Last week Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev paid a state visit to Pakistan – his first ever visit to the country after taking charge in Tashkent in 2016. He had, however, met Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan twice earlier – during the Central Asia-South Asia connectivity conference that Tashkent hosted last year in July and thereafter in August at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in September 2021.
The two had earlier held a virtual meeting on April 14, 2021where they had supported the construction of the ‘Termez–Mazar-e-Sharif–Kabul–Peshawar’ railway line, calling it an "important initiative" to establish connectivity from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea through Afghanistan and the Pakistani seaports of Karachi, Gwadar and Bin Qasim.
Mirziyoyev's visit marked the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and Uzbekistan and is expected to provide a huge fillip to bilateral ties, a wide range of issues were on the table including defence and a common fight against Islamophobia. Both countries agreed to develop and expand their strategic collaboration in all sectors and to sign a strategic partnership treaty.
However, at the heart of the meeting was trade and investment, and therefore connectivity. Mirziyoyev was accompanied by a high-level delegation comprising cabinet members and businessmen. Both Pakistan and Uzbekistan need to improve their economies and given their geo-strategic locations can significantly benefit each other.
For Uzbekistan's vast resources and search for markets from its landlocked geography, Pakistan provides the shortest route to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea and markets in Asia and Africa.
For Pakistan’s cash-strapped debt-ridden economy the prospects of the vast markets of Central Asia and Eurasia through short overland routes via Afghanistan is a premium; so is the idea of the enormous transit fees it can collect by allowing transit trade through its territory not just from Uzbekistan but also from neighbouring countries in the region through Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
For some time now, Imran Khan has been harping on "geo-economics", rather than "geo-politics". And with good reason too – old pals like Saudi Arabia are no longer willing to bail out the perpetually bankrupt state, while all-weather friends like China can distinguish between friendship and business when the need arrives.
The country therefore has outlined its own "Vision Central Asia", where like India it is focusing on regional connectivity with five landlocked Central Asian countries – Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan – in efforts to witness a major economic upturn. But unlike India, Pakistan has an advantage in its contiguous geography with Central Asia. And Uzbekistan lies at the heart of it. With Pakistan’s surrogates now installed in Kabul, with whom the Uzbek administration has also been long cultivating ties, things should be more promising.
It was with this in mind that Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan on February 2 2021 agreed to a roadmap for the construction of a 573-kilometre route from Mazar-e-Sharif to Peshawar via Kabul. At a cost of almost $5 billion, the project is meant to open Pakistani seaports on the Arabian Sea to Uzbekistan and continue Afghanistan’s gradual integration into the Central Asian economic system. This connectivity is expected to bring in up to 20 million tons of cargo transportation annually. Khan has repeatedly said that a peaceful Afghanistan could act as a corridor for Pakistan’s trade route to Central Asian states besides benefitting itself from Pakistan’s Gwadar seaport.
Last year Pakistan and Uzbekistan traded goods via Afghanistan in a landmark first. A Pakistani cargo truck transported medicine from Karachi in April to the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, via Kabul. In May an Uzbek cargo truck took a shipment of leather products from Tashkent and arrived at the Afghan-Pakistani border (Torkham crossing), which was then sent to Faisalabad inside Pakistan.
Again, it was with this in mind that the USA had floated, on the sidelines of the connectivity conference in Tashkent last year, the Central Asia South Asia "QUAD" – for “Regional Support for Afghanistan-Peace Process and Post Settlement”, which would “in principle to establish a new quadrilateral diplomatic platform focused on enhancing regional connectivity”.
The potential, therefore, for Pakistan and Uzbekistan is unlimited. Bilateral trade had increased by 50% last year from $122 million in 2019 and the joint ventures had increased five-fold.
However, as Imran Khan himself has said on a number of occasions – peace in Afghanistan is the “foremost factor” to materialise such a vision of prosperity. It must have been with this in mind that both Khan and Mirziyoyev called for the unfreeze game of Afghan assets that were frozen by the international community in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last year.
But peace inside Afghanistan alone does not remain elusive; Taliban-Pakistan relations are fast deteriorating as the clashes along the Durand Line demonstrate; as also Taliban's refusal to hand over wanted militants by Pakistan, who the latter alleges are operating from its territory. Moreover, peace inside Pakistan itself remains elusive. Even as Mirziyoyev's visit was ongoing ISIS-K took responsibility for a brutal attack on a Shia Imamhargah in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing at least 60 and wounding over 200 people.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is an important plank in Pakistan’s connectivity projects with Uzbekistan. This attack itself came against the backdrop of an ongoing battle between insurgents from the Baloch Liberation Front and the Pakistani army. The battle has intensified this year following two attacks by the Baloch militants on Pakistani security forces prompting reprisals from the security forces with casualties running into hundreds. Balochistan province with its Gwadar Port forms another important plank in Pakistan’s connectivity plans. Till all these conflicts are resolved all Pakistan’s grand connectivity plans may simply remain in the realms of its ambitions.
