By Eldaniz Gusseinov, Rassul Kospanov

The Pakistan–Afghanistan war has accelerated Kabul's economic reorientation toward Central Asia, a structural shift that Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have moved most visibly to institutionalize. Less visible, but strategically consequential, is the parallel track that Russia has been constructing through the Republic of Tatarstan. Over the course of 2024 and 2025, Tatarstan has signed memoranda worth US$ 183 million with Afghan private-sector counterparts, doubled bilateral trade to US$ 51 million in the first eleven months of 2025, and prepared a trilateral Russia–Turkmenistan–Afghanistan transport corridor agreement for signature at KazanForum 2026. The pattern suggests that Moscow has delegated a substantial component of its Afghan engagement to a subnational actor as a calibrated instrument of paradiplomacy, a model that carries implications for how external powers compete for position in the emerging trans-Afghan corridor system.

BACKGROUND:

Tatarstan's suitability as Moscow's Afghan channel rests on a combination of confessional, communal, and institutional factors that no other Russian federal subject combines. The republic's Islamic identity provides a register of communication with the Taliban authorities that federal Russian institutions cannot easily replicate. 

Kazan hosts the annual Russia–Islamic World: KazanForum, which since 2023 has carried federal status and functions as one of the few large-format venues where Taliban officials are received. An additional advantage is the presence of a historically established Tatar diaspora in Afghanistan. A notable Tatar community has lived in the country since the nineteenth century, having been formed largely by merchants and trading intermediaries from the Russian Empire who gradually settled in Afghan cities and integrated into local society. 

Today, descendants of this diaspora are concentrated primarily in the northern provinces of Balkh, Samangan, and Baghlan, providing Kazan with an important human infrastructure for engagement that predates the events of 2021. In March 2021, the Afghan government formally recognized "Tatar" as a nationality category in civil documentation, which anchored the community's relationship with Kazan more durably than informal ties had previously allowed.

The institutional architecture developed in parallel. In 2023, a Russian business center affiliated with the Kazan-based Charitable Patriotic Fund of Muslims opened in Kabul. Russia became the first country to open a business representative office in Afghanistan after August 2021. 

Tatarstani firms entered the market before the federal center had resolved the legal status of the Taliban movement, which remained on Russia's list of banned organizations until April 2025, when the Supreme Court suspended the ban and Russia became the first state to formally recognize the government in Kabul. 

During that pre-recognition period, Tatarstan's engagement operated in a space that federal diplomacy could not formally occupy, and the institutional relationships established during those years have persisted after recognition. 

As CEO of the Charitable Patriotic Foundation of Muslims of Russia, Rustam Khabibullin headed the business representative office. Even before the Taliban movement came to power, the patriotic foundation of Muslims had maintained relations with Afghanistan, in particular with Afghans of Tatar origin. Trade volumes reflect the accumulated weight of this engagement. 

Tatarstan–Afghanistan commerce doubled in the first eleven months of 2025 to US$ 51 million, accounting for roughly 10 percent of total Russian–Afghan trade. Tatarstan exports petroleum products, grain, KAMAZ trucks, and specialized equipment; Afghanistan exports dried fruits and minerals. 

In May 2025, Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar led an Afghan delegation to Kazan for meetings with Rais Rustam Minnikhanov and federal ministers. 

In August 2025, a Tatarstani delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Korobchenko travelled to Kabul, the first regional Russian delegation of such standing to visit in the post-2021 period.

IMPLICATIONS:

The paradiplomatic model offers Moscow operational flexibility that formal diplomacy cannot match, even after recognition. Industrial cooperation, equipment supplies, and energy projects can be advanced through Kazan without elevating every transaction to state-to-state protocol. 

The confessional and historical background that Tatarstan brings to the engagement is quite unique. Recognition has regularized the legal environment without altering the functional logic that made Kazan the preferred channel in the first place. 

The federal center has therefore continued to route substantial engagement through the republic rather than absorbing the Afghan file fully into the standard Ministry of Foreign Affairs framework.

This model also has historical precedents. During the Soviet period, Moscow often used Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as showcase republics of the “Soviet East” — modernized Muslim-majority regions meant to demonstrate the compatibility of socialism with development, secular governance, and industrial progress. 

