A railway project linking Central Asia to the Arabian Sea has moved a step closer to being realized.

Railway officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan met in Islamabad on July 17 and agreed to the trans-Afghan railway, a project that would connect Uzbekistan and Pakistan by rail via Afghanistan.

Discussions on the project started in 2018 and it quickly topped the agenda in Pakistani-Uzbek talks.

In late December 2020, then-Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan met with visiting Uzbek Transport Minister Ilhom Makhkamov and the two signed a “joint appeal letter” for $4.8bn in loans from international financial institutions (IFIs) for the construction of the railway, sometimes referred to as the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan railroad, or UAP.

In early February 2021, officials from the three countries met in Tashkent and signed a roadmap for the project that would connect Termez, Uzbekistan, on the Afghan border, to Kabul and Peshawar.

Khan visited Uzbekistan in July 2021, arriving one day early for a Central and South Asia conference in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, so he could discuss trade routes linking Pakistan and Uzbekistan with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021 made no difference to the Pakistani-Uzbek plans for the railway.

Khan discussed the railway project with Mirziyoyev on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan in September 2021, less than one month after the Taliban took control of most of Afghanistan.

When Mirziyoyev visited Pakistan in March 2022, the trans-Afghan railway was again one of the main topics of discussion.

At the July 17 meeting of railway and transport officials from the three countries involved, the officials signed off on the route for the 573-kilometre railway. The line will run from Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan, southeast to the Karlachy border crossing at the Kurram tribal district in Pakistan.

Officials of the three participating countries say the infrastructure will cut travel time between Uzbekistan and Pakistan by at least five days and reduce costs by some 40%. Those officials also say that the railroad should be completed by 2027 and by 2030 could be carrying as much as 15mn tonnes of cargo annually.

A statement from Pakistan’s Ministry of Railways said the line would carry both freight and passengers.

Uzbekistan estimates that the construction cost for the trans-Afghan railway will be some $4.6bn, while Pakistan put the figure at more than $8bn.

Planning for the railway has progressed remarkably quickly and has continued despite the change of government in Afghanistan and the removal of Khan, a champion of the project, from power in Pakistan in April 2022.

Obstacles still remain.

In November 2020, when the trio of countries declared their intention to realise the railway project, they were hoping to get funding from the United States.

The US and American financial institutions are unlikely to finance such projects in Afghanistan, however, so other sources of funding need to be found.

China or the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) seem to be the likely financiers, but the project has many challenges and risks that might deter Chinese sources from getting deeply involved.

Afghanistan's railway network very much remains in its infancy (Credit: CIA Base map, public domain).

One of the basic challenges is whether Afghanistan can maintain its section of the railway.

There are currently three railway lines in Afghanistan, all in the north. All are in operation, but none of the lines extend to any great distance.

There are two lines connecting Afghanistan to Turkmenistan; one that runs some 10 km into Afghanistan to the town of Torghundi. That line was built in the 1960s and was upgraded in 2018.

The other goes some 30 km into Afghan territory to the town of Andkhoi. It started operating in January 2021.

The third railway is the 100-km line linking the Uzbek border city of Termez to the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif. This is a line that will feature in the trans-Afghan project linking Uzbekistan to Pakistan.

The railway running from Termez, which crosses the Dustlik (Friendship) Bridge on the border, was built in the early years of the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan. The line terminated only a few kilometres inside Afghanistan.

An extension to Mazar-e Sharif was completed in 2011 and served as part of the Nato Northern Distribution Network that supplied troops in Afghanistan, connecting Afghanistan to Europe.

In September 2016, the first train carrying goods from China crossed the bridge into Afghanistan.

The line to Mazar-e Sharif is currently being managed by Uzbekistan’s state railway company Uzbekiston Temir Yollari, though the Afghan side has complained about the Uzbeks not fully carrying out their work commitments.

If the trans-Afghan railway is completed, Afghan transport officials and workers will be expected to maintain 573 km of a railroad, most of which runs through mountains.

The Afghans have little experience running a railway system and the country’s existing rail network is less than 150 kilometres in length in all, nearly all of it laid across relatively level terrain.

Training personnel might not be so difficult, but obtaining and maintaining the equipment needed to keep the line clear in mountain areas will not be cheap.

There is also the perennial issue of security that has seen so many projects involving Afghanistan come to naught.

The proposed route transits areas where the National Resistance Front, a group of mainly former government soldiers opposed to the Taliban, and the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (IS-K), the ISIS offshoot in Afghanistan that is another foe of the Taliban, have been staging attacks.

It would be easy to consign the trans-Afghan railway to the heap of grandiose projects involving Afghanistan that never could be achieved for one reason or another.

But just perhaps this railway project will not be derailed. It is enthusiastically embraced by all the parties involved and some formidable obstacles, such as the change in government in Afghanistan, have not stopped it progressing.