KABUL - The leaders of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan approved a landmark plan last week to connect the three countries with railway links, in a move expected to boost the economic potential of the region as well as help strengthen relations.

Afghanistan’s Minister for Public Works, Najibullah Ozhan, termed the development “historic” and added that the work of the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-backed project will commence in two months.

“This project not only connects neighbouring countries, but is also of high economic importance for the region,” said Mr. Ozhan, who accompanied the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, to Turkmenistan for a 5 June ceremony to inaugurate the railway project.

The plan falls within the framework of a regional cooperation process aimed at enhancing stability and economic prosperity in the ‘Heart of Asia’ region, centred on Afghanistan. On 26 April, at a related meeting to that cooperation process, high-level delegations from 30 countries and a dozen international organizations, including the United Nations, endorsed an implementation plan for six key confidence-building measures (CBMs). One of the CBMs was ‘Regional Infrastructure.’

“We believe there is no greater measure of confidence and cooperation in a region than the existence of infrastructure that connects peoples and facilitates interaction,” said a declaration agreed by the delegations at the end of the meeting in the Kazakh capital of Almaty, where the UN was represented the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom.

Once completed, the 590-kilometre rail link will connect the landlocked countries of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan with Russia, and other former Soviet states with South Asia. Media reports suggest that, as a strategic transit nation, Afghanistan could benefit immensely from the project.

A statement put out by the office of the President Karzai on 6 June said the project will improve business relations and the economies of the countries involved. The President assured his Tajik and Turkmen counterparts – Emomali Rahmon and Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov, respectively – that Afghanistan “would spare no effort in timely implementation of the project.”

Mr. Ozhan said that the ADB has agreed to provide US$240 million for project implementation on the Afghan side.

He noted that another railway project, which connects Afghanistan’s western Herat province with neighbouring Iran, has been funded by Iran and, so far, 85 per cent work of the project has been completed.

“We are also in contact with Pakistani officials have and requested them to build railways up to the border between the two countries in order to enable us to start building the remaining part of the project on the Afghan side,” Mr. Ozhan added.

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