9. Creating Frameworks to Confront Terrorism in Central Asia
9.2. Zhang Weipeng 3
Introduction
China–Russia relations have been put on a fast track. They share broad common interests and shoulder important responsibilities in safeguarding peace and sta-bility. In this regard, the signature by Russia’s Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and China’s Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, of the Joint Communiqué of the 21st
Reg-3 Zhang Weipeng is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Copenhagen and a PhD candidate at Zhejiang University in China.
ular Meeting on 18 November 2016 was an important milestone. China and Russia face many new but similar counterterrorism challenges in Central Asia.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has historically served as an effective framework, but terrorist threats continue to proliferate. In China, the border areas have seen increases in terrorist activity that have adversely affected the national economy. For Russia, terrorism, separatism and extremism all threaten its border security. It is therefore necessary to promote the exploration of cooperation institutions based on mutual trust among China, Russia and Cen-tral Asian countries.
New characteristics and tendencies of terrorism
Terrorism constitutes organized or calculated violence that harms innocent civil-ians, causes panic and threatens society for political purposes. It has become one of the most threatening non-traditional global security issues, cutting across geo-politics, culture, geo-politics, economics and social psychology. The structural vio-lence that results has had a deep influence on the political ecology of Central Asia.
Despite the long-standing nature of terrorism, three new characteristics have emerged in the Central Asian context.
First, the adaptability and expansiveness of terrorist organizations bridge regions and even, at times, religious doctrines. With the emergence of such group-ings as ISIS, global terrorism and violence have reached unprecedented levels of cruelty. Such groups aspire to create their own state and seek to consolidate their influence. Despite their frequent geographic attachment to Iraq and Syria, even in their name, Central Asia remains a target for expansion.
Second, terrorists are updating their operational methods. Among the increas-ingly common set of tactics are ‘lone wolf’ attacks carried out by individuals, ‘wolf pack’ attacks involving small groups, and ‘multi-point serial’ attacks, which con-stitute a series of operations. Uniting these methods is an increasingly strategic rationale that allows terrorist campaigns to morph over time and spread without the organization necessarily having to travel to remote destinations to carry out attacks.
Third, the return of foreign fighters to their countries of origin poses challenges in terms of outmoded legal frameworks and detection methods. Even for those individuals who have not travelled abroad, the suppression of domestic recruiting activities by international terrorist organizations using social networks and emis-saries sent to Central Asia is difficult. Given these new trends, table 9.2.1 provides an overview of the challenges in each country and their current proposed political and legal remedies.
Engagement with counterterrorism in Central Asia
Counterterrorism activities under the SCO are not a product of strategic compe-tition, but rather the outcomes of strategic cooperation. This security mechanism provides its two main members, China and Russia, with a means to coexist in
creating frameworks to confront terrorism in central asia 71
Central Asia. There is no denying that Central Asia is viewed as Russia’s sphere of influence, but it is also a key outpost of China’s Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB).
The enactment of declarations, statements, treaties and conventions within the framework of the SCO promotes the ‘rules of the game’ and an institutionalism that guarantees China–Russia security relations and the success of such projects as the land-based SREB.
Furthermore, the ‘wider’ conceptualization of security by the SCO, which focuses on non-traditional security threats rather than military threats between states, is emphasized in all SCO statements and programmes. The regional threat of terrorism has long been the primary target of the organization, which benefits Central Asia. Since the first joint military exercises in the border areas between China and Kyrgyzstan were held in 2002, more than 20 bilateral and multilat-eral counterterrorism exercises have been conducted within the framework of the SCO. Moreover, the counterterrorism centre in Bishkek, combined with a range of member state agreements, serves as an integral base for joint activities
As China’s SREB strategy proceeds, the SCO has enriched cooperation to bet-ter realize the organization’s economic potential and advance common inbet-terests.
Central Asia is an overlapping area of the China-led SREB and the Russia-led Eur-asian Economic Union (EAEU), meriting the protection of increasing numbers of migrants from and projects by both countries. These migrants can be the target of terrorist attacks or recruitment. Therefore, a transformation of police cooper-ation is imperative and should include the construction of informcooper-ation sharing platforms, safety monitoring mechanisms, early warning systems, joint police training programmes and coordinated efforts to block terrorist funding.
Formulas and spillover in future engagement
Terrorism is one of the most severe non-traditional security issues in Central Asia. In the light of this fact, the following equation merits greater consideration:
S×C=E×R, where S stands for ‘scope’, meaning the scale of issues; C stands for ‘cov-erage’, meaning those affected; E stands for ‘effectiveness’ and R for ‘resources’.
Using this formula as a guide, counterterrorism requires the expansion of cooper-ation among regional leaders to pool resources and to increase political will. This approach plays out in numerous domains, including cybersecurity. Russia is par-ticularly adept at leveraging cyberspace to counter threats to the state, preserve economic and social security, and combat terrorism and other criminal threats.4
Using this baseline, China has also increasingly sought to use cyberspace in its counterterrorism efforts. China’s Huawei Technologies and Lenovo have begun cooperation with Russia’s Rostelecom and Bulat on servers and data store sys-tems as well as other technologies applicable to China’s counterterrorism laws.5
4 Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, 1 Dec. 2016,
<http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/official_documents/-/asset_publisher/CptICkB6BZ29/content/
id/2542248>.
5 For more information on the interaction between China’s counterterrorism law and cyberspace, see the following English-version of the draft law, which is linked to the Chinese-version of the final law. China
Table 9.2.1 Characteristics of terrorism and counterterrorism in Central Asia
64 acts of terrorism were stopped in 2011–16a policy strategy of balance of power; and cross-border situation of the Tajik nationality in Uzbekistan; Law of Freedom of Religious Belief and Religious Organizations
creating frameworks to confront terrorism in central asia 73
This demonstrates the advantages of technical cooperation in arenas that include Internet monitoring, data collection and combatting terrorist recruitment through social media. Combined with education from books, videos, images, memoirs and interview notes,6 these cyberspace tools offer greater national penetration to demonstrate the damage wrought by terrorism.
Law Translate, ‘Counterterrorism law (Initial draft)’, 11 Aug. 2014, <http://www.chinalawtranslate.com/
ctldraft/?lang=en>; and Blanchard, B., ‘China passes controversial counter-terrorism law’, Reuters, 28 Dec.
2015, <http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-security-idUSKBN0UA07220151228>.
6 Hansen, L., Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (Routledge: Oxford, 2006), pp. 49–55.
a 汪嘉波 [Wang Jiabo], ‘哈国近5年制止64起恐袭预谋’ [Kazakhstan has stopped 64 premeditated attacks in nearly five years], 光明日报 [Guang Ming Daily], 23 Sep. 2016, <http://epaper.gmw.cn/gmrb/
html/2016-09/23/nw.D110000gmrb_20160923_7-12.htm>.
Source: The author.
Takeaways
Relations between China and Russia serve as the guarantee of the SCO and their engagement has a substantial impact on counterterrorism. Nonetheless, as table 9.2.1 shows, each Central Asian country has its own characteristics in terms of counterterrorism that must be integrated into and correlated with Chinese and Russian national security and grand strategies. The SCO is the best framework for this approach. It has remained effective, despite the role of the USA and com-petition between the BRI and the CSTO. To mitigate the impact of externalities on the effective functioning of counterterrorism cooperation in Central Asia, it is essential to map out these relationships and better understand the convergences and divergences of approach.