Would Afghanistan join the SCO club?

In May 25^th Afghan foreign Minister Mr. Spanta stated that Afghanistan is not interested in neither SCO or CSTO membership. The declaration came after a Pakistani proposal; NATO to join SCO in Afghanistan. Yet the recommendations and diplomatic efforts to have the landlocked country join forces with other partners have all but ceased. Just last month in Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan, a summit bearing the title "Afghanistan, SCO, Central Eurasian Security and Geopolitics" showed the high interest in Afghanistan pacification as well as it displayed the Afghani stranger" elements that would possibly play a stabilizing role in Afghani politics. Tajiki is for example an important minority in the north, that happened to be the back-bone of the Northern alliance, Uzbeki are important MP´s and local chiefs (some say “warlords”), Shi´a Hazara is the ethnicity that may prove useful in dealing with Iran. This seizing of the stakeholders multiplicity was perhaps the main success of the conference, and points directly to Central Asia ties in every attempt to studying a really democratic and pluralistic Loya-Jirga. Moreover, it befriended Afghan authorities with SCO proceedings and featured the Friedrich Ebert Institute, testifying that Europe is not idle.

If Afganistan is to join SCO, it would be a chance to meet another major actor in Afghan struggle, Iran, in a multilateral environment. As a matter of fact Iran wants to improve its relationship seeking a full membership, now hindered by its Nuclear Program.

Moreover it would help SCO to exit an impasse. As the interesting analysis of Dr. Erica Marat stresses, Russia and China are said to be weary over the very mission of SCO.

Russia is seeking to merge CSTO and SCO, which concerns China as this would definitively present the organization as military, whereas it has been kept up to now an economic partnership (despite the military drills, which Chinese authorities don´t want to be re-staged).

Afghanistan and Iran membership would re-connote the organization as Strategic (not merely economic) and move the balance of the organization towards the observers Pakistan and India.