Regional Cooperation - The Times Of Central Asia

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Afghanistan

Central Asia Builds a Regional Track for Engagement with Afghanistan

The United States and Europe may have stepped back from Afghanistan, but the country’s instability still affects migration, security, trade, and humanitarian pressures far beyond its borders. Given their proximity, Central Asian states cannot and have not disengaged, and their efforts to keep Kabul connected to regional diplomacy and commerce serve interests that are also shared by the West. On June 16, the Center for Strategic Studies of Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs convened the first Afghanistan-Central Asia Think Tank Forum in Kabul, bringing together leaders and senior representatives from strategic research institutions across the region. Held under the theme "The Strategic Role of Think Tanks in Advancing Regional Cooperation," the forum included delegations from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan alongside their Afghan counterparts. [caption id="attachment_52266" align="aligncenter" width="1080"] Image: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan[/caption] In his keynote address, Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi observed that the international order stands at a delicate crossroads, divided by competing narratives and opposing camps: “Given the developments and challenges in the global structure, the current international order finds itself at a sensitive juncture in history — a period marked, on the one hand, by various illusions and contradictory narratives, and, on the other, by efforts toward cooperation and multilateralism.” In essence, Muttaqi was advocating for an international order that allows Afghanistan and its neighbors to chart their own courses while engaging constructively with willing partners. Speaking to those in his immediate region, he drew attention to shared challenges, among them climate change, water shortages, economic headwinds, and conflict spillover, and asserted that “There is no doubt that, in order to make more effective and constructive decisions and to develop indigenous narratives for our region and shared future, specialists and researchers from academic and intellectual institutions must draft practical and comprehensive roadmaps for future cooperation across various fields.” Muttaqi underscored to participants the growing recognition that regional states stand to gain more through practical cooperation than through isolation or unilateral approaches. He reaffirmed Afghanistan's commitment to advancing the research-based proposals discussed at the April Consultative Dialogue in Kabul to help inform regional political and economic decision-making. His remarks reflected a view that broad-based economic development and good-neighborly relations are mutually reinforcing foundations of societal stability within a shared civilizational context—a perspective widely shared across the Central Asian republics. That is why, for example, he highlighted the need to follow through on economic and connectivity opportunities, citing projects such as CASA-1000, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan electricity transmission project (TAP-500), the Lapis Lazuli Route, and the Afghan-Trans railway. These initiatives are in various stages of development, some having been stalled for decades. Javlon Vakhabov, former Uzbek ambassador to the United States and currently Director of the International Institute for Central Asia (IICA) in Tashkent, travelled to Kabul for the Forum. In his address, he summed up the mood of the participants: “In this emerging Greater Central Asia, Afghanistan is not a periphery. It is the southern gateway of our region, linking Central...

Regional Cooperation

Turkmenistan Signs Regional Cooperation Treaty, Reaffirm $1 Billion Kazakh Trade Target

Turkmenistan has signed the Treaty on Friendship, Good-Neighborliness, and Cooperation for the Development of Central Asia in the 21st Century, completing another step in the five-country regional agreement during Kazakh Foreign Minister Yermek Kosherbayev’s official visit to Ashgabat, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry said. During the visit, Kosherbayev was received by Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov and held talks with Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov. The sides discussed political ties, trade and investment, transport and logistics, energy cooperation, and humanitarian exchanges. The two countries also signed a cooperation program between their foreign ministries for 2027-2028. Trade expansion was one of the key issues on the agenda. Bilateral trade turnover rose 6.8% year-on-year in January-April 2026 to around $180 million, according to the Kazakh side. Both governments reaffirmed plans to raise annual trade to $1 billion, in line with instructions from their presidents. Kazakhstan has also signaled plans to expand non-commodity exports to Turkmenistan. At the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan business forum in Astana, the Kazakh side presented 178 export product categories with a combined potential exceeding $200 million. The products include metallurgy, machinery, food, chemicals and petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, transport equipment, and construction materials. According to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Trade, bilateral turnover has more than doubled over the past five years, surpassing $530 million. Kazakh exports to Turkmenistan rose nearly 50% to $316.3 million, while imports from Turkmenistan increased fivefold to $215.8 million. The two sides also discussed expanding trade houses, digital commerce, trade financing, and a roadmap for increasing bilateral trade. Transport and logistics cooperation was another focus, including development of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, seen as a strategic route linking Asian and European markets. More than 100 Kazakh companies and around 40 Turkmen businesses took part in the forum. Several agreements were signed in logistics, e-commerce, investment, and business support.

Middle Powers

Kazakhstan’s Middle Power Moment: From Balancer to Regional Organizer

In “What Is the Status of Middle Powers?”, Michel Duclos of the Institut Montaigne presents Kazakhstan as a test case for whether middle powers can still influence outcomes in an era of intensifying great power rivalry. Writing after the Regional Ecological Summit in Astana, which brought together nine heads of state around President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Duclos notes that Kazakhstan “plays a leadership role” among states navigating pressures between China and Russia. He also argues that Tokayev, drawing on his experience as a former senior UN official, is seeking to elevate Kazakhstan into an intermediate power on multilateral issues. That is a useful lens for understanding Tokayev’s foreign policy. Rather than treating Kazakhstan’s position between larger powers as a liability, he has sought to turn geography, energy resources, logistics, diplomatic reliability, and convening power into regional agency. The result is an emerging model of middle power leadership rooted not in confrontation, but in coordination, credibility, and practical cooperation. That assessment places Tokayev’s foreign policy in a broader category than traditional balancing. Kazakhstan’s importance does not rest only on its raw assets — uranium, oil, minerals, logistics, or its position along Central Asian land routes. It also rests on how Astana uses those assets: as a convening state, a reliable partner, and a practical organizer of regional cooperation. Under Tokayev, multi-vector diplomacy has become less a defensive posture than an operating strategy, aimed at keeping Kazakhstan open to multiple partners while building platforms others have reason to use. In that sense, Kazakhstan is being presented not simply as a state located between great powers, but as one increasingly able to give structure to the space between them. Moving from “balancer” to “regional organizer” is only possible if Kazakhstan turns geography, resources, and diplomacy into practical systems others have reason to use. The clearest operational evidence of this shift is transport. Kazakhstan’s geography has often been described as a constraint. It is landlocked, vast, and positioned between larger powers. But the growth of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, or Middle Corridor, allows Astana to recast that geography as a strategic advantage. In the first quarter of 2026, 125 container trains transited Kazakhstan via the Middle Corridor, a 34.4% increase from the same period in 2025. The Times of Central Asia also reported that freight volumes along the route through Kazakhstan have grown more than fivefold over seven years, from 0.8 million tons to 4.5 million tons annually. These figures show that Kazakhstan is not simply selling potential; it is building operational value into the corridor. This is where the idea of Kazakhstan as a regional organizer becomes concrete. A balancing state tries to avoid overdependence on any single power. An organizing state builds systems that others have a reason to use. If Kazakhstan can make the Middle Corridor faster, more predictable, more digitalized, and more commercially reliable, it is not merely balancing Russia, China, Europe, Türkiye, and the South Caucasus. It is creating connective tissue between them. World Bank analysis suggests that infrastructure...

Border Security

Kyrgyzstan Opens New Border Post Near Uzbekistan in Batken Region

A new border post has opened in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region near the border with Uzbekistan, as authorities continue efforts to improve security infrastructure in sensitive frontier areas, according to 24.kg news agency. The opening ceremony for the Sogment border post took place in the village of Sogment in Batken district. The facility is part of the Charbak border outpost under the Batken regional department of Kyrgyzstan’s State Border Service. The presidential representative’s office in Batken region said the ceremony was attended online by Abdikarim Alimbaev, chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s State Border Service, while local officials, border guards, and regional authorities gathered at the site. Among those present was Mamyrzhan Rakhimov, the presidential representative in Batken region. Officials congratulated border guards on Border Guards’ Day, which is marked in Kyrgyzstan on May 28, and described the opening of the new facility as an important step toward improving national security and maintaining stability in border areas. According to local authorities, the post includes modern barracks and other facilities designed to support border personnel stationed in the area. Border guards assigned to the sector are responsible for monitoring more than 12 kilometers of the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan state border. The report noted that several additional border facilities were also inaugurated across Kyrgyzstan on the same day. The opening comes amid broader efforts by Central Asian states to improve border cooperation following years of tensions and unresolved territorial disputes in the region. On March 31, 2025, the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan signed a landmark agreement defining the junction point of the three countries’ borders during a summit in Khujand, Tajikistan. The agreement was signed by Sadyr Japarov, Emomali Rahmon, and Shavkat Mirziyoyev. In May this year, Japarov also visited the newly established Dostuk, or Friendship, Stele in Batken region near the tri-border area. The monument symbolizes the settlement of long-standing border issues and a new phase of regional cooperation among the three neighboring states. During that visit, Kyrgyz authorities also presented plans for the proposed Dostuk International Trade and Economic Park, a cross-border development project intended to strengthen trade, logistics, and investment ties in the region.

Middle Powers

Opinion: Middle Powers and the “Voice of the Region” – Is Central Asia Becoming a Coordinated Actor?

