The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

when they renamed themselves the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) in 2001. 45 In following
years, Mongolia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and
India received observer status in the SCO. In 2009, Sri
Lanka and Belarus became the SCO’s first “dialogue
partners.” With these peripheral partners, the SCO’s
range of associated members ranges from Central
Asia to Eastern Europe and the Indian Ocean.
Although far from a cohesive organization due to
differences among the members, the SCO has developed
security programs focused on defeating terrorist
action or a mass uprising. All member states fear such
crises to some extent, and combined military exercises
to counter these emergencies have been held with China
and Russia in the lead. The first combined exercise,
“Peace Mission 2005,” was held in China’s Shandong
Province. “Peace Mission 2007” was held on Russia’s
Chelyabinsk military exercise area in southern Russia.
“Peace Mission 2009” was conducted on the PLA’s
Taonan exercise area in Jilin Province. These exercises
also demonstrated that China’s relationship with
at least one of the four Central Asian SCO members
shows signs of being stressed. Chinese units from the
Lanzhou Military Region (MR) assigned to the SCO
military exercise “Peace Mission 2007” were denied
passage across Kazakhstan to reach the Chelyabinsk
exercise area on Kazakhstan’s northern border—the
most direct route. With this denial, these PLA units
had to detour through China’s northeast and Russia’s
Trans-Baykal region to reach the exercise area. 46
The war in Afghanistan adds to the SCO’s troubles
through its combination of terrorism, drug trafficking,
and religious extremism that threaten the region’s stability.
While SCO member states do have an interest
in restoring Afghanistan’s stability, their participation
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