Tashkent in particular hosted Afro-Asian conferences and served as a symbolic bridge to the decolonizing world, while Kazakhstan projected an image of industrial modernity and frontier development. In this sense, the current use of Tatarstan as Russia’s preferred Afghan channel reflects not an innovation, but a revival of an older practice: governing external peripheries through carefully selected internal Muslim intermediaries.

The trilateral Tatarstan–Turkmenistan–Afghanistan transport corridor scheduled for signature at KazanForum 2026 in May represents the most consequential element of this architecture. The route is conceived as an alternative to the International North-South Transport Corridor, whose Iranian segment has been disrupted by regional conflict. 

Nuruddin Azizi, the Afghan Minister of Industry and Trade, has been one of the driving forces behind the project from Afghanistan, and Oleg Korobchenko, Tatarstan's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade, has overseen the Tatarstani component through regular meetings with the Afghan side. First shipments are planned from Tatarstan. Khabibullin has identified Afghanistan as Tatarstan's leading importer of halal-certified goods. In 2024, companies in Tatarstan exported US$ 37 million worth of halal products to Afghanistan. This figure is 20 times higher than in 2023.

If the corridor materializes, it will deepen Russian participation in the trans-Afghan railway architecture that Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have been actively advancing. Uzbekistan's project, which runs from Termez through Mazar-i-Sharif toward South Asian ports via the Salang Pass. Kazakhstan's alternative route, with approximately US$ 500 million committed including a logistics hub in Herat, follows the technically simpler Turgundi–Herat–Kandahar–Spin Boldak corridor across western Afghanistan.

A parallel track runs through Uzbekistan's Surkhandarya region, where the Aritom free economic zone in Termez borders Afghanistan and offers multimodal logistics including rail, road, and river port. At the Russia–Uzbekistan interregional conference held in Termez in autumn 2026, Tatarstani and Surkhandarya officials advanced a cooperation framework covering industrial localization, agro-processing, and transit through Aritom toward Afghan and broader South Asian markets. The Uzbek side has positioned the zone as a 250-million-consumer gateway; Tatarstan's two industrial parks at Chirchik and Jizzakh, where more than half of resident firms are Russian, provide a productive base that can be articulated with the transit infrastructure at Termez. The architecture allows Russian exports to reach Afghan markets either through the Turkmen corridor or through Uzbek infrastructure, which diversifies the operational risk inherent in a single route.

Energy and resource cooperation extends the model further. At the Tatarstan Oil and Gas Chemical Forum, the Taliban's acting Minister of Mines and Petroleum Hedayatullah Badri publicly invited Tatarstani firms to invest in Afghan hydrocarbon projects, while the acting Minister of Energy and Water Resources Abdul Latif Mansur proposed Tatarstani participation in the Panjshir-to-Kabul water transfer project. Memoranda on exploration, extraction, and processing of oil and gas were signed in Kazan in 2025, and KER-Holding has advanced proposals for coal-fired power generation in Afghanistan. This is a role that China lost when its oil extraction project in northern Afghanistan was cancelled, and which Kazakhstan is now beginning to contest through Kazatomprom's and Kazakhmys's exploration activities in Laghman.

The labor migration track, opened in late 2025, adds a further dimension. Kabul has formally proposed directing Afghan labor migrants to Tatarstan, with an initial cohort of approximately 1,000 workers for the agricultural sector and potential expansion across industries. This inverts the direction of the Afghan exodus of the 2021–2024 period and establishes a formal channel through which Afghan labor enters Russia via a subnational agreement, a configuration that the federal labor migration framework has not previously accommodated.

The limits of the model are also visible. Banking infrastructure remains the principal operational constraint. Rustam Khabibullin has publicly identified transaction commissions of approximately 30 percent as a substantial barrier to Russia–Afghanistan commercial settlement and has proposed that Russia develop an international payments system modelled on hawala for transactions with member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Nur Ahmad Agha, the chairman of Da Afghanistan Bank, is expected to attend the first congress of OIC national bank representatives at KazanForum 2026, which has been identified as the venue for this discussion. Without a payments architecture that can absorb Afghan transactions at scale, the trade volumes reported will remain concentrated in a narrow band of fuel, grain, and equipment.

CONCLUSIONS:

Tatarstan's Afghan engagement is neither a humanitarian gesture nor a purely commercial venture. It is the operational layer of Russian policy in a region where the confessional and communal dimensions of the relationship carry weight that standard diplomatic instruments cannot supply. 

