Central Asia is bottled up by an unstable Afghanistan. It would dearly love to open a southern corridor that leads to the huge and lucrative markets of Southeast Asia that could transform the economy of the region.

Since taking office in 2016, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has worked hard to normalise relations with Afghanistan and help bring stability to the country. A key project has been talks with India and Iran since 2020 to win access to the deep-water port of Chabahar, which provides direct access to the Indian Ocean and the wealth beyond.

Uzbekistan’s economy is flourishing, growing by 6.5% a year for the last six years, with one year off during the pandemic. Mirziyoyev's industrial policy is to add value to everything the country produces and boost exports. It needs new markets.

Tashkent wants to revive its Silk Road legacy and become a regional transport hub but the programme is complicated as competing rail corridors through Afghanistan accelerate. Some of those threaten Tashkent’s preferred route via Kabul that would put Uzbekistan at the centre of the regional transshipment network, according to a note by Nargiza Umarova, a political analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Since 2020, Uzbekistan has actively engaged with India and Iran to secure access to Iran’s deep-water port of Chabahar on the Indian Ocean as an alternative route out of Central Asia. The port is central to Tashkent’s southern transit strategy, offering a maritime gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia. For India, Chabahar is both a strategic and economic imperative, facilitating access to uranium, oil and other raw materials while bypassing rival Pakistan.

"Transit through Iran reduces the cost and duration of Indian cargo shipments to and from Central Asia by nearly one-third relative to maritime routes via Europe or China," Umarova noted.

The key infrastructure link is the Chabahar–Zahedan–Mashhad railway, now nearing completion. Its route will eventually connect to the Afghan city of Herat via Khaf, forming Afghanistan’s first cross-border railway with Iran. The Khaf–Herat line, with an annual capacity of 3mn tonnes, is expected to handle predominantly transit cargo and could soon become part of a broader China-led transport corridor stretching through Iran and Central Asia.

“The Taliban administration seeks comparable advantages for Afghanistan and is actively encouraging Tashkent to extend the railway from Mazar-i-Sharif to Herat,” Umarova said, adding that such a move would boost Uzbekistan’s access to Chabahar while circumventing Turkmenistan.

However, the construction of parallel routes could undermine Uzbekistan’s transit leadership. Iran is promoting a five-nation corridor—China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Iran—relying heavily on the Herat–Mazar-i-Sharif segment. From there, only a short extension to the Tajik border would be needed to give Dushanbe a direct route to Chabahar, weakening Tashkent’s logistical advantage.

Compounding the challenge is the proposed Kandahar Corridor, extending the Herat line south to Kandahar and Pakistan. Umarova highlighted that “the attractiveness of the Kandahar Corridor lies in its capacity to extend toward both Iran and Pakistan,potentially establishing the shortest overland route between Moscow and New Delhi.

Russia, which sees the Trans-Afghan railway as an extension of its International North–South Transport Corridor, may reroute 8mn to 15mn tonnes of cargo annually through Chabahar, bypassing the instability of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces.

Yet, Iran’s confrontation with Israel adds new volatility. “A protracted period of hostilities, accompanied by potential political destabilisation within Iran, will unavoidably impact the reliability of established logistics networks in West Asia,” Umarova warned. In this case, reliance on Pakistan’s corridors may increase, despite existing security concerns.

Umarova argued that Uzbekistan must adapt by seeking regional consensus and avoiding competition among Central Asian states. “It is essential to implement a coordinated policy aimed at identifying and advancing mutually beneficial transport routes through Afghanistan,” she said. Failure to do so, she cautioned, could allow external actors to influence the Taliban’s decisions in ways that undermine Central Asian interests.