The post-Soviet republics fear that a prolonged conflict will wreck their regional connectivity and economic development plans.

With Afghanistan and Pakistan effectively locked in a war since last year, the trajectory points toward a perilous cycle of escalation, with little prospect of a meaningful de-escalation in the near term. For the Central Asian republics, the emergence of a protracted conflict on their southern flank carries significant economic and security risks. At the same time, this war is also reshaping regional dynamics in ways that enhance their leverage over Kabul, as these former Soviet states increasingly function as Taliban-ruled Afghanistan’s principal conduit to the outside world amid the closure of the Afghan-Pakistani border to trade.

After accusing Afghan authorities of allowing militant groups—chiefly the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP)—to plan and launch attacks against Pakistan from Afghan territory, Islamabad has conducted military operations in Afghanistan since October 2025. Cross-border strikes have continued despite Qatari- and Turkish-led mediation efforts, which have so far failed to secure a lasting ceasefire. 

China has also entered the diplomatic arena to leverage its influence and de-escalate the conflict. For Beijing, this has been a significant test of its ability to stabilize its backyard and advance its economic interests in Pakistan. Should the war rage on, violent extremist organizations are likely to exploit the instability, while humanitarian conditions on both sides of the border risk further deterioration.

Although the Central Asian governments have not formally recognized the Taliban since it re-established control over Afghanistan nearly five years ago, all have been engaging with the Islamic Emirate to varying degrees to ensure that the ongoing conflict does not disrupt their channels of cooperation with Kabul. They have been careful to avoid any perception of alignment with either side. Nonetheless, they continue to discuss the war with their Afghan and Pakistani counterparts, even if domestic media do not report on those exchanges.

“Central Asian states have largely responded with caution and pragmatism,” Aigerim Turgunbaeva, a Bishkek-based journalist, told the author in an interview. “While avoiding direct involvement, they have increased diplomatic engagement with the Taliban to safeguard border stability and economic ties. Security concerns, particularly around militancy and cross-border spillover, remain central, but there is no appetite for confrontation.”

War Puts Central Asia’s Connectivity Ambitions at Risk

The Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict is now the key stumbling block to Central Asian states’ plans for energy and trade corridors linking them to the Indian subcontinent.

The planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline has remained under discussion for decades. Spanning roughly 1,120 miles, the pipeline is designed to transport 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Turkmenistan’s Galkynysh gas field to Fazilka, India, via Afghanistan and Pakistan.

For three decades, however, a list of obstacles prevented the project from becoming viable. Although construction of the Afghan section finally began in 2024, it is now difficult to envision the strategic energy corridor extending into Pakistan, let alone reaching India, given that the TAPI pipeline’s two key transit states are now effectively at war with one another.

“The Taliban are continuing to build the pipeline…but now the big question is, what happens when the gas gets to Herat? Is that as far as it goes? Or will something happen in the future that might make it more future? I think most people believe that given the state of hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan, it’s really impossible to make the pipeline all the way to Pakistan. It doesn’t make any sense,” explained Bruce Pannier, a fellow at the Turan Research Center and board member of the Caspian Policy Center, in an interview with this author. “In the best-case scenario this project is delayed by possibly decades at this point.”

The TAPI pipeline is not the only regional energy and infrastructure project threatened by the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisis. Kazakhstan has committed to investing more than $500 million in a railway linking Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. While the project has made tangible progress, particularly in developing storage facilities, it now faces the same obstacles as TAPI. For Kazakhstan, the principal concern is that exports, especially grain, could become stranded as a result of the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict. 

“If trade routes of grain are stuck in southern Afghanistan, where there’s a desert, it’s going to go to waste and perish in no time,” noted Pannier. The stakes are considerable not only for Kazakhstan but for Central Asia more broadly. Once completed, the railway would provide the region with direct access to warm-water ports through Pakistan’s ports of Karachi and Gwadar.

The Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict has similarly jeopardized the proposed Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (UAP) railway. Although negotiations have advanced and funding commitments have meaningfully progressed in recent years, the project’s viability is now in doubt. Intended to link Tashkent with Peshawar via Kabul, the railway makes little economic sense if it terminates in Afghanistan. Like Kazakhstan’s rail project, the UAP’s commercial rationale depends on reaching Pakistan and the Arabian Sea.

