With Tajikistan’s most successful Olympic team ever returning home victorious, the SCO summit is nearly here.  Such a star-studded conference would be a major event in any world capital and will thus focus particularly intense attention on internationally neglected Dushanbe, especially with the summit poised as a crucial part of the volatile diplomacy surrounding Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Stephen Blank, at EurasiaNet, has a good summary of the many other international relations issues that will be at play during the summit.  In addition to China-Russia and Kazakh-Uzbek struggles for dominance in the region, he includes the Tajik-Uzbek grudge as a potential barrier to meaningful cooperation:

Another is the Tajik-Uzbek discord that flared again recently when Tajikistan’s Chief Justice Nusratullo Abdulloev accused the Uzbek government of complicity with the terrorist bombing of the Tajik Supreme Court building in 2007. That is only the latest example of a long-standing relationship of mutual suspicion between Tashkent and Dushanbe.

Predictably, security measures are getting serious.  The borders are reportedly closed as of August 24.  ITAR-TASS report from statements by the head of the border troops of the State Committee on National Security, Sherali Mirzo, that:

Besides closing border check points and traditional border trade points, the border troops took measures to strengthen the border with Afghanistan, in particular, by installing additional posts at complicated mountainous areas of the “Panj border line” [the River Panj divides Tajikistan and Afghanistan].

With so much emotion and attention focused on the world leaders about to convene in Dushanbe, this security is hardly surprising and planned in advance.  Tajikistan has much to lose if something goes wrong and thrusts the country into the wrong kind of spot light.