There is no doubt that Afghanistan will shape Eurasia’s future. The question is whether that future will be defined by geopolitical rivalry or by economic connectivity.

The international order is fragmenting, and the institutions established to manage it are finding it increasingly difficult to act. For Kazakhstan, a middle power, that means stability must be built regionally rather than by external powers. Nowhere is this more evident than in Afghanistan, where Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has called for a strategy of replacing the “Great Game” with the “Great Gain.”

Nearly five years after the Republic in Kabul fell in August 2021, the policy of isolating the country has not produced the moderation its advocates promised. It has instead deepened a humanitarian emergency whose effects reach far beyond Afghan territory, in narcotics flows and in the migration that touches Iran, Central Asia, and Europe. The lesson of recent decades is plain; any vacuum in Afghanistan, whether economic, humanitarian, or institutional, will be filled by destructive forces.

Kazakhstan’s Strategy of Pragmatic Engagement Toward Afghanistan

Kazakhstan has answered with a deliberate strategy rather than a sequence of gestures. We call it pragmatic engagement without official recognition. Astana removed the Taliban from its list of banned organizations in December 2023 and kept the Afghan embassy in the capital in operation. In June 2025, President Tokayev appointed a special representative to institutionalize Kazakhstan’s Afghanistan policy. The objective is clear. A stable and economically viable Afghanistan is essential for the security of the wider region.

The surest way to achieve this is to help the country transition from a vulnerable recipient of aid to a producer and transit hub. Kazakhstan’s high-level mission to Kabul in June 2026 showed how far that strategy has advanced.

The June mission to Kabul marked the transition from diplomatic engagement to practical economic cooperation. Led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Economy Serik Zhumangarin, the Kazakh delegation held the first prime-ministerial-level talks between the two governments in four years.

Zhumangarin met Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund at the Gulkhana Palace, along with Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar, Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, and the governors of Herat and Kunduz. Akhund expressed gratitude to President Tokayev for his continued support for the Afghan people, described the relationship as important, and invited President Tokayev to visit Afghanistan. 

The delegation delivered 318.8 tonnes of humanitarian aid. It deployed a team of doctors for a week of clinical work, and the two sides also established a joint chamber of commerce and discussed cooperation to combat narcotics and extremism. The substance of the talks, though, lay in the economy.

Kazakh-Afghan Trade Is on a New Footing

Bilateral trade reached $541.8 million in 2025, and the two governments have set a target of $3 billion under a roadmap agreed in 2024. The imbalance in that trade remains the central challenge. By the Kazakh side’s accounting, exports to Afghanistan exceeded $500 million. In comparison, imports from Afghanistan remained near $23 million, an imbalance underscored by the modest scale of Afghan sales across the region, which reached only $216 million to all five Central Asian states combined in 2025.

Kazakhstan has therefore opened its national retail networks to Afghan agricultural goods, the first such mechanism offered in the region, and launched a Trade House in Kabul to follow the one opened in Herat in 2024. Grain and flour remain the foundation, and Kazakhstan ranks among the leading suppliers of flour to the Afghan market.

The more strategic shift is in industry. During the visit, Kazakhstan’s ShalkiyaZinc and an Afghan-German partner signed a contract for 30,000 tonnes of zinc ore per year, worth $18.88 million, to feed Kazzinc’s smelters, after Kazakh specialists sampled the Pami-Kakrak deposit in Bamyan in 2025 and confirmed that the ore could be processed at home. Eurasian Resources Group, a global leader in ferrochrome, is considering either purchasing an Afghan chrome deposit or entering into a joint venture with local partners.

Kazakhstan is also seeking access to Afghan technical aquamarine, a source of beryllium used in aerospace and nuclear applications that only a handful of countries can process, with deliveries of several thousand tonnes envisaged by the end of 2026. Kazakh engineers have begun assessing the modernization of the nitrogen plant at Mazar-i-Sharif.

