SCO summit in Islamabad on Oct 15-16, 2024 in fact highlights Pakistan’s image as a key cooperative global player. If we multiply Pakistan’s existing relations with the nine full members of the organization, with each one having global clout and ties then ideally Pakistan being host of SCO summit emerges taller among the international community of nations – all bound in one bind with the UNO as members.
Political mathematics add the Islamabad international event as Pakistan’s fruitful global relational growing trajectory at a time when in some neighbourhood corners a lean propaganda was on boil that Pakistan is an isolated country. My view is that the isolationist theorists should focus on the geo-location of Pakistan – a geographic hub among Southern and Central Asia and the much hyped Middle East.
And Pakistan has strong trade, diplomatic, cultural, historic and demographic linkages with the nation-members of the SCO. So Pakistan is the country whose geography cannot brook isolation of Pakistan. Pakistan shall remain as a king axle of global hub of diplo-development map. SCO whose get together importance is an accepted truth comprises nine full members: Pakistan, China, Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrghystan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan with three observer status states: Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia while Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka are dialogue partners. In a way SCO is a mini-Asiatic United Nations Organization destined to play an active pivotal role in pushing ahead the objectives of peace, progress and diplomatic exchange roundabout.
The Islamabad SCO moot is planned to talk on very important regional aspects of global life; it includes regional security and solidity, chiseling an agreed mechanism for fortifying multi-dimensional and multilateral discussion and dialogue, climate vicissitude and environmental safety, enlarging economic cooperation among member states, terror combating. In fact this agenda lends a new cooperative lease of life to the region and its people for nursing peace and stability and selective commonness. It is great that this agenda has a takeoff from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad. World Islamabad means soil of peace, abode of peace, shared mutuality.
Summit will be participated by heads of government: Pakistan host, China, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrghystan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and India with her External Affairs Minister. Keeping diplomatic channels talking among the states is the best science of international life; this science does not preclude mutual talking formal or in-depth. Mutual or multilateral relationing is characterized by talks, telephone calls, special days greetings, exchange of condolences over losses by calamities, etc.
Wisely clever nations seek such occasions to ever renew ties with other countries/nations. Global diplomacy has undergone many impactful changes, both visible and non-visible. Organizations like SCO should now upgrade their roles by establishing economic interests in member countries to vitaminize it as one FAMILY. This familia approach and profundity will help resolve hitherto unsettled political issues to the hearty satisfaction of each member state of SCO. End shaheenalvi52@gmail.com
—The writer, a retired Secretary in AJK Govt, is a senior columnist, based in Rawalpindi.
(shaheenalvi52@gmail.com)