Russia's formal recognition of the Taliban government in April 2025 regularized the legal environment without displacing the Tatarstani channel, because the republic's combination of Islamic identity, a diaspora community in northern Afghanistan, an institutional platform in KazanForum, and a productive industrial base constitutes an instrument that no federal subject of Russia could replicate. 

The trilateral corridor agreement prepared for May 2026 and the parallel track through Surkhandarya indicate that the model is scaling from bilateral commerce toward regional transit infrastructure. Whether Tatarstan's engagement consolidates into a durable Russian presence in Afghanistan will depend on the resolution of payment-system constraints and on whether Moscow formalizes the paradiplomatic arrangement through a trade representation in Kabul. 

The broader significance lies in what the case illustrates: in the northward reorientation of Afghanistan that began with the closure of the Pakistani corridor, external powers are not only competing through state-level instruments but through the subnational channels that carry confessional, communal, and industrial advantages.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Eldaniz Gusseinov is Head of Research and сo-founder at the political foresight agency Nightingale Int. and a non-resident research fellow at Haydar Aliyev Center for Eurasian Studies of the Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul. Rassul Kospanov is a Senior Researcher at the National Analytical Center under Nazarbayev University, where he coordinates socio-political research projects and prepares analytical reports and policy recommendations for central and local government bodies. His work focuses on political processes in Kazakhstan and across Central Asia, as well as issues of regional cooperation.

By Stephen Blank

Recent trends in world politics have led several analysts to emphasize the idea of the retreat or recession of Russian power abroad. Yet few have commented on a key aspect of this retreat, namely the growing movement across Central Asia to unseat the Russian language from its position, often enshrined in law, as an official language on a par with the native tongue. Trends across the region demonstrate state action to diminish the role of the Russian language, growing political discussion of the issue, or socio-economic trends working to reduce the hegemony of the Russian language. These trends also display both Russia’s mounting anxiety about such trends and its increasingly visible inability to reverse or stop them.

BACKGROUND:

Russia’s recent reversals in Syria, Venezuela, the Caucasus and potentially Iran have triggered a flood of articles proclaiming the retreat of Russian power. However, none of these writings noticed the parallel ongoing dethronement of the Russian language from its previous eminence in Central Asia. Nevertheless, this epochal development, like Russia’s aforementioned geostrategic defeats, possesses profound political as well as cultural significance.  Given the importance of linguistic policies in the Tsarist, Soviet, and now post-Soviet regimes, the retreat of the Russian language from a position of linguistic-political primacy in Central Asia signifies major political and cultural transformations.

Specifically, Kazakhstan’s new constitution subtly but overtly downgrades the status of Russian as an official language. Article 9 of the new constitution establishes Kazakh as the dominant language of the country, relegating Russian to the status of an official language used by the government “alongside” Kazakh. This new constitution obtained massive public support although much of it was probably engineered from above, forcing Putin to congratulate President Tokayev on its ratification.  However, those congratulatory remarks, as Tokayev and his team well know, probably came through clenched teeth and were preceded by much Russian public criticism of Kazakhstan’s language policies.

An analysis of Russian press perspectives on the return of Kazakhstan’s Latin alphabet, originally introduced in the 1920’s, from the Cyrillicization of the alphabet during the height of Stalinism, displays a politicized perspective where this process is seen as a repudiation of a Russian orientation in favor of a Turkic-Western one. Insofar as Turkey and Western powers like the EU and the U.S. have stepped up their presence and interest in Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a whole, this politicized perspective sees language and alphabet policies as manifestations of the growing regional presence of those parties at Moscow’s expense. Thus, Russian press coverage warns Central Asian audiences against alleged foreign plots of an imperialist nature.

Russian media also minimize or deny the agency of Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states in formulating and then executing their own alphabet and language policies while implicitly and often overtly extolling the superior, imperial role of Russia’s language and culture as a vehicle for connecting Central Asia with modern civilization and culture. In other words, much of this literature reflects an imperial echo with deep roots in late Tsarist and then Soviet imperial policies that Russian elites seek to preserve.

IMPLICATIONS:

Kazakhstan’s assertion of its linguistic sovereignty challenges the Russian dream of maintaining its cultural-political hegemony over Central Asia because it is losing the means to enforce that claim on Kazakhstan and because Astana’s example is being replicated across Central Asia, e.g. in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. In Uzbekistan, as a 2024 paper makes clear, Russian must coexist if not compete with Uzbek and Tajik while English, a global Lingua Franca, is rapidly gaining on it as well. In Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan’s example has simultaneously stimulated debates on emulating its language policy.

