The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met last week in Moscow to discuss the possibility of increasing the coalition’s collaboration on military training to combat terrorism, extremism, and separatism.
Although the organization – made up of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – has maintained that it is not a political/military alliance, it seems that they have been moving towards that direction since Russia took the SCO presidency in August 2008.
As part of the SCO’s “Peace Mission 2010,” military exercises will be conducted in Kazakhstan with the bulk of the armed forces participating in the drills hailing from Russia and China.
“Specific anti-terrorism activities will be practiced at drills in Kazakhstan. All previous and upcoming military exercises involving SCO countries are of a counter-terrorist nature,” said Russia’s Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov.