The return of the Taliban has been the greatest threat to regional security and has cut Central Asia off from potentially very lucrative markets in Asia. There have been diplomatic efforts to normalise relations with the Taliban and both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have already dropped their “terrorist state” designation, but progress is slow.

Uzbekistan has been leading the effort and opened up a flourishing new trade centre on the border at Termez as a practical step to bringing the two countries closer as well as exporting electricity to Afghanistan, but problems persist.

President Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev highlighted the need for dealing with Afghanistan during his first UN speech after taking office in 2016 as a top priority for the region, long before the current tensions and conflicts broke out and well before the Taliban re-took power.

More recently, the Taliban finalised trade and investment deals worth $2.5bn with neighbouring Uzbekistan on August 17. The agreements were signed during a visit to Kabul by Uzbek Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov, the highest-level foreign official to visit Afghanistan since the Taliban regained control three years ago.

“Uzbekistan has spearheaded diplomatic efforts to come to terms with the Taliban government and has thought constructively about how to engage with it. Tashkent has done this by providing humanitarian assistance, promising economic investment, and hosting the largest global conference featuring Taliban participation,” Jennifer B. Murtazashvili wrote in a paper for Carnegie entitled Nobody’s Backyard: A Confident Central Asia.

Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan maintain regular official meetings with the Taliban, and even Tajikistan, which has not formally recognized the group, and has its own terrorist problem, continues to provide electricity to Afghanistan despite unpaid bills.

“Russia has used fear of terrorism to assert its role as the security guarantor in Central Asia, a region it still considers its “near abroad.” It is becoming evident to Central Asia that Russia has taken advantage of this concern about extremist spillovers into Central Asia from Afghanistan to maintain robust military presence in the region. It maintains bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and extensive infrastructure in Kazakhstan,” Murtazashvili said.

Russia also continues to have its own problems with terrorism that have their source in Central Asia. In March it suffered its deadliest terror attack when a group of Tajiks, reportedly part of the Islamic State – Khorasan, gunned down over a hundred people in cold blood in the Crocus City Hall shopping mall in Moscow.

A month later there was another incident when terrorists attacked traffic cops simultaneously in several locations in the southern Russian region of Dagestan.

Both the republics of Central Asia and Russia would dearly love to open a southern trade corridor that would connect the former Soviet Union with Asia, but instability in Afghanistan remains the cork in a logistical bottleneck that runs through its mountainous country.