Afghanistan Turns North

As much as the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict alarms the Central Asian republics, it is simultaneously deepening Kabul’s dependence on its northern neighbors for Afghanistan’s geo-economic connectivity. With trade across the Afghan-Pakistani border effectively suspended since the outbreak of hostilities, and the American-Israeli military campaigns against Iran undermining the reliability of trade routes through Afghanistan’s western neighbor, the Central Asian states have emerged as Afghanistan’s primary gateway to the outside world. 

“As Kabul-Islamabad ties deteriorate, Afghanistan has shown greater interest in deepening engagement with Central Asia, particularly in trade, energy, and transport connectivity. While this does not signal a full reorientation, it does create space for stronger northward integration, especially with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan,” noted Turgunbaeva.

Uzbekistan’s trade with Afghanistan reached $1.6 billion last year (almost 94 percent of it consisting of Uzbek exports to Afghanistan) and is expected to surpass $2 billion this year. To maintain perspective, this volume exceeds Uzbekistan’s trade with Tajikistan several times over. Kazakhstan has experienced a similar expansion in commercial ties. Bilateral trade exceeded $500 million in 2025, driven overwhelmingly by Kazakh exports, particularly agricultural goods, with Afghanistan becoming the largest importer of Kazakh grains.

Central Asia’s economic leverage is further reinforced by the fact that the regional states, led by Uzbekistan, are Afghanistan’s main electricity suppliers. Today, Afghanistan imports roughly 80 percent of its electricity, creating a durable foundation for deeper commercial engagement. Against this backdrop, Kazakh and Uzbek companies are increasingly pursuing investment opportunities in Afghanistan’s mining sector, as both governments seek to capitalize on their geographic proximity and the deterioration of Kabul’s relationship with Islamabad to secure commercially and strategically advantageous deals with the Taliban.

Pakistan’s Potential Leverage over Afghanistan

Under the “Taliban 2.0,” Afghanistan remains home to a diverse array of militant groups. While many operate under the Islamic Emirate’s control and do not use Afghan territory to plot attacks against neighboring states, others—notably the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K)—remain enemies of the Taliban and view Central Asia as a key arena for projecting their influence through deadly attacks. The prospect of the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict generating greater chaotic instability, thereby creating opportunities for ISIS-K and other groups beyond Kabul’s control to expand their activities inside Afghanistan, is a growing source of concern for Central Asian governments.

Should hostilities between Afghanistan and Pakistan evolve into a prolonged conflict, Pannier said he believes elements within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), or other parts of the country’s security establishment, could seek to leverage militant groups based in Afghanistan, including factions with Central Asian nationals in their ranks, to carry out attacks in Central Asia. Such a strategy would risk exacerbating tensions between the Afghan Taliban and Central Asian governments, potentially derailing the steady expansion of Afghanistan’s political and economic ties with its northern neighbors.

Such a course of action by the ISI or other elements of Pakistan’s security establishment could trigger a swift response from Central Asian states, as well as China and Russia. Yet despite the considerable risks such a strategy would pose to Pakistan’s regional standing, it remains within the realm of possibility, according to Pannier.

“If the Pakistanis are tired of sitting there and watching the Central Asians do as much, or more, trade with Afghanistan than Pakistan was doing itself just a couple of years ago, you can imagine that maybe someone in [Pakistan’s] security apparatus would say, ‘Look, for a couple million dollars [we can] funnel some weapons across the border, we can have them do a one-off attack [somewhere in Central Asia] that will set back Central Asian-Afghan relations [for] years,’” he told this author. “It’s something to keep an eye on. Security is always the central issue for Central Asia along the border [with Afghanistan].”

As Pannier pointed out, “if Pakistan is going to look at the long game and conclude that it cannot gain anything in the long game and that Central Asians are going to supplant Pakistani influence, it’s not unfeasible to imagine that someone is going to say, ‘we got to mess that up somehow.’”

