Volga display of power

Chebarkul, a town in Russia's Volga-Urals Military District, is hosting anti-terror exercises under the aegis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) that will last all this week and be the largest operations that its members have conducted.

The official name of the exercises, Peace Mission-2007, hides the gulf of diverging, often competing, goals of the participants.  The SCO comprises Russia, China and the four republics of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan). The two largest members use the SCO as a forum to keep each other's influence in check. Both seek to expand their presence in Central Asia, an area rich in oil and gas and also of strategic significance to the United States

Limiting US influence in the region tops the Russian and Chinese SCO agenda. Pressure from Moscow and Beijing led Uzbekistan to evict US troops from its territory in summer 2005. Kyrgyzstan, which currently hosts the only US military base in the region, may come under similar pressure when it holds the SCO summit in Bishkek later this month.