Tracks of Transformation: Bridges Through the UAP Railway

Ali Mehar

Where borders have come to symbolize too often division, the Framework Agreement for the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (UAP) Railway Project is a significant step toward unity and cooperation. Pakistani Foreign Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s trip to Kabul was not a global headline, but it’s a quiet moment of optimism with game-changing significance for South and Central Asia. Conceptions of regional trade corridors have languished on the back burner for decades because of instability, distrust, and purgatory in logistics. At last, there is a real opportunity to reverse that, steel by steel, track by track.

The UAP Railway Project is a decision to opt for pragmatism rather than paralysis.

The much-anticipated 850-kilometer Peshawar-Tashkent-Kabul railway line has existed in fantasy until now. The authorization of the joint feasibility study provided the project a real jump start for the very first time ever. Besides the physical aspect, the rail connection is an economic geography remake, a suggestion to redefine vanished fault lines with new bridges of commerce-transit.

For Uzbekistan and the rest of the Central Asian republics, the project will finally put an end to their reliance on Russian and Iranian pipelines and provide a direct connection to Pakistan’s deepwater ports and beyond. For Afghanistan, however, much more hangs in the balance. Three decades of chaos, interrupted by global isolation, have made any vision of being a commercial bridge, instead of a battlefield, into one of material and moral revolution. And for Pakistan, the project is a part of its “infrastructure-first diplomacy” grand strategy, where roads, railways, and pipelines carry energy as instruments of peace and economic diplomacy.

Vision alone will not be enough to overcome the stark on-the-ground reality that punctuates the trail. The estimated $4.8 billion cost will demand more than regional goodwill. Foreign financing will be made challenging by the existence of the Taliban administration, which to date has not been supported by the outside world. Technical challenges, including terrain conditions and other railway requirements, will test technical knowledge with challenges. And most importantly, the pass traverses some of the most unstable land on earth, where rebel movements have defied state rule for centuries.

In the face of these gigantic obstacles, the promised return is a valuable incentive to stick with it. The rail will cut five days from transit time and lower shipping costs by as much as 40 percent, an economic lifeline for the landlocked economies of Central Asia. Fruit and vegetables, clothes, minerals, and manufactured goods can move more freely across borders, translating latent potential into concrete growth. The corridor might be the center of a mutually beneficial trade accord that isn’t political or ideological but back-and-forth.

The rail will cut transit time by five days and lower shipping costs by 40 percent.

The fact that Pakistan’s diplomatic move towards Afghanistan also comes at the right time. Islamabad’s move to elevate its mission in Kabul and to affirm itself publicly for long-term development schemes is a sign of a more stable, investment-driven policy towards the western neighbor. Rather than aiming for an exclusive concentration on security interests or border control, Pakistan appears to be planning in the long term, where development, and not deterrence, is the gateway to peace.

For the Taliban, being part of a high-profile trilateral initiative is a double-edged sword: a splash of de facto legitimacy and an economic outlet desperately sought. While both the group’s human rights abuses and its ideology continue to soil it, even its willingness to discuss economics must be accommodated. The creation of a trilateral coordination bureau in Tashkent illustrates an operating, if hesitant, desire to go from the likes of isolation to the likes of incorporation.

This railroad, in short, is not solely about business. It is a decision, a unanimous one by three countries, to opt for pragmatism rather than paralysis. In the midst of an age of trade wars, higher tariffs, and shrinking borders, the UAP Railway Project is a blessed exception story: one where regional cooperation triumphs over natural and political impediments.

Pakistan’s infrastructure-first diplomacy envisions roads and railways as instruments of peace.

It will be a gradual evolution. There will be risks. But the promise of steel rails crossing battlefields of history is tempting. If the project can make it through its first decade, maybe it can be an inspiration for another kind of diplomacy, one that is not founded upon political patronage but on progress for all.

With the laying of the rails, a message also goes, brief and powerful: cooperation can be had by us in a broken world. The UAP Railway will not simply transport goods; it will transport hope. Hope that history-beaten nations can still pen a new page, one where economic dependency replaces isolation, and common futures replace broken pasts.

The author is a student of BS International Relations at Quaid-e-Azam University. He can be reached at @ alimeharmail50@gmail.com