TAJIKISTAN-RUSSIA-CHINA-MILITARY-DIPLOMACY

Personnel leave a chopper during a military exercises in a training ground outside Dushanbe on April 18, 2009. More than one thousand soldiers from Russia, China and Central Asia have arrived in Tajikistan for three days of joint exercises. The war games are being held under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional group dominated by Moscow and Beijing that has raised concern in the West about becoming a possible counterweight to NATO. AFP PHOTO/ SALLOKHIDDIN ERGASHEV