Bishkek opens the 6th World Nomad Games as SCO leaders fly in

The 6th World Nomad Games open in Kyrgyzstan as presidents and prime ministers arrive in Bishkek for the 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who landed in Tashkent on Saturday, said in his departure note that he would attend the opening ceremony after he flies on to the Kyrgyz capital. President Sadyr Zhaparov is host of both events.

The games are a state project first staged in 2014 on the south shore of Issyk-Kul. They collect sports that steppe societies actually used: kok-boru, the mounted contest over a goat carcass; alysh belt wrestling; togyz kumalak, the board game; eagle hunting; archery on horseback. The point, for Bishkek, is to put that list on television while the SCO is in town, so the summit is not only closed doors and a communique.

India is not a nomadic-sports power. Modi's seat at the opening is a courtesy to the host and a signal that New Delhi will show up for Central Asian public ritual as well as for the security session. The MEA called the games a celebration of living heritage that India respects. That sentence is diplomatic packing. The useful fact is the photograph of an Indian prime minister in the stand while kok-boru is played.

What the games are for

Kyrgyzstan built the Nomad Games to own a brand that Turkey, Kazakhstan and Mongolia also claim. Each edition has grown the country list and the budget. The sixth edition sits on the 25th anniversary of the SCO, which gives Zhaparov a double bill: sport in the day, Eurasian security at night.

Athletes come from states that do not otherwise share a games circuit. Some events look like folklore to a viewer who knows only the Olympics. They are closer to working skills. Eagle hunting is a job in the high pastures. Kok-boru is played hard enough to injure horses and riders. Treating the programme as a costume parade misses why local crowds come.

For visiting leaders the risk is the opposite: using the stand as a backdrop and leaving before the final. Summit schedules are tight. Putin and Xi are expected in Bishkek. If they also sit through an opening, the games become the public face of a meeting that will otherwise be remembered for side talks on energy and the Iran war.

The diplomatic use of a goat carcass

Central Asian states have spent a decade trying to turn heritage into tourism and tourism into a reason for other capitals to visit. The Nomad Games are the most finished version of that bet. Hotels in Bishkek and around Issyk-Kul fill. Broadcasters buy feeds. The host gets to talk about culture instead of bases and transit pipes for a few hours.

India's interest in the region is transit, uranium, defence training and a path that does not run through Pakistan. None of that is settled by a wrestling bout. Showing up still has a cost-benefit. Absence would have been read in Bishkek as coldness after Modi took the trouble to come as far as Tashkent.

The opening ceremony is the one moment when the SCO week will look like a festival rather than a security forum. After that the leaders go back to the language of terrorism, connectivity and opportunity that Modi previewed in New Delhi. The riders will still be on the field. The communique will not mention them.