Predictably the Russian government, sensing another threat to its receding hegemonic pretensions, has reacted strongly. On March 19, its embassy in Bishkek forcefully demanded that Kyrgyzstan’s government suppress “provocative statements of certain public figures” about the place of Russian in Kyrgyz society. The statement also complains about “language patrols” where vigilantes purportedly try to intimidate people to stop speaking Russian and speak only Kyrgyz. The embassy deemed such calls incitement to ethnic hatred and a threat to Russo-Kyrgyz strategic partnership and, in a conscious echo of Soviet propaganda, “deep alliance between our fraternal peoples and countries – Russia and Kyrgyzstan.”

This atavistic employment of Soviet tropes is no accident. Whereas Lenin’s language policies, likely inspired by his father’s work in teaching Orthodoxy to Muslims, wagered that teaching socialism would lead Soviet Muslims to socialism; Stalin decisively imposed Russification by giving the Russian language primacy and Cyrillicizing Central Asian alphabets. Putin’s consistent attacks on Lenin’s nationality policies, many of which stemmed from an appreciation of socio-political realities during the early Soviet period, reflect his clear preference for the centralizing, Stalinist, and more openly imperialist policies of Stalin and his successors.

Nevertheless, a generation after independence and having devoted much effort to fostering large-scale national identification among their populations, Central Asian leaders are openly moving to assert not just their foreign policy sovereignty, but also their linguistic nationalism. The use of Russian across Central Asia will likely remain pervasive because of the benefits it offers in economic relations with Russian and possibly Central Asian entities. However, Russian will not be the only regional Lingua Franca or the language of Russian imperial hegemony either in the Caucasus or in Central Asia. Since we can readily imagine a similar outcome in Ukraine due Russia’s war against the country, which underlies many of the causes for the retreat of Russian hegemony, the trends discernible in Central Asia go far beyond its borders.

CONCLUSIONS:

Even as the Russian government is currently discussing legislation allowing it to intervene anywhere abroad on behalf of its citizens, Central Asian developments presage the ongoing erosion of Russian cultural and thus political power. The whole idea of the “Russkii Mir” (Russian World) based on speakers of the Russian language that furnishes a pretext for interventions abroad is rapidly falling to pieces. From Tsarist and Soviet times, Russian authorities consistently regarded Russian as the sole “civilized” and therefore hegemonic language of the empire and often sought to enforce that hegemony by coercion. Those days are visibly ending as Central Asian governments are, with increasing confidence, asserting their own native tongues while also opening up to greater economic-cultural interaction with other countries. While Russian will not disappear in Central Asia; it is being decentered and increasingly deprived of its superior legal-political standing.

This process is clearly linked to the global recession of Russian power even as Russia fights to retain its erstwhile imperial and global great power status. For its rulers, expression of that status through all the forms of cultural power, e.g. alphabets and languages, was a critical component of empire. Yet what we see today, despite Moscow’s threats or even forceful efforts to arrest or reverse that decline, is an imperial sunset that evidently cannot be stopped either in culture or in hard power.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, www.fpri.org.

By Rafis Abazov

Uzbekistan is undergoing a strategic shift from reliance on traditional labor migration destinations toward a regulated, skills-based mobility model targeting high-income markets in Europe, East Asia, and North America. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the establishment of a centralized Migration Agency institutionalizes vocational training, language certification, and bilateral labor agreements aligned with international standards. With over 2 million citizens working abroad and remittances reaching nearly US$ 14 billion annually, approximately one-fifth of GDP, migration remains central to economic stability. The reform aims to diversify risk, increase remittance quality, enhance human capital accumulation, and position Uzbekistan as a structured and reliable partner in global labor markets while strengthening domestic development through reintegration and entrepreneurship.

