Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will travel to Bishkek on Monday to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Council of Heads of State Summit (Aug. 31-Sept. 1), sharing the stage with Presidents Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and other SCO leaders. At the conclusion of the summit, Pakistan will assume the year-long presidency of the Council for the first time, before hosting the next summit in Islamabad in September 2027. 

Bishkek therefore marks an unusual geopolitical transition: from a year in which Pakistan emerged as a consequential diplomatic player in a crisis dominated by Washington to one in which it will lead the principal Eurasian forum anchored by China and Russia.

The timing could hardly be more significant. During much of 2026, Pakistan emerged as a key backchannel between the United States and Iran, using its access in Washington and Tehran to facilitate contacts and efforts to end the Iran conflict. Its diplomatic utility rested on a rare combination of relationships: renewed strategic engagement with the Trump administration, an enduring strategic partnership with China, close ties with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and working relations with Iran.

The SCO presidency offers Pakistan an institutional platform to carry this momentum into 2027. Its Iran diplomacy demonstrated its usefulness as a peace broker during a major war; SCO leadership will test whether that political capital can be converted into sustained international influence.

This represents a remarkable turnaround from the years following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, when Pakistan lost much of the strategic relevance it had enjoyed in Washington during two decades of war next door. The Iran conflict changed the equation. Pakistan’s importance this time arose not from facilitating another American war, but from helping create diplomatic space to end one.

Equally significant, renewed engagement with Washington has developed without disturbing Pakistan’s strategic partnership with Beijing, close ties with Riyadh or channels with Tehran. Pakistan this month also assumed the presidency of the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, adding another multilateral dimension to an unusually active year for its diplomacy.

Pakistan has been associated with the SCO for more than two decades, initially as an observer and since 2017........

© The Friday Times