As a measure of how far the export profile has moved, the delegation signed a $45 million agreement to supply artificial intelligence diagnostic equipment, digitize Afghanistan’s health ministry, and build a national telemedicine network. Kazakhstan now exports technology—where its sales were once confined to grain and fuel.

Afghanistan’s long-term economic recovery will depend not only on investment but also on sustainable water management. As agriculture expands and industrial activity grows, efficient use of water resources will become increasingly important. Recognizing this, Kabul University and two Kazakh institutions signed a document of intent to build a joint center for water management, irrigation, and sustainable agriculture. In doing so, Kazakhstan is not only sharing its expertise but also helping integrate Afghanistan into regional cooperation on water management. 

Building Corridors from Kazakhstan to the Sea

Transport corridors are perhaps the clearest expression of the shift from Great Game to Great Gain. Instead of competing for spheres of influence, regional states have an opportunity to compete to build prosperity. For Kazakhstan, a landlocked country, diversifying transport routes and securing access to ports on the Indian Ocean are strategic imperatives.

Two points deserve particular attention.

First, Kazakhstan already has practical experience in railway construction in Afghanistan. A private Kazakh company, Integra Construction, holds the contract for a section of the Khaf–Herat railway on the Afghan side, giving Herat an outlet toward Iran and the sea. Kazakhstan also has the capacity to support not only railway construction but also long-term operations by supplying locomotives, rolling stock, and related equipment.

Second, Kazakhstan remains open to cooperation with all Central Asian countries and other interested partners to develop regional railway connectivity.

Rather than competing over individual transport initiatives, the region should focus on harmonizing standards, customs procedures, and tariff policies so that different corridors reinforce one another and operate as parts of a coherent regional logistics network.

Any railway project supported by all participating countries would deliver historic benefits across the region. For Afghanistan in particular, it would create an unprecedented level of connectivity between its regions and neighboring markets, strengthening its role as a transit state rather than a geopolitical fault line.

The West’s and Kazakhstan’s Shared Interests in Afghanistan

None of this requires the West to build a new instrument. The European Union is already the largest investor in connectivity up to the Afghan border, and engagement in education and healthcare inside Afghanistan is a field in which Kazakhstan and the European Union can work together, as the regional record already shows. Healthcare projects are particularly important for the most vulnerable members of Afghan society: women and children.

The new Regional Center for the Sustainable Development Goals for Central Asia and Afghanistan, established in Almaty by a law President Tokayev signed in 2026, provides an institutional platform for these efforts. Migration remains a concern that both sides hold, with more than 6 million Afghans having returned from Iran and Pakistan since 2023. For external actors, Central Asia offers a tested route to Afghanistan.

Stability in Afghanistan will be built rather than declared. The architecture for it is taking shape across commerce, resources, water, and transport, and much of it now runs through Kazakhstan—the practical expression of a middle power accepting responsibility for its own strategic neighborhood.

Kazakhstan’s policy toward Afghanistan is built on a simple premise: to engage with reality rather than illusion. By recognizing both risks and opportunities while remaining firmly committed to international law, Astana seeks not to revive the Great Game but to make the “Great Gain” a reality in the heart of Eurasia.

About the Authors: Yerkin Tukumov and Eldaniz Gusseinov

Yerkin Tukumov is the special representative of the president of the Republic of Kazakhstan for Afghanistan. He was previously the director of Kazakhstan Institute (KazISS), minister counselor of the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Russia (2019–2022), consul general of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Kazan (2018–2019), head of the Analytical Department of the Security Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2010–2018), and director and deputy director of the Central Asia Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2008–2010). 

Eldaniz Gusseinov is a co-founder of geopolitical foresight agency Nightingale International. Eldaniz has worked for several academic institutions and think tanks in Europe and Central Asia. He has authored numerous analytical papers on regional integration, transport infrastructure, and critical minerals policy, shaping debates on Central Asia’s evolving place in global geopolitics.

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