BACKGROUND:

Uzbekistan is entering a new phase in its migration policy. Long characterized by unregulated large-scale labor outflows to Russia and other post-Soviet destinations, the country is now deliberately repositioning itself as a regulated supplier of skilled labor to high-income markets in Europe, North America, Japan, and South Korea. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, migration is no longer treated merely as a social safety valve but as a strategic economic instrument. The newly established Migration Agency signals an institutional shift toward managed mobility, vocational certification, and international labor standards—embedding migration policy within Uzbekistan’s broader economic modernization agenda. For over two decades, Uzbekistan has been one of Central Asia’s largest labor exporters. Economic restructuring, demographic pressure, and limited domestic job creation pushed millions of citizens to seek employment abroad. According to official data, almost two million Uzbek citizens (2023, official est.) were working abroad in 2023, the majority in Russia. Remittances have played a decisive role in the national economy: inflows reached approximately US$ 13.9 billion in 2023, accounting for nearly 18–20 percent of GDP. While these remittances have stabilized household incomes and supported domestic consumption, overdependence on a single labor destination exposed structural vulnerabilities. Currency fluctuations, geopolitical tensions, and regulatory shifts in host countries directly impacted migrants’ earnings and employment conditions.

Recognizing these risks, Tashkent has embarked on a policy recalibration. The government’s new migration strategy emphasizes diversification toward high-income economies where wage levels, labor protections, and skill requirements are higher. This pivot is not simply geographic; it is qualitative. It aims to transition from low-skilled, often informal labor migration toward regulated, skills-based, contract-driven mobility. The new Migration Agency coordinates with ministries of education, labor, and foreign affairs to align training curricula with employer demands in Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the Gulf states. Specialized programs now provide certification in healthcare assistance, construction trades, agricultural technologies, and industrial maintenance—sectors experiencing labor shortages in high-income economies. Language proficiency has become a central component of this strategy. Uzbek vocational centers now offer certified courses in German, Korean, Japanese, and English, increasing employability and reducing risks of exploitation. In parallel, bilateral labor agreements are being renegotiated to include stronger social protection clauses, insurance coverage, and mechanisms for dispute resolution. These agreements also aim to reduce irregular migration flows by expanding legal quotas and transparent recruitment procedures.

IMPLICATIONS:

Uzbekistan’s approach reflects a broader global shift toward managed migration frameworks. Rather than allowing informal recruitment networks to dominate the process, authorities are introducing structured pathways that protect workers and enhance the country’s reputation as a reliable labor partner. The economic rationale behind Uzbekistan’s migration pivot is multifaceted.

First, diversification reduces systemic risk. By expanding destination markets beyond Russia, Uzbekistan shields remittance flows from regional economic volatility. Even modest wage differentials matter: average earnings in South Korea or parts of the EU can exceed Russian wages by two to three times for comparable skills. Second, higher-income destinations generate larger remittance volumes per worker. If managed effectively, even a partial reallocation of labor flows toward high-income economies could significantly increase foreign currency inflows. With remittances already reaching nearly US$ 14 billion, incremental improvements in wage levels and contract stability could strengthen macroeconomic resilience. Third, the government views migration as a vehicle for human capital accumulation. Returning migrants often bring savings, technical skills, and entrepreneurial experience. Policy frameworks increasingly emphasize reintegration programs, small-business grants, and credit access to channel return migration into domestic economic development.

Uzbekistan’s recalibration also carries significant geopolitical implications. Diversifying migration destinations reduces overdependence on a single external partner and enhances foreign policy flexibility. By negotiating labor agreements with EU member states and East Asian economies, Tashkent strengthens diplomatic and economic ties beyond the post-Soviet space. Domestically, migration reform intersects with demographic realities. Uzbekistan’s population exceeds 36 million (up from 21 million in 1992), with a median age under 30. Each year, hundreds of thousands of young people enter the labor market. While domestic job creation remains a priority, international labor mobility offers a complementary pathway to absorb demographic pressure. By embedding migration within vocational education reform, authorities attempt to align external labor demand with internal skills development. This integration reduces the historical gap between education outputs and labor market requirements—both domestic and international.

Despite its strategic coherence, the migration pivot faces structural constraints.

An important challenge lies in balancing external labor exports with domestic industrialization goals. As Uzbekistan pursues manufacturing and services expansion, excessive outward migration of skilled workers could create internal shortages. Policymakers must calibrate mobility to avoid brain drain while still leveraging remittance benefits. Geopolitical uncertainties also remain. Immigration policies in high-income markets are subject to domestic political debates and regulatory fluctuations. Uzbekistan’s strategy depends on sustained openness in receiving countries. Finally, the success of reintegration programs will determine whether migration fosters long-term development. Without structured incentives for investment and entrepreneurship, returning migrants may struggle to translate overseas experience into domestic opportunity.

