Transport and logistics agenda of SCO Summit Caliber.Az interview with Uzbek pundit Ravshan Nazarov

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit will be held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in mid-September. Some 20 heads of state are expected to attend. The keynote of the upcoming meeting will be the discussion of international logistics projects, some of which Azerbaijan is directly linked to - the implementation of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative. The organization is also important for the further expansion of Azerbaijani-Chinese and Azerbaijani-Pakistani relations. Azerbaijan currently has a status of a dialogue partner within SCO.

Which project will be the main topic of discussion at the summit, and at what stage is the realization of the "One Belt, One Road" idea? Caliber.Az addressed these and other questions to Ravshan Nazarov, Ph.D., senior researcher at the Institute of State and Law of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan.

Nazarov stressed that the SCO has been acting as a dynamically developing organisation. In 2021 the total trade turnover between the SCO member-states (including Iran, which has almost become an SCO member) exceeded $776 billion. As compared to 2020, foreign trade contacts have increased by a quarter, and in general, over the past five years the growth has made up one-third (at the end of 2017 the trade turnover between the SCO countries amounted to $575 billion).

As for the Samarkand summit, it is primarily planned to discuss aspects of expanding cooperation within the organisation, including those related to the transport and logistics agenda, the expert noted.

"One of the significant planned projects is the China - Kyrgyzstan - Uzbekistan railway, the construction of which was agreed upon long ago, but its practical implementation has been repeatedly postponed for various objective and subjective reasons. This railway route is considered in the expert community to be one of the elements of the large-scale international project "One Belt, One Road". Currently, a significant part of the issues related to its implementation has been discussed in bilateral and trilateral working meetings, the drafting of a feasibility study, and approval of the final version of the route (there are four so far, but there is a preferred one: Irkeshtam - Sarytash - Osh - Andijan) and preparation of financing arrangements have already started.

Initially, it was thought that China would bear most of the financial costs, as the entire road was supposed to be built to Chinese standard (1.435 m gauge). However, it was later agreed that the Chinese track would only go as far as the border and that the Russian track size (1.52 m) would be used in Central Asia, and the Russian Federation has also expressed an interest in part-financing the project. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan will mainly contribute labour and partly construction materials and machinery", our source said.

However, according to Nazarov, the proposed route is unlikely to become a serious alternative to the main routes connecting China, Russia, and Central Asia - the Trans-Siberian Railway, BAM, and North-South.

"The new route is planned to carry mainly those cargoes that are initially oriented towards Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Türkiye, and the Middle East, and this is by no means more than 10-15% of the volume of modern traffic. But the important aspect of building the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway is that it will make it possible to link the transport and logistics communications of China and the Central Asian states to a greater extent", the Uzbek analyst said.

He mentioned the construction of the Trans-Afghan railway as another long-discussed project, which is also likely to be considered at the SCO summit.

"The recent tensions on the Afghan-Uzbek border related to the infiltration of Afghan nationals into Uzbek territory on Aral Paigambar Island was not the first case of a conflict situation and, apparently, not the last. Earlier incidents have also occurred - mines, shells, and rockets were launched into Uzbek territory from the Afghan side because fighting between the Taliban and the anti-Taliban armed opposition as well as between rival groups within the Taliban regularly occurs in the border areas. These factors contribute to the overall volatility of the internal political situation in Afghanistan. Although the scale of fighting has decreased significantly over the past year (since the Taliban came to power), real stabilization is still a long way off. And this is the main factor that prevents the launching of the Trans-Afghan railway project.

On the one hand, Afghanistan needs large-scale projects (in mining, manufacturing, agriculture, logistics, etc.) to accelerate the normalisation of the domestic political situation. On the other hand, such projects can only be implemented if there are security guarantees, which are still very problematic. This is currently a vicious circle with one of the promising logistics plans," Nazarov concluded.