The SCO Summit Sizzles in Nervy Islamabad

BJ Sadiq on the remarkable lockdown of citizens as Pakistan hosted the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, (2nd left), and Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, (3rd left), at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of Governments Summit in Islamabad, Wednesday 16 October 2024. Photo: Alexander Miridonov /Sputnik/Government Pool Photo via Associated Press/Alamy

In the second week of October, Islamabad’s dome-roofed convention centre and an entire sweep of land in the purlieus of its extensively barricaded diplomatic enclave, were the focal points of regional importance. As a permanent member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Pakistan was hosting its summit for the first time in Islamabad.

Inside the convention centre it was neat and ceremonious. Outside, velvety lawns surrounded it, with a patchwork of snipped parterres and creeper-covered trellises in the foreground. Here and there were whorls of colourful LED lights creeping up the lamp-posts and the pine trees. The air was pleasantly crisp proclaiming the arrival of autumn.

On the morning of 14 October, a convoy of black luxury vehicles, carrying dignitaries from as many as 16 countries pulled up at the entrance of the convention centre. Shahbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s present Prime Minister, waited with an air of savoir faire to receive the guests with a broad, ingratiating smile plastered on his face.

But all this display of political vanity and self-importance came at a cost for millions of disgruntled citizens. One wonders what the foreign dignitaries must have thought, looking out of their hotel balconies, at a city steeped in graveyard silence, cut out of the world, and pushed into the void. There was no sign of inhabitants; no hoot of traffic; no hum of bazaars; nothing of the customary clamour one attaches with Islamabad’s city life.