On November 17, a railway bridge between the Galaba and Amuzang stations in Uzbekistan exploded. The location of the explosion is in Surkhandarya oblast, between the Uzbek city of Termez and the Tajik city Kurgan-Tyube, not far from Uzbekistan’s borders with Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Due to the destruction of the bridge, a large number of wagons carrying goods headed for Tajikistan are stuck in Uzbekistan. A governmental committee has been organized to investigate the causes of the incident. According to local mass media, the explosion is considered to be a terrorist act. However, some local observers have doubts about this version as Uzbek authorities keep the site closed to the public and make little progress in restoring the bridge and the operation of the railway.

It should be noted that Uzbekistan has not experienced terrorist acts in several years. Serious damage to the railway such as the current destruction of a bridge fundament is a major concern not only for the Uzbek authorities, but also for Tajikistan and the U.S., who transport goods through this area.

While no human casualties have been reported, the disruption caused huge inconveniencies and large financial losses to both the Tajik and Russian Railway companies. The Deputy Head of Tajik Railways, Usmon Kalandarov, confirmed interruptions in the operation of railway communication to and from southern Tajikistan as a result of the bridge explosion. Another Deputy Head of the company, Vladimir Sobkalov, reported that Tajik Railways organized transportation of passengers heading for to the southern regions of the country from Dushanbe by motor transport. This nevertheless infers substantial losses to the company. Similarly, the authorities of the Russian Railways announced temporary suspension of railway ticket sales for the route passing the affected area in Uzbekistan.

Tajikistan is seemingly suffering the most from the incident, although the Uzbek state-owned joint stock railway company “Uzbek Railways” continues to accept wagons with goods bound for Tajikistan. Thus, 270 wagons with goods headed for the Khatlon region in Tajikistan are currently being stored in Uzbekistan. According to the authorities of Uzbek Railways, this negatively affects the operation of Uzbekistan’s railway system. They have thus proposed to their Tajik colleagues that the wagons be transferred to the checkpoint at Kudukli and on to central Tajikistan, and that the goods could be sent to southern Tajikistan from there.

However, Sobkalov stated that they strongly disagree with such a proposal: “We have no opportunity to take these goods to Dushanbe and arrange their delivery to the south of the country, as it requires large exploitation expenses on motor transport, and primarily involves the movement of vehicles through the mountain passes.” Moreover, the right to change the destination points of the goods belongs to the consignors, which are outside Tajikistan. Thus, nothing can be changed for goods that are already on their way.

Furthermore, Sobkalov claimed that Tajik Railways offered helping their Uzbek colleagues in reconstructing the damage and restoring the operation of the railway between Galaba and Amuzang. “However, we received no answer and no information concerning the time frames of the bridge reconstruction.” According to Sobkalov, Tajik Railways had received no information about the nature and extent of the damage to the bridge from their Uzbek colleagues. “Currently, the bridge is cordoned off, Uzbek law enforcement bodies do not let anyone near it, so at the moment we don’t even know how the bridge is damaged,” Sobkalov said. The Tajik railway authorities are not convinced of the difficulties in restoring such a small bridge with the facilities and resources possessed by their Uzbek colleagues and believe that it should be possible to restore the bridge within 24 hours.

In light of the many ambiguities around the incident, many local observers recalled that Uzbekistan in 2010 prevented the delivery of goods to Khatlon oblast in southern Tajikistan under the pretext that a road was destroyed. Tashkent later motivated these actions by its position on the construction of the Roghun hydropower station in Tajikistan. After four months of “railway blockade,” the two countries managed to agree that Uzbekistan would only disrupt goods intended for the Roghun project. Hopefully, the investigation will determine whether this explosion is an actual terrorist act or another “expression of discontent” by Uzbekistan.