On Oct. 29, the acting chairman of the board of the Uzbekistan Railways company and the first deputy director general of Russian Railways held an online meeting that also involved the heads of the two countries’ design, research and development institutes, the Uzbek company’s press service said, to plan the Tashkent-Kabul-Peshawar rail line, connecting the Uzbek and Afghan capitals and Pakistan city, Peshawar, which connects to the Gwadar seaport via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The parties calculated the approximate amount of cargo that could be transported by such a railway and prepared a report on the pros and cons of various possible routes. A video conference involving top officials from the Uzbek, Russian and Afghan railway authorities is expected to be held in the near future.
In December 2018, Uzbek, Russian, Kazakh, Afghan and Pakistani railway officials discussed creating a consortium to construct a railway connecting Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul in Afghanistan and Peshawar. A final agreement was reached in February 2021. However, the project was suspended after the Taliban takeover in August.
Experts quoted by Russia news agency Vedomosti believe that it will be difficult for Russian Railways to participate in a project with the Talibani government. However, efforts by Moscow to facilitate reconciliation in Afghanistan might change the situation in the near future. The real problem seems to be the lack of specialists in the country who would be capable of building the railway at an appropriate technical level and of maintaining and using it in the future, say sources quoted by Vedomosti.
