Sedov believes that holding an international anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan without notice of regional and national peculiarities of this country and border countries’ interests called into being new manifestations of terrorism. He emphasized that “currently the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area is the main incubator of the international terroristic activity, on the territory of which numerous gunmen and suicide bombers training camps function that are then transferred for execution of subversive acts to the Central Asian countries, Iraq, Russia and further to Europe.”
General mentioned that in the near future the increment in activity of global and regional terrorist networks targeting to create so called “World caliphate” is predicted. Today extremists expand geography of their actions, coordinate them more, use novel weapon, state-of-the-art electronic means. That is why,” said the rapporteur, “Basing on the data testifying active use of advanced information technologies by terrorists for their purposes it is not allowed to eliminate probability of their cybernetic attacks against electronic networks of government institutions and private companies, connected with management of critical infrastructure objects.”
And this danger is not exaggerated, which both special services and leaders of the SCO states understand perfectly. As reported by Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexei Borodavkin, a group of experts engaged (in compliance with the decision of the SCO Summit in Bishkek in 2007) in preparation of an intergovernmental draft agreement on cooperation in the field of international information security assurance, is now completing its work. It is reasonable to expect that at the next summit that will be held in Yekaterinburg, this document will be approved.
At the same June summit, as expected, the heads of the SCO states will sign a Convention on struggle against terrorism that had been also actively discussed at the current conference in Moscow. Expressing their opinions on this document, the participants of the meeting were unanimous that it meets all the Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries’ interests, puts urgent and real tasks, of which solution will eventually permit to response current and future threats and challenges to the mankind in an appropriate manner.