Against the backdrop of growing global fragmentation and the weakening of universal international institutions, the role of so-called middle powers is increasing. These are states able to influence regional agendas without possessing great-power status. In this changing system, Central Asia is gradually moving beyond its long-standing image as a geopolitical periphery and is beginning to act more like a region with shared interests. For decades, the region was viewed mainly as a space where the interests of external powers, including Russia, China, the U.S., and others, intersected. Today, that paradigm is beginning to shift. Central Asia is showing greater signs of agency through what may be described as a cluster effect: individually, the countries have limited influence, but collectively they form an important transit hub between Europe and Asia, a growing market, a significant resource base, and a strategic security zone. This creates the conditions for a more coordinated regional position, even if a single regional voice is still emerging rather than fully formed. C5+Azerbaijan as a Foundation for Regional Architecture The institutional foundation of this process is the Central Asian leaders' consultative format, which is now expanding through Azerbaijan's participation. That is turning what was once a C5 dialogue into a looser C5+Azerbaijan, or C6, framework focused on transport, energy, and practical cooperation. Within this framework, the countries of the region are learning to act in a more coordinated manner without supranational pressure. In practice, this process is developing through three main areas. The first is transport and logistics. Azerbaijan's participation has strengthened efforts to make the Middle Corridor more coherent, though the route still faces bottlenecks in capacity, customs coordination, and Caspian crossings. Through tariff coordination, simplified border procedures, and investment in port and rail infrastructure, Central Asia and the Caucasus are increasingly functioning as parts of a single transport artery. That gives the region a faster option for cargo between China and Europe, even if it remains far smaller than traditional maritime routes. Shipping goods via the Suez Canal or the northern route can take between 35 and 45 days, whereas the Middle Corridor can reduce transit times to around 13-21 days under favorable conditions. According to forecasts cited by BCG, shipping volumes along the route could increase three- to fourfold during the current decade. Beyond logistics, the project is creating a new economic framework for the region. Its status as a crossroads is attracting investment in transport hubs and manufacturing facilities along the route, with the potential to turn transit corridors into zones of economic growth. This gives participating countries not only transit revenue but a stronger basis for long-term strategic resilience. The second major area is energy integration, where historical disputes over water and fuel resources are increasingly being supplemented by models of joint development. The Kambarata HPP-1 hydropower project in Kyrgyzstan, being developed with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has created an important precedent for shared management of water and energy interests. The project is expected to support cleaner electricity generation while helping stabilize irrigation flows...

Regional Ecological Summit

Opinion: The Regional Ecological Summit and the Making of a Central Asian Voice

On 22–24 April, Astana hosted the Regional Ecological Summit—a gathering of governments, international organizations, financial institutions, and civil society that marked a new level of ambition in Central Asia’s environmental diplomacy. Fifty-eight sessions were held across three days at a moment when Central Asia’s ecological agenda is becoming inseparable from its political and economic future. The opening ceremony was attended by the presidents of all five Central Asian states. The summit adopted the Astana Declaration on Ecological Solidarity in Central Asia and brought renewed attention to the need to reform the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS). Taken together, these developments signal more than procedural diplomacy. They point to growing political momentum. The region has never lacked shared history or channels of communication. Russian remains a practical language of intergovernmental exchange, and borders, economies, rivers, energy systems, and labor markets have tied these countries together long before contemporary climate diplomacy gave this interdependence a new vocabulary. For decades, much external analysis of Central Asia expected this interdependence to produce confrontation, particularly around water and energy. Those risks remain real. Yet the Astana summit showed a more complex trajectory. Climate change, biodiversity loss, water insecurity, land degradation, and food security are not separate national problems neatly contained within borders. Addressing them is becoming one of the fields through which regional coherence is being built. The significance of the Summit lies less in ceremonial language than in the consolidation of multiple ecological agendas into a visible diplomatic architecture. Through its panels and high-level discussions, the Summit placed Central Asia’s natural heritage not at the margins of development but at its center. Ecosystems, rivers, glaciers, mountains, and landscapes are not only environmental assets. They are conditions for prosperity, stability, and resilience. Kazakhstan’s chairmanship of IFAS reopened the question of whether the Fund, long criticized for its limitations, can be reworked rather than left as a symbol of failed regional environmental governance. Kazakhstan’s proposal for an International Water Organization should be read in the same frame: it is not merely a technical proposal about water governance but an attempt to move a Central Asian concern into the language of global institutional reform. Kyrgyzstan’s mountain agenda and Tajikistan’s glacier diplomacy also belong to this broader pattern. They are not just isolated national branding exercises. Together with Uzbekistan’s increasingly active regional posture, they form a wider mosaic: each country brings a distinct ecological priority, but these priorities are becoming legible as parts of one regional perspective, and its voice carries more weight when presented as such. This is particularly important in the current geopolitical moment. As larger powers turn inward, compete over corridors, or speak about Central Asia through the old grammar of influence, the region is attempting to define itself not as terrain for another “Great Game" but as a pole of its own. This does not mean distance from external partners. On the contrary, the United Nations was a strategic partner of the Summit, and many formats involved major international organizations, European...