US Central Asia Policy Has an Afghanistan Problem

The National Interest | Zalmai Nishat and Chris Blackburn

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Samarkand on 18 October within the C5+1 framework, accompanied by a substantial American business delegation. Zalmai Nishat and Chris Blackburn contend that Washington’s push on trade, investment and security cannot succeed while Afghanistan’s political and security crisis remains unresolved.

Washington’s calculations centre on critical minerals, energy resources, transport corridors and industrial development. Rubio called it a beginning. He acknowledged the United States had paid the region insufficient attention. Russia became the first country to recognise the Taliban in July 2025, opening the way for a military-technical cooperation agreement in May 2026 whose terms have not been publicly disclosed. Pakistan has spent much of the past year confronting the Taliban along its western frontier. The World Bank says CASA-1000 cannot operate unless the Afghanistan section of the line is completed. Nishat and Blackburn propose a regional dialogue running alongside an Afghanistan-led national one.

Comment

The authors hold that Central Asian prosperity is inseparable from Afghanistan’s stability, which is truer of southbound links than of the rest. CASA-1000 shows why, since the World Bank says the project cannot operate until its Afghan section is completed. A line meant to join Central and South Asia has no route that avoids Afghan territory. Freight bound for American buyers faces a different geography, because minerals could move west across the Caspian instead.

The Trans-Caspian route, known as the Middle Corridor, tests the point. It carries Central Asian freight across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and Georgia and passes through neither Afghanistan nor Russia. Its bottlenecks lie at Caspian ports and in vessel availability, which suggests Afghan insecurity would matter little to minerals travelling this way. The authors’ logic would then apply to energy and transit towards Pakistan but could overstate the risk to westbound trade.

Earlier American logistics ran the other way. Karshi-Khanabad in Uzbekistan and Manas in Kyrgyzstan existed to serve the Afghanistan campaign, so a war created the footprint rather than trade. Neither Karshi-Khanabad nor Manas offers a template for a partnership that begins with minerals and corridors.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If minerals can reach buyers through the Middle Corridor without touching Afghanistan, which carries more weight in Washington’s Central Asia strategy, southern links such as CASA-1000 or Caspian capacity, and what would tip the balance?

The pattern suggests Caspian capacity carries more weight for the minerals trade Washington has named as a priority, since those cargoes do not depend on Afghan transit. Southern links would tip the balance only if South Asian demand for Central Asian electricity became the larger prize. My assessment is that CASA-1000 would then remain tied to Taliban politics in a way the Middle Corridor is not.

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