CONCLUSIONS:

Uzbekistan’s reforms may set a precedent for other Central Asian states grappling with similar migration dynamics. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan also face outward unregulated labor mobility, albeit on different scales. If Tashkent successfully institutionalizes managed mobility while maintaining remittance stability, it could provide a replicable governance model for the region.

In this regard, migration policy intersects with regional economic cooperation frameworks. Skills harmonization, cross-border vocational partnerships, and data-sharing mechanisms could enhance Central Asia’s collective bargaining power in negotiations with destination countries.

With over 2 million citizens working abroad and remittances nearing US$ 14 billion annually, migration remains central to Uzbekistan’s economic stability. The new framework aims to maximize these benefits while reducing vulnerability and enhancing skill formation. Uzbekistan’s migration transformation represents more than a policy adjustment; it is a structural repositioning within the global labor economy. By institutionalizing managed mobility through the newly established Migration Agency, aligning vocational training with international standards, and diversifying destination markets toward high-income economies, Tashkent seeks to convert migration from a reactive necessity into a strategic asset.

If implemented effectively, this pivot could deepen Uzbekistan’s integration into regional and global economic networks—not merely as a labor exporter but as a regulated, skills-oriented partner. The long-term success of this strategy will depend on sustained institutional capacity, international cooperation, and the ability to translate institutionalized mobility programs into domestic development.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Rafis Abazov, PhD, is a director of the Institute for Green and Sustainable Development at Kazakh National Agrarian Research University. He is author of The Culture and Customs of the Central Asian Republics (2007), An Effective Project Manager (2025) and some others. He has been an executive manager for the Global Hub of the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) on Sustainability in Kazakhstan since 2014 and facilitated the International Model UN New Silk Way conference in Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries.

By Sudha Ramachandran

Afghanistan currently finds itself in an exceptionally precarious position. To the west, neighboring Iran has become an active war zone, while to the east, Pakistan has initiated what it describes as an “open war” against Afghanistan. After decades of conflict, Afghanistan’s capacity to manage the far-reaching consequences of the situation in Iran remains severely limited. The country’s already fragile economy is being further strained by rising global oil prices. At the same time, its access to maritime trade routes via Pakistan has been effectively closed for several months, while alternative trade corridors through Iran, the only viable substitute, are increasingly under threat. The likelihood of a substantial influx of refugees, including returning Afghan nationals, is expected to exacerbate an already critical humanitarian situation. Concurrently, the Taliban authorities are closely observing how the Iranian government responds to external pressures aimed at regime change.

BACKGROUND:

On the night of February 21-22, Pakistan launched “Operation Ghazab Lil Haq” against Afghanistan. Islamabad said that its missile and air strikes were targeting camps and hideouts of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Islamic State of Khorasan Province based on Afghan soil. Over the past month, Pakistan’s strikes have intensified and expanded in terms of the nature of targets and their geography. If initially Islamabad targeted border posts and alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan’s border provinces, soon it was hitting Taliban military assets and ammunition depots as well as civilian targets, including a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul.  

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s western neighbor, Iran, came under devastating missile and air strikes launched by the U.S. and Israel on February 28. Since then, leadership compounds, military infrastructure, and economic and energy locations, including the country’s oil production and storage facilities have been destroyed. Top Iranian political and military leaders have been killed in the strikes as have hundreds of civilians. The war has spread beyond Iran. Tehran retaliated to the U.S.-Israel attacks by hitting Israeli targets as well as U.S. bases and oil infrastructure in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. South Asia was soon drawn into the war when the U.S. torpedoed an Iranian warship, IRIS Dena, 40 nautical miles off the Sri Lankan coast. On March 20, Iranian missiles reached deep into the Indian Ocean to target the U.S.-UK base in Diego Garcia. The war could draw in more countries, such as Pakistan. The destruction of production and refining infrastructure in the Gulf and Iran’s blocking of the Strait of Hormuz have led to fuel shortages and surging prices worldwide. What started as a war on Iran has set economies across continents ablaze. 

