Central Asia’s plan to bypass Russia and Iran? Railways through Afghanistan and Pakistan

Central Asia has long been someone else’s crossroads. Squeezed between an overbearing Russia to the north and an increasingly unstable Iran to the west, the region’s landlocked ex-Soviet republics have settled on a different solution: send railways south, through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, all the way to the Arabian Sea.Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan – Central Asia’s two largest economies – have in recent months struck preliminary multilateral agreements for the construction of two multibillion-dollar railway lines through Afghanistan and Pakistan.One would link Uzbekistan to Pakistan’s ports via Afghanistan, while the other would connect Kazakhstan to Pakistan via Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.Together they aim to revive what some have called the “Great India Road”: an ancient overland artery similar to the Silk Road trade routes connecting East and West.That connection through the steppes of Central Asia was severed by the Soviet Union and has not been fixed since.“It is only now being reopened, and not without difficulty,” said Frederick Starr, founding chairman of the Washington-based American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute.“Without it, their [Central Asian states’] trade and national lives will be dominated by Russia, as in fact happened in the 20th century.”The Silk Road was often “erroneously discussed” as the main trade route through the region, Starr said, whereas “the oldest, most heavily travelled, least interrupted, and richest east-west route connected Europe not with China but with the Indian subcontinent”.