ISLAMABAD: It seems like Uzbekistan may be playing both sides of the game as regards its confidence about the ability of Afghanistan to act as a trade corridor. On the one hand, Tashkent keeps on trying to move closer to Kabul, but at the same time, it is developing a parallel Uzbekistan-Pakistan trade corridor that will avoid Afghanistan completely and go through China.

For the last year, Tashkent has stepped up its dealings with Afghanistan, having established a challenging goal of increasing the volume of annual trade by more than double within a few years. The president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, said recently that his administration was "actively cooperating" with Taliban leaders to build a railway connecting Afghanistan and providing a passage for Uzbek cargo to the port of Pakistan. Such a railway would provide a direct route from Central Asia to South Asia.

Nevertheless, despite these efforts aimed at Kabul, Pakistani media outlets have reported that Tashkent and Islamabad have concluded a tentative deal to enhance trade between the two nations via the Uzbekistan-Pakistan trade route, which would circumvent Afghanistan and instead pass through China. This decision clearly reflects that both states are not ready to wait until the Afghan route gets improved and are ready to seek an alternate route at least for the time being.

A trans-Afghan trade route will be the optimal route for the transportation of goods from Central Asia into Pakistan. Unfortunately, there is an impasse in the Afghan-Pakistani relationship, which has led Islamabad to block all its major land border checkpoints as well as cross-border trade in trucks between the two countries. Such an impasse has left everyone in the region looking for alternative means of transporting their goods despite the diplomatic deadlock.

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As per reports from Pakistani sources, Pakistan and Uzbekistan intend to ink a protocol in the near future for increasing the scope of this transit trade through China. "This protocol is going to help increase options for transit passage and facilitate seamless movement of trade goods irrespective of emerging security challenges in the region," according to a government official cited in Pakistani news.

The railroads that can link Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China are under construction now and will be incorporated into the rail networks of China, giving the way to reach Pakistani ports directly. This project is not expected to be completed for several more years. In the meantime, in case Uzbekistan Pakistan trade route protocol is signed, it will refer to truck traffic passing via China.

But Uzbekistan is not the only country from the region which has started to develop its route through China in order to access Pakistani market. This spring Kyrgyzstan proved the feasibility of the overland route through China into Pakistan. In early July, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan took even another step and announced their intention to develop strategic partnership which means that several countries of Central Asia might prefer China’s route in order to access Pakistani markets.

Uzbekistan Pakistan Trade Route Signals for Regional Trade

The development of an alternate trade route from Uzbekistan to Pakistan via China brings to light the greater problem that confronts regional connectivity initiatives, which require peace in Afghanistan. Unless the frost in relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan is thawed, Central Asian countries seem more ready than ever to develop other trade routes to connect with Pakistan and the South Asian markets.