Among the countries that will be hit the hardest by the Iran war is Afghanistan. Several factors make it particularly vulnerable. It is Iran’s neighbor; the two countries share a 921 km-long border. Afghanistan is also a landlocked country, dependent on Iran and Pakistan for access to ports. Importantly, Afghanistan was ravaged by war for decades and internationally isolated since the Taliban captured power in August 2021. Its capacity to withstand the impact of the war in West Asia was limited to begin with. This capacity is being further weakened by Pakistan’s ongoing military strikes on Afghanistan.

IMPLICATIONS:

The Taliban regime strongly condemned the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran, describing them as an “act of aggression.” Following the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it expressed its condolences to the Iranian government and people. Especially since the Taliban came to power in August 2021, relations between Iran and Afghanistan have grown, especially with regard to trade. Although there are several issues of conflict between the two, anti-Americanism serves as glue. The Taliban’s chief spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, has said in the past that if Tehran requests assistance in the event of a U.S. attack, Afghanistan is ready and willing to extend help.

So far, Afghanistan has not been hit by Iranian or U.S/Israeli drones or missiles. Indeed, it is western and south-western Iran that has borne the brunt of U.S. and Israeli strikes. Eastern Iran, which borders Afghanistan, has escaped being hit so far. It is therefore an attractive safe haven for those fleeing western Iranian cities and towns. These internally displaced people can be expected to cross into Afghanistan and Iran’s other eastern neighbors should the war intensify, prolong or spread to eastern Iran. Afghanistan is already grappling with the economic burden imposed by the mass deportation of an estimated 5.4 million Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan since October 2023. The new refugee flows from Iran will substantially intensify the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Persecution of Afghan refugees in Iran is set to increase as Iranians have often suspected that they are spying for Israel. Such perceptions are likely to intensify. They will be hounded by Iranian police and people, forcing them to join the exodus into Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s weak economy is poised to fray further amid fuel shortages and surging prices. Given its low capacity for manufacturing, Afghanistan has depended on Iran for consumer goods. Afghanistan’s landlocked status has made it dependent on Pakistan and Iran for access to the sea, however, as access to Pakistani ports has been shut off, Afghan dependence on Iranian markets and trade corridors to the sea have deepened. Although Iranian border posts remain open to Afghan goods, the trade corridor through Iran to the sea is insecure as it runs through the conflict zone. While it continues to function, it is vulnerable to missile strikes as the war in Iran intensifies. There is a risk that Chabahar port could be bombed. The closure of the Iranian trade corridor would bring the Afghan economy to its knees and shatter Afghan lives and livelihoods. Afghanistan will have to strengthen its trade and transit ties with other Central Asian states.

Notwithstanding its condemnation of the U.S and Israeli strikes on Iran, Pakistan has benefited somewhat from the war in Iran. As the international community is preoccupied with the West Asia crisis, it has ignored the Pakistani military strikes on Afghanistan. Pakistan has therefore escaped global opprobrium for the horrific suffering its strikes have caused to Afghan civilians. Meanwhile, the Taliban regime is watching how Pakistan is responding to the crisis in West Asia. Should the Saudis decide to join the war against Iran, Pakistan, which has a mutual defense pact with Riyadh, is obligated to join the Saudis. Drawn into the West Asian crisis, the Pakistani military would need to halt its ongoing “open war” against Afghanistan. A termination of ‘Operation Ghazab Lil Haq’ would be welcomed by Afghanistan.

Taliban leaders will also be watching Iran closely to see how pressure from outside in the form of military strikes and war impacts an authoritarian regime. Will decapitation and war trigger unrest and lead to regime change? Or will it strengthen national unity and see the population rally behind the regime against the foreign invader? In the event of regime change in Iran, its leaders could seek sanctuary in Afghanistan.

CONCLUSIONS:

The conflict involving Iran has arisen at a particularly challenging moment for Afghanistan, which is simultaneously facing missile and air strikes from Pakistan. As a landlocked state, Afghanistan is especially vulnerable to external disruptions; its economic difficulties are likely to intensify due to fuel shortages linked to the conflict in Iran and the resulting constraints on access to seaports. In addition to its geographic proximity to the West Asian conflict zone, Afghanistan’s already limited institutional and economic capacity is expected to come under severe strain. This pressure will be exacerbated by a further economic downturn and by the anticipated influx of refugees, including returning Afghan nationals, from Iran.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Dr Sudha Ramachandran is an independent South Asian political and security analyst. She is also South Asia editor at The Diplomat. Her articles have appeared in publications like The Diplomat, Asia Times, China Brief and Terrorism Monitor.