Today’s Top Story

Leaders and top officials from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization met today in Islamabad, where they called for enhancing security and economic cooperation, boosting people-to-people contact and mitigating the effects of climate change. The SCO includes Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and four Central Asian states. (AP)

Our Take

Today’s SCO meeting highlights the way in which the role of regional organizations has changed over the past two decades or so. In the 2000s and early 2010s, in parallel with the resurgent emphasis on multilateralism, regional groupings were considered a practical tool for states to facilitate cooperation, ease tensions and amplify their influence on the global stage.

The SCO fit this bill perfectly. Founded in 2001, the organization’s original tacit purpose was to reduce friction between Moscow and Beijing in their respective engagement with Central Asia. At the time, China was seeking more economic inroads into the region, where Russia had historically been the hegemon. The trust-enhancing forum provided by the SCO prevented the ensuing competition between the two from generating tensions, while amplifying Central Asia’s strategic position.

But in the past decade, the SCO, like many regional and smaller organizations, has become as much a symbol of global competition as of cooperation. Russia and China have both sought to position the grouping, as well as BRICS, as alternatives to the U.S.- and Western-led global order and platforms to challenge Western pressure.

Still, while Moscow and Beijing may see the SCO as an anti-U.S. grouping, the internal dynamics of the organization are much more complicated than that, especially since it expanded to include India and Pakistan in 2017, followed by Iran last year. For example, India is actively boosting its ties with the West, while the Central Asian states are courting economic cooperation with a number of Western countries, including the United States. A similar dynamic can be seen in BRICS, where Brazil and South Africa, like India, are less eager to actively counter the West than Russia and China are. Instead, they see BRICS as a useful platform to usher in a more multipolar order, a view shared by many of that grouping’s new members as well.

Put simply, while blocs like the SCO and BRICS will continue to play an important role in economic development, diplomatic connectivity and, to some extent, competition, their geopolitical orientation is more complicated than the reductionist narrative of a Second Cold War.

For more: Read Ali Ahmadi’s briefing from last year on the SCO’s identity crisis.

On Our Radar

A fuel tanker exploded in the village of Majiya in northern Nigeria yesterday, killing at least 94 people and injuring 50 more. Officials say the tanker tipped over and that locals rushed to retrieve the spilling fuel, after which the truck exploded.

While the explosion is undoubtedly a tragedy, it is also just the latest in a long line of fuel tanker explosions across the continent. In 2020 alone, Nigeria recorded 1,531 gasoline tanker crashes resulting in 535 deaths.

As Chris O. Ògúnmọ́dẹdé wrote in 2021 after an explosion in Sierra Leone killed more than 130 people under similar circumstances to the one yesterday, the issues that lead to these kinds of tragedies are seemingly well-known in Africa but have largely gone unaddressed by governments.

Sierra Leone’s Tanker Accident Was a Preventable Tragedy

Nov. 12, 2021 | Deadly explosions of fuel tankers are familiar occurrences across Africa. But while the problem is well-known, its causes go unaddressed. Read more.

Leaders from the National Conference, a regional party, were sworn into office in India-controlled Kashmir following the first local elections in a decade. The vote also marked the first in Kashmir since the government of Indian PM Narendra Modi stripped the region of its semi-autonomous rule in 2019, a move that the National Conference opposed but lacks the power to reverse.

Since 2019, ramped-up state surveillance and intimidation have brought relative calm to the restive region. But as Shweta Desai reported in January 2023, locals say the outward appearance of peace in Kashmir masks pent-up anger that is likely to lead to increased violence and insecurity in the future.

in Jammu and Kashmir, India is cracking down on human rights after revoking Article 370

India’s Crackdown in Kashmir Has Brought Calm, but Not Peace

Jan. 18, 2023 | India’s BJP government is cracking down on Jammu and Kashmir after revoking Article 370, thereby removing its semi-autonomous status. Read more.

Tunisia will raise taxes on companies and middle-to-high income earners next year, as the country continues to face a financial crisis and struggles to obtain external funding. While President Kais Saied’s power grabs in recent years have grabbed more international attention, he has also shown no ability to deal with Tunisia’s worsening economic crisis. And as Francisco Serrano wrote last year, the two stories are inseparable.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is branding his Government of National Unity—the coalition formed between his ANC, the main opposition party and a number of smaller parties—as the country’s “second miracle” as it reaches its first 100 days in power. Still, while many South Africans share that sense of optimism, as Chris O. Ògúnmọ́dẹdé wrote when the coalition was first formed, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical.

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