When Russia invaded Ukraine, it took itself off the map of Eurasian
transport corridors linking China and Europe. At the same time, it breathed new
life into moribund routes that would allow goods to travel across the Eurasian
landmass without traversing Russia. It also opened the door to greater Russian
connectivity with the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia.
اضافة اعلان
Next month’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) in the Uzbek ancient Silk Road trading hub of Samarkand
could provide a lynchpin for alternative routes.
The SCO, which groups China, Russia, India,
Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan, is certain to set
the scene for an expansion into the Middle East as well as agreement on the
construction of a crucial Central Asian railroad.
The summit is expected to finalize Iranian SCO
membership at a time when the Islamic republic stands to benefit from shifts in
the geopolitics of Eurasian transportation.
The summit will further welcome Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Egypt, Bahrain, and the Maldives as dialogue partners and Azerbaijan and
Armenia as observers. The UAE has recently also expressed interest in an
association with the group.
Kyrgyz officials believe that leaders of the Central
Asian nation and China have agreed to sign an accord at the summit to build a
523km China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway that has been on the drawing board
for 25 years. The railway would link the three countries with Turkey, Iran, and
Central and Eastern Europe.
Lack of political will, coupled with logistical and
technical obstacles, particularly in mountainous Kyrgyzstan, and the high cost
caused delays that now appear to be perceived as less problematic because of
the fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev predicted that
the railway would “open new opportunities for transport corridors linking our
region with markets in the Pacific Ocean area. The move will add to the
widening of existing railway routes connecting East with West”.
Uzbekistan has long asserted that the railway would
offer the shortest route from China to markets in the Middle East and Europe,
while China sees it as a way of evading the risk of violating US and European
sanctions that continued transport through Russia could invoke.
The new railway would feed into the rail line
connecting Uzbekistan to Turkmenistan’s Turkmenbashi International Seaport on
the Caspian Sea.
From there, it can feed into the Caucasus, Turkey,
and the Black Sea via the Azerbaijani port of Baku or Iran, India, the Gulf,
and East Africa through the International North-South Transportation Corridor
(INSTC) that makes use of the Iranian port of Anzali and potentially Chabahar.
The Baku port agreed in July to let Turkey’s
Albayrak group, which has close ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, manage
the facility, expand its cargo handling capacity, and build a terminal for
fertilizers.
Lack of political will, coupled with logistical and technical obstacles, particularly in mountainous Kyrgyzstan, and the high cost caused delays that now appear to be perceived as less problematic because of the fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The INSTC, a 7,200km patchwork of independently
operated railroads, highways, and maritime routes, also provides a corridor
northward to Kazakhstan and Russia.
The patchwork could prove important to Kazakhstan,
which has stood against the invasion of Ukraine despite its dependence on
Russian food, fertilizer, petrochemical, and iron imports.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has explored
diverting oil exports to Europe from traversing Russia to flowing through Iran
and Turkey.
Adding fuel to the fire, Kazakhstan has also not
shied away from seeking to turn sanctions against Russia to its advantage,
including by offering an alternative to Western businesses leaving Russia.
Earlier this year,
Iran and Qatar announced regular shipping lines between the two countries as
part of the INSTC. Similarly, Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization announced the launch of shipping lines
between Chabahar and Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port.
Chinese analysts expect that the railroad, which
would start in Kashgar, will help transform the economy of Xinjiang, the
Chinese troubled north-western province that is home to brutally repressed
Turkic Muslims.
Moves to bolster Central Asia as a critical node in
East-West and North-South transportation corridors come amid increased public
discontent in the region and stepped-up extremist activity.
In January, Kazakhstan invited the Russian-led
Collective Security Treaty Organization
to help restore law and order amid mass anti-government protests. Six
months later, protests in Uzbekistan’s autonomous Karakalpakstan region turned
violent.
Operating from Afghanistan, Daesh militants vowed to
wage a jihad in the region that would initially target Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan.
Daesh militants hailed rocket attacks in recent
months against targets in the two countries as the “great jihad in Central
Asia” that would unite the five former Soviet Central Asian republics with
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India in a caliphate.
A UN report warned in July that members of the East
Turkistan Islamic Movement, Uighur militant group that garnered notoriety in
Syria, had defected to Daesh because Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders prevented
them from launching cross-border attacks in Xinjiang.
“Although ETIM/TIP (Turkestan Islamic Party), like
Al-Qaeda, has been keeping a low profile for now, it is really a ticking time
bomb for China in its neighborhood,” said Faran Jeffery of Islamic Theology of
Counter Terrorism, a UK-based Muslim counterterrorism group.
James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and scholar, an
adjunct senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and
blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
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