Tajikistan will take part in “Peace Mission-2018”, a multi-nation counter-terror war game, under the aegis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Russia in August this year.
Tajik delegation will be led by General-Lieutenant Emomali Sobirzoda, the Frist Deputy Minister of Defense also the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Tajikistan, a source at the Ministry of Defense (MoD) told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, Tajikistan will be represented in the forthcoming war game by a company of Mobile Force of the country’s Armed Forces.
In all, the multi-nation counter-terror war game will involve more than 3,000 servicemen from China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well as more than 500 military vehicles.
“Peace Mission-2018” will be conducted at the Chebarkulsky training ground in Russia’s Chelyabinsk oblast under the framework of the SCO's Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), which is headquartered in Tashkent (Uzbekistan).
The exercise is aimed at bolstering counter-terror cooperation among the member countries and it will see joint mock drills to eliminate terrorists and their networks, and interventions in hostage situations.
The “Peace Mission” exercise is conducted once every two years.
The SCO was founded at a Summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization currently has eight full members — China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, India, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia are four observer states, and SCO’s dialogue partners include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey. ACEAN, CIS, Turkmenistan and the United Nations are guest attendances.
