About SCO Peace Mission Exercise: Details, Aim, Significance

About SCO Peace Mission Exercise: Details, Aim, Significance, Highlights

SCO Peace Mission Exercise is the initiative of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). It provides an opportunity to armed forces of SCO nations to train in counter-terrorism operations in the urban scene in a multinational and joint environment.

The significance of the 'SCO Peace Mission Exercise' included professional interaction, mutual understanding of drills and procedures, the establishment of joint command and control structures and elimination of terrorist threat in the urban counter-terrorist scenario.

The 'SCO Peace Mission Exercise' also helped to strengthen mutual confidence, interoperability and enable sharing of best practices among armed forces of the SCO nations.

The SCO Peace Mission Exercise takes place every two years. The previous editions of this exercise were mainly limited to Central Asian nations. But due to the entry of India and Pakistan (in June 2017), SCO’s counter-terrorism mission now has been expanded to South Asia.

In this SCO Peace Mission Exercise-2018, around 3,000 soldiers from eight SCO member countries took part in the exercise this year 2018. Russian Army was had major participation with 1700 personnel followed by China with 700, India with 200 personnel (167 Indian Army personnel including four women officers and 33 personnel from Indian Air Force). Pakistan contingent comprised of 110 members.

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)

Formation: 15th June 2001

Headquarters: Beijing, China

Secretary-General: Rashid Alimov

Member Countries: 8 (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan)