C5+1 - The Times Of Central Asia

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C5+1

C5+1 Meets Again in Samarkand, but Central Asia Has Changed

In mid-October, C5+1 will meet again in Samarkand, where its first ministerial was held in November 2015. The regional actor it was created to engage has, however, changed substantially. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to arrive with representatives of more than 100 American companies for talks focused on regional economic connectivity, energy security, trade, private investment, and economic modernization. John Kerry convened the first C5+1 ministerial in Samarkand on November 1, 2015, after the six governments had met in New York that September and agreed to regular consultations. The initial agenda already treated security, economic connectivity, and environmental problems as fields where regional approaches could add value. The question is what purposes C5+1 serves now. C5+1 itself began with a Kazakhstani initiative. As S. Frederick Starr recently reconstructed the history, Ambassador Kairat Umarov, after consulting Astana, proposed in 2013 that Washington create a regular mechanism for engaging Central Asia collectively rather than only through five bilateral relationships. The State Department subsequently developed the proposal, and the format took institutional shape in 2015. That origin rules out any account in which regional agency appears only later. Kazakhstan helped create the mechanism through which Washington would engage the region collectively; the five states’ own capacity for regional coordination deepened substantially thereafter. The second ministerial in Washington in 2016 launched joint projects in economic connectivity, renewable energy, climate resilience, and security, while explicitly recognizing the value of regional approaches. A secretariat was established in 2022; the format reached presidential level for the first time in New York a year later. That summit also produced plans for a private-sector business platform and a Critical Minerals Dialogue, which held its inaugural meeting in February 2024. Its basic structure has remained the same: the United States engages the five Central Asian states collectively. Alongside C5+1, the five developed their own regional process, independent of any outside partner. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev proposed regular consultations among the Central Asian leaders in 2017, and their first Consultative Meeting took place in Astana in March 2018. Further meetings followed in Tashkent in 2019 and Turkmenistan in 2021 before the process moved to Cholpon-Ata in 2022. Subsequent meetings extended the process into trade, transport, energy, water, security, and cultural cooperation. The process remained intergovernmental and did not require policy uniformity among the five states. It gave them a recurring political process of their own. By 2022, the process had expanded from consultation among the five to coordination in dealing with outside partners. At the fourth Consultative Meeting in Cholpon-Ata, the leaders adopted a regional cooperation roadmap for 2022–2024, a Green Agenda, and a Concept of Interaction of the Central Asian States in Multilateral Formats. A treaty on friendship, good-neighborliness, and cooperation for the development of Central Asia in the twenty-first century was also opened for signature. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had proposed regular foreign-minister consultations to develop coordinated approaches to regional and international issues. He specifically connected the multilateral-formats concept to cooperation with non-regional strategic partners. The Concept of Interaction...

C5+1

U.S. Links Trusted Digital Infrastructure to Investment at C5+1 Conference

Stronger cybersecurity and trusted digital infrastructure could encourage greater U.S. investment in Central Asia, Mark Cameron said in Astana on September 29. Cameron, deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, was speaking at the C5+1 conference on artificial intelligence. He said data centers and trusted infrastructure would give American companies greater confidence to invest and expand their cooperation across the region. “The strongest house is built on the firmest foundation,” Cameron told reporters, linking cybersecurity to the development of advanced AI. Cameron said Washington sees private companies as central to the process, with government programs helping create conditions for investment and technological cooperation. “The United States has the deep belief that companies, given the opportunity, will find great solutions and new opportunities that many of us have never even considered before,” Cameron said. He said Washington has committed $5 million through CRDF Global for cybersecurity and digital-sector assistance. The support covers incident response, critical infrastructure protection, financial sector security, and cybersecurity policy. The C5+1 format brings together the United States and the five Central Asian countries. The conference comes ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s planned business delegation to Uzbekistan in mid-October, involving executives from more than 100 American companies alongside talks with the region’s foreign ministers. Kazakhstan Sets Out Its AI Development Model Kazakhstan’s vice minister of artificial intelligence and digital development, Bakhtiyar Mukhametkaliyev, described the development of an AI economy as a five-layer process. Energy comes first, followed by access to chips and graphics processing units (GPUs), information systems, high-quality data, and finally AI agents. Countries that attempt to deploy AI agents before building the infrastructure and data beneath them, Mukhametkaliyev said, are unlikely to realize their full economic value. He also framed data centers as a way for Kazakhstan to convert its energy and resource base into higher-value digital capacity. Mukhametkaliyev stressed that Kazakhstan does not intend to build its emerging AI ecosystem solely for the domestic market. He said the infrastructure should also help neighboring countries develop their AI industries and improve connectivity. He also pointed to drones, space technologies, startups, and workforce reskilling as areas where digitalization could create new markets and occupations. Kazakhstan’s ties with U.S. technology companies are also expanding. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is scheduled to make his first visit to Kazakhstan on October 23, as the country develops data centers and NVIDIA-based computing infrastructure. Regional Plans for AI Development Kyrgyzstan focused on practical AI applications, human oversight, education, and local-language models. Niyazaly Bazarbaev, adviser to the minister of digital development and innovative technologies, said Kyrgyz and other Central Asian languages remain insufficiently represented in existing AI systems. He discussed work involving a Kyrgyz-language corpus of roughly five million words and efforts to prepare the school curriculum for an AI-driven economy. Tajikistan presented AI as a presidential priority. Hakim Ismoilzoda, first deputy director of the Agency for Innovation and Digital Technologies, highlighted Tajikistan’s initiatives at the United Nations on AI and its safe, secure,...

C5+1

How Kazakhstan Initiated C5+1

When U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio travels to Samarkand in mid-October, he is expected to meet the foreign ministers of all five Central Asian states under a diplomatic format known as C5+1. He will also be accompanied by representatives of more than 100 American companies, underscoring how far the platform has developed since its creation in 2015. C5+1 — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, plus the United States — has become Washington’s principal diplomatic mechanism for engaging Central Asia as a region. It has expanded from meetings of foreign ministers to presidential summits and cooperation on trade, security, connectivity, energy and critical minerals. Less widely known is the role Kazakhstan played in getting it started. S. Frederick Starr, founding chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and a longtime scholar of the region, has argued for years that the proposal that developed into C5+1 came from Kazakhstan rather than from inside the U.S. government. In a detailed account published on September 24, titled How C5+1 Came to Be, Starr identifies Kairat Umarov, then Kazakhstan’s ambassador in Washington, as the diplomat who set the process in motion. Starr writes that shortly after Umarov arrived in Washington, the two discussed the absence of a mechanism through which the United States could deal with Central Asia collectively rather than through five separate bilateral relationships. In 2013, after consulting Astana, Umarov approached Nisha Biswal with the idea of creating a regular consultative mechanism between Washington and the governments of Central Asia. According to Starr, Biswal supported the proposal and subsequently took it to Secretary of State John Kerry, who approved moving ahead with the concept. Afghanistan was initially considered for inclusion, which would have produced a C6+1 format. It was ultimately left outside the mechanism, resulting in the C5+1 grouping that exists today. In September 2014, three Kazakh and three American authors, including Starr, published Looking Forward: Kazakhstan and the United States. The study was prepared with support that included Kazakhstan’s embassy in Washington and called specifically for establishment of a “Central Asia Six Plus One” mechanism. The report argued that the United States lacked a regular platform for engaging Central Asia on a regional basis and proposed a U.S.-Central Asia/Afghanistan partnership. By then, the concept had moved beyond an informal diplomatic conversation. A jointly produced Kazakh-American policy paper was explicitly calling for Washington to establish essentially the same regional mechanism that emerged the following year. Starr says the proposal subsequently received support from Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Uzbek President Islam Karimov. Karimov wanted the Central Asian meeting held in Samarkand, an arrangement to which Astana and Washington agreed. The five Central Asian foreign ministers and Kerry met in New York on September 26, 2015. They gathered again in Samarkand on November 1, where Kerry described the meeting as the first time the six countries had met as a group in that format. The resulting joint declaration committed them to regular meetings under the name C5+1. [caption id="attachment_57100" align="alignnone" width="1828"] Source: S....

C5+1

Rubio to Lead Major U.S. Business Delegation to Uzbekistan for C5+1 Talks

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead a delegation including executives from more than 100 American companies to Uzbekistan in October. The visit will bring a substantial business contingent to talks with Central Asia’s foreign ministers in Samarkand. Sergio Gor, the U.S. special envoy for South and Central Asia, announced the visit in a statement published by the U.S. Embassy in India. Gor said the talks would focus on “deepening regional economic connectivity, enhancing energy security,” alongside cooperation on shared regional priorities. The delegation is expected in mid-October, alongside a C5+1 ministerial meeting. The C5+1 format brings together the United States and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Bringing executives from more than 100 companies gives Rubio’s visit a substantial commercial component. The delegation’s composition should indicate which sectors Washington is ready to back following last year’s C5+1 agreements. In November 2025, Rubio announced his intention to visit all five Central Asian countries in 2026. Speaking ahead of the Washington C5+1 summit, he suggested such a tour could take a week. The Samarkand announcement gives a destination and timeframe for his regional engagement, although it does not establish an itinerary covering all five states. President Donald Trump hosted the five Central Asian presidents in Washington on November 6, 2025. Commercial agreements featured prominently in the summit, reflecting a greater focus on investment within the C5+1 framework. The U.S. Commerce Department said the “Deal Zone” business event held alongside the November 2025 C5+1 summit featured more than $25 billion in announced commercial deals. Air Astana’s agreement covered up to 15 Boeing 787-9 aircraft, comprising five firm orders, five options, and five purchase rights. Tajikistan’s Somon Air announced plans to acquire up to four Dreamliners and ten 737 MAX jets. Uzbekistan Airways finalized an order for eight additional Boeing 787-9 aircraft during the summit. Boeing said the purchase brought the airline’s total order to 22 Dreamliners, converting options from an earlier agreement into firm orders. In mining, Cove Capital and Kazakhstan’s Tau-Ken Samruk agreed to develop the Severny Katpar and Verkhne Kairakty tungsten deposits. The projected $1.1 billion investment includes two processing plants and a metallurgical facility. Kazakhstan’s technology announcements included a memorandum for $2 billion in advanced AI-chip procurement, involving NVIDIA, Freedom Holding, and the country’s digital ministry. Critical minerals cooperation has also advanced since the Washington summit. During a February 4 visit to the U.S. capital, Uzbek Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov attended a ministerial meeting devoted to the sector and held talks with Rubio. Saidov and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau signed a memorandum on mineral supplies, covering the mining and processing of critical minerals and rare earths. Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry said the country was seeking foreign technology and investment to develop the industry, with an emphasis on value-added production. For Tashkent, the unresolved question is how much mineral processing American investors will finance inside Uzbekistan. October’s talks could clarify whether February’s memorandum will lead to domestic processing facilities, allowing the country to retain more of the...

Central Asia’s C6 Takes Shape in Washington as Ambassadors Push for Practical Integration

Less than two weeks after regional leaders gathered in Cholpon Ata, diplomats from the emerging C6 grouping used a discussion in Washington to shift the focus from declarations of unity to the mechanics of integration: customs, railways, digitalized trade, access to European markets, and stronger links across the Caspian. The sharpest political message came from Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to the United States, Edil Baisalov, who said that Central Asian states were increasingly recognizing that they were “enough for each other,” and that resolving differences within the region had become a pragmatic national interest. His comments gave unusually direct language to a trend that has accelerated since the region’s consultative meetings began in 2018. The August 12 event at the Caspian Policy Center brought together the U.S.-based ambassadors of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajikistan, the sixth country in the emerging C6 framework, was not listed among the participants. The event followed a late-July meeting in Cholpon Ata, where leaders concentrated on transport, energy security, investment, and foreign-policy coordination. The C6 label remains shorthand rather than the name of a formal organization. Its political basis, however, has become more concrete since Azerbaijan was admitted as a full participant in the Consultative Meeting of the Heads of State of Central Asia in November 2025. The shift extended a format once focused on relations among the five Central Asian republics across the Caspian Sea. From Regional Dialogue to Regional Agency Azerbaijan’s ambassador, Khazar Ibrahim, presented Cholpon Ata as evidence that the six states increasingly see themselves as part of one political and economic space. “We are finally holistic. We are all together,” he said. He argued that Azerbaijan’s presence changes the geography of the grouping by turning the Caspian from a dividing line into a connecting space between Central Asia and the South Caucasus. That idea has been developing for some time. TCA has previously examined how Azerbaijan’s entry could turn the C6 framework into a platform for common rules on transport, tariffs, customs systems, and digital data, rather than another layer of summit diplomacy. Kazakhstan’s ambassador, Magzhan Ilyassov, put the emphasis on building an “economically active neighborhood.” He pointed to the frequency of regional meetings and said the value of the current process lies partly in maintaining an inclusive conversation among the Central Asian states. Kazakhstan has also pushed for stronger coordination on transport planning as the consultative format develops. For Uzbekistan, the discussion was more explicitly about market access. Ambassador Furqat Sidiqov said cooperation with Azerbaijan could give Uzbekistan wider access to European and other export markets. He also called for further digitalization of the Middle Corridor. Sidiqov said Uzbekistan had close to 300 joint ventures with Central Asian countries in 2017, and now has about 1,500 with neighboring states. Corridors Become the Practical Core Digitalizing the Trans-Caspian route is not a new proposal. The countries of the UN Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia, which already brings together the five Central Asian states and Azerbaijan, endorsed a digitalization...

Azerbaijan

Aliyev Sees Azerbaijan and Central Asia’s Interests Converging

The Shusha Global Media Forum, an annual gathering held in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region and conceived as a platform for journalists and media representatives from dozens of countries across Europe and beyond, including the United States, acquired broader regional significance last year because of its consequences for several Russian participants. Last year’s forum attracted widespread attention in Russia after two prominent Russian participants faced repercussions at home. Mikhail Gusman, then first deputy director general of the state news agency TASS, was dismissed shortly after attending the event and praising Azerbaijan, although no official reason was given. The following month, pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov was designated a “foreign agent” after facing criticism for his favorable comments about Azerbaijan. It was therefore unsurprising that this year’s forum attracted close attention from media outlets around the world. Beyond the forum’s Russia-related significance, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev’s remarks pointed to a broader regional shift. Azerbaijan increasingly sees its political and economic interests converging with those of Central Asia, particularly through the Middle Corridor, cross-Caspian energy links, and infrastructure cooperation. According to official figures, approximately 160 journalists, experts, and public officials from 53 countries attended the event. The forum brought together representatives of around 30 international news agencies, more than 60 leading media organizations, and roughly 10 international organizations and companies. Former TASS executive Mikhail Gusman attended the fourth Shusha Global Media Forum and highlighted its growing international profile. “There are very few, if any, media platforms in the world that bring together representatives of media organizations from every region to exchange views and engage in dialogue. That is precisely why the importance of this forum cannot be overstated,” he said. As in previous years, President Aliyev opened the forum and spent nearly three hours answering questions from journalists representing a wide range of countries. Given the latest deterioration in relations between Baku and Moscow, many observers were watching to see whether questions would prompt unusually sharp comments about Russia. The organizers did not shy away from potentially sensitive questions. Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gordon, who has been designated an extremist in Russia, was once again invited to the forum and made full use of the opportunity. Gordon noted Ukrainian drone and missile strikes deep inside Russia before asking Aliyev what counsel he would offer Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin. “What advice would you give Putin today, when, in my view, he no longer has any good options left?” Gordon asked. Aliyev avoided an overtly confrontational response, stating that Ukraine should “never agree to occupation” and that the war “must be stopped—and stopped immediately.” Aliyev’s exchange with journalists and analysts from Europe and the United States painted a clear picture of Azerbaijan’s worldview and the role it sees for itself internationally. That perspective remains heavily shaped by the three-decade conflict between Baku and Yerevan over Karabakh. According to Aliyev, the United States, France, and Russia all sought to preserve the status quo during that period. He described those decades as a “time of war,” arguing that...