SEPT. 21 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Four Chinese bombers and two fighter jets flew into Kazakhstan for China’s first cross border air strike exercise, Chinese state media reported. The China and Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is holding a two week long military exercise in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 8, published on Sept. 23 2010)
SEPT. 14 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan agreed to restart oil supplies to Europe through Ukraine’s pipelines after it cut the route in January over a cost dispute. About 8m tonnes of oil per year from Kazakhstan will transit Ukraine.
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(News report from Issue No. 7, published on Sept. 16 2010)
SEPT. 16 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Created in 2001, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has a broad remit to promote economic, cultural and military cooperation between its 6 members; China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Certainly, the SCO has initiated a handful of economic and infrastructure projects but its roots are in military cooperation beginning in the mid-1990s. Some Western observers say the SCO could one day act as a counterbalance to NATO.
For now, though, SCO is politically too fractured to rival NATO and acts more as a regional forum to discuss anti-terrorist measures and energy policy than coordinate defence policies. Its regional anti-terrorist headquarters are based in Tashkent.
Notably, the SCO did not act during Kyrgyzstan’s revolution in April or in June during ethnic violence in the south of the country when hundreds died.
In 2008, the SCO and its members chose not to back Russia and recognise the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.
Still, the large scale and highly publicised war games are the SCO’s most eye catching activity. Peace Mission 2010, the SCO military exercise which started on Sept. 13 in Kazakhstan, is the biggest military exercise since Russia hosted it in 2007.
The SCO does appear to have wider geographic ambitions. India, Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia have SCO observer status, Sri Lanka and Belarus are dialogue partners and Afghanistan has been invited to SCO summits as a guest.
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(News report from Issue No. 7, published on Sept. 16 2010)
SEPT. 13 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — A 2 week long military exercise by the China and Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) started in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, Russia and China sent 1,000 soldiers each, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan sent 150 soldiers each. Uzbekistan declined to send any. It is the biggest SCO military exercise since 2007.
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(News report from Issue No. 7, published on Sept. 16 2010)
SEPT. 14 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan and Russia moved towards a deal to allow Russian military bases to remain in the country for 49 years, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported. It said Kyrgyzstan wanted to be paid with weapons but AP quoted the Kyrgyz defence minister saying Russia’s rent may quadruple to $18m a year.
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(News report from Issue No. 7, published on Sept. 16 2010)
SEPT. 7 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan and Russia agreed a deal to jointly develop the Imashev gas field that straddles their borders. Dispute over ownership had slowed its exploitation down. Russian media said the field holds about 128b cubic metres of gas and 21m tonnes of gas condensate.
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(News report from Issue No. 6, published on Sept. 9 2010)
SEPT. 3 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia will double the amount of gas it buys from Azerbaijan from next year to 2b cubic metres. Europe and Russia are competing for Azerbaijan’s gas supply. Europe needs the gas to fill its proposed Nabucco pipeline that will run from the Caspian Sea to central Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 6, published on Sept. 9 2010)
SEPT. 20 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek media reported that on the sidelines of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s trip to the UN General Assembly in New York, a delegation had signed a series of deals with US businesses worth $2.6b. It said that the deals covered a range of potential investments and included companies such as Boeing and Visa. Uzbekistan has said it wants more foreign investment.
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— This story was first published in issue 344 of The Conway Bulletin, now called the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on Sept. 24 2017.
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2017