China and Russia Reinforce Central Asia’s Pragmatic Approach

Central Asian governments are not managing these security and diplomatic challenges in isolation. Their calculations are also shaped by the broader regional strategies of China and Russia, both of which have become deeply invested in Afghanistan’s stability and increasingly influential in Kabul.

Russia has gained particular diplomatic weight by becoming the first and, so far, only country to formally recognize the Taliban government, giving Moscow a unique degree of political influence in Kabul. China, by contrast, moved swiftly to deepen its presence after the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, driven by ambitions in infrastructure, mining, and regional connectivity. Yet those expectations have since been tempered by persistent security concerns, an uncertain investment climate, and the practical challenges of doing business in Afghanistan, leaving Beijing with a more limited footprint than many observers anticipated only several years ago.

As Turgunbaeva observed, “Russia and China remain key external actors, but their roles differ. Russia is primarily concerned with security and regional stability, while China is focused on economic interests and connectivity, particularly through infrastructure and trade routes. Both prefer a stable Afghanistan but are cautious in their engagement.”

Although the Central Asian republics have pursued their own bilateral relationships with the Taliban rather than relying on either Moscow or Beijing as intermediaries, their engagement unfolds within a broader geopolitical environment heavily shaped by both powers. As Russia and China continue to expand trade, investment, and diplomatic ties with Afghanistan, the Afghan portfolio has become another area where the interests of the Central Asian states increasingly align with those of their two most influential neighbors. Their respective approaches are not identical, but all share a common interest in promoting regional stability, preventing the spread of extremism, and fostering greater economic connectivity with Afghanistan.

For the Central Asian governments, this convergence carries important strategic implications. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have little incentive to pursue Afghan policies that could unsettle either Beijing or Moscow—two indispensable political, economic, and security partners. Indeed, China and Russia view the former Soviet republics in Central Asia as valuable regional interlocutors capable of advancing their own economic and strategic interests inside Afghanistan. As a result, Central Asia’s growing engagement with the Taliban is increasingly taking place within a broader framework of Chinese and Russian regional influence.

Central Asia Wants Stability Above All Else

Ultimately, the Central Asian governments view the Afghanistan-Pakistan war through a pragmatic rather than an ideological lens. For Central Asian policymakers, the conflict is not fundamentally about the Taliban, Pakistan’s security concerns, or the competing narratives advanced by Kabul and Islamabad. What matters are fundamental questions about whether the prolonging of this conflict will derail Central Asia’s long-term ambitions to transform itself into a connectivity hub linking many countries across multiple regions. Every escalation across the Durand Line casts doubt on the viability of transport corridors, energy projects, and commercial partnerships that are central to the region’s economic future.

At the same time, the conflict has produced an unexpected geopolitical shift. As international conflicts disrupt Afghanistan’s trade routes through Pakistan and Iran, Kabul has become increasingly dependent on Afghanistan’s northern neighbors for electricity, commerce, and access to international markets. This has enhanced Central Asia’s leverage in ways that many experts would have struggled to imagine in the past. However, Central Asian governments are likely to cautiously take advantage of such dynamics, prioritizing their interests in seeing Afghanistan stabilize and serve as an economic bridge, rather than a dangerous and unpredictable flashpoint in the region.

As Afghanistan and Pakistan appear far from resolving their conflict, Central Asian countries will probably continue to pursue pragmatic engagement with the Taliban while seeking to avoid taking either Kabul’s or Islamabad’s side. Across Central Asia, policymakers recognize that no lasting economic dividend can emerge from instability on their southern frontier. In their view, the greatest danger is the potential for an open-ended conflict to undermine regional connectivity and empower violent extremists.

About the Author: Giorgio Cafiero

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics, an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University, and an adjunct fellow at the American Security Project. He is a frequent contributor to Al Jazeera, Gulf International Forum, The New Arab, Responsible Statecraft, Stimson Center, and Amwaj.Media. Throughout his career, Mr. Cafiero has consulted with many public and private-sector entities, briefed diplomats from various countries on Gulf affairs, and worked as a subject-matter expert for multinational law firms. Mr. Cafiero holds an MA in International Relations from the University of San Diego. Find him on X: @GiorgioCafiero.

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