The Trans-Afghan Railway

The Trans-Afghan Railway

 Line will be a lifeline for an integrated Eurasia when it is completed because Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries that can connect Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.

The Trans-Afghan Railway Line was initially the idea of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to diversify trade and supply routes for his landlocked Central Asian nation. Since then, it has become a dream of all stakeholders in the region to improve connectivity.

The termez-mazar-e-sharif-kabul-peshawar railway is our future together. During his visit to Islamabad in 2020, Mirziyoyev stated, "We will create the closest, cheapest, and most secure corridor connecting Pakistan and Central Asia." The primary objective of the project was to enable Uzbekistan to expand its trade outreach to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa by gaining access to Pakistan's Karachi, Port Qasim, and Gwadar ports. When the feasibility study for the project was launched in July 2021, even Kazakhstan and Russia showed a great deal of interest. Pakistan and Afghanistan found it more conducive to their plans for economic revival. In addition to agreeing to assist in the laying of a 1520-millimeter-wide rail track up to Pakistani territory, the Russian Railway promised to create a digital model of the project. Uzbekistan had three options for interacting with the outside world while working on the proposal. The ports of Bander Abbas and Chabahar in Iran were carefully considered. Tashkent, on the other hand, was dissuaded from doing so by international sanctions imposed on Tehran. It's possible that Iran's relationships with the Arab world were also disadvantageous.

The rail-road economic corridor between China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan has already been made operational.

In a similar vein, Turkmenistan's transit tariff and import-export processing were significantly more stringent. As a result, Pakistan and Afghanistan were identified as viable options for realizing the dream. At the time, officials from Uzbekistan said that Pakistan was a more stable partner than Iran and Turkmenistan. Additionally, the Trans-Afghan Railway Line proved to be the shortest and most cost-effective route for Uzbek freight. In fact, Uzbekistan had already constructed a 75-kilometer rail track in 2011 between its border city of Termez and Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. However, the railway line has remained inoperable for a variety of reasons, and its cargo has been diverted to the road instead.

The 2018 Uzbek plan calls for moving goods from Termez to the border town of Hairatan in Afghanistan, where they will be transported to the Pakistani town of Landikotal after going through Mazar-e-Sharif, Kabul, and Jalalabad. The shipment will be offloaded at Peshawar before being transported by Pakistan's rail system to Karachi and Gwadar.

The project's implementation is complicated by Afghanistan's harsh climate, treacherous terrain, and security risks. However, both the previous Kabul government and the current Taliban regime have pledged to carry out the project.

The three and a half-kilometer Salang Pass is part of the project route in northern Afghanistan. During the winter, heavy snowfall and avalanches keep most of it closed. To avoid this, a second, more expensive tunnel parallel to the existing Salang Tunnel has been proposed. A plan to bypass the Salang Pass and route the railway through Baghlan and Bamyan provinces was approved by the Taliban cabinet in January of this year. The railway line's length will increase slightly as a result, but its topographic safety will be maintained.

The organization of the funds is a significant obstacle in the project's implementation in addition to security issues. In addition to the US International Development Finance Corporation, Uzbekistan is attempting to obtain financial assistance from the World Bank, Asia Development Bank, and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and the International Finance Corporation, in addition to the majority of these financial institutions, have reportedly indicated their willingness to finance the $4.80 billion, five-year project in recent reports. Supply routes in the region have been largely destabilized as a result of the Ukraine war's disruption of Central Asian geopolitics, making such infrastructure projects somewhat more feasible. The Trans-Afghan Railway Line, which is at the center of major regions and is expected to connect China to major export markets from the borders of the European Union, is also expected to do so.

According to a statement released in 2021 by the Ministry of Investment and Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan, "once the Trans-Afghan Railway Line project is completed, Pakistan's trade with Central Asia will rise to $six billion." Additionally, it anticipated rapid expansion of India's trade with the region.

Already operational is the rail-road economic corridor between China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan: only with willpower, as the project's infrastructure has not yet been developed. The first shipment of goods from China left Kashghar in southwestern China on September 13 and traveled through Osh in Kyrgyzstan and Termez in Uzbekistan before arriving at the border town of Hairatan in Afghanistan on September 23. With a shipping time of seven to nine days, this 523-kilometer supply route is estimated to shorten China's distance to Europe by 900 kilometers.

The Afghan rail corridor will significantly contribute to long-term economic prosperity and cultural diversity, making the region a point of convergence for eastern and western civilizations once it is connected to the region's existing and potential supply routes. These connections will serve as roads to prosperity and development for their people if the nations of the region decide to shift the focus of their national policies away from geopolitics and toward geoeconomics.