Central Asia’s Border Regime Creates New Distance and Connection
Central Asia’s Border Regime Creates New Distance and Connection
Executive Summary:
- Central Asian states continue to improve border management through ongoing cooperation. “Invisible borders” are nevertheless manifesting in official policies, communiqués, and speeches that could quietly sabotage regional ties and large-scale development plans.
- Geopolitical rapprochement in Central Asia is gaining traction, but the coordination and implementation of “soft” infrastructure remain sluggish. New border regimes create new forms of distantiation even as they forge new connectivities.
- Regional cooperation through mechanisms that foster bottom-up initiatives, transparency, and sustainability of multilateral projects will help address shared challenges. Invisible borders are neither new nor insurmountable in the pursuit of institutional cohesion on the way to regionalism.
Central Asian regionalism has made a viable pivot since independence, and borders continue to play an important role in deepening regional cooperation. Intentions to improve border management mark ongoing cooperation (see EDM, September 24). On September 23, the heads of the Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Tajik border services met in Issyk-Kul to strengthen information-sharing and operational cooperation along their borders (Kaktus Media, September 23). Some of Central Asia’s most consequential borders, however, are less visible. Different administrative procedures, security regimes, permits, infrastructure standards, customs practices, regulatory systems, and national institutional logics continue to divide societies even when physical border disputes are being resolved.
Roads and rail bear heavily on Central Asia’s connectivity, both internally and with the global economy. The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) injection of billions of dollars for varied projects under the One Belt One Road initiative makes it a prominent—if not dominant—player in Central Asia (see China Brief, May 23, 2023, July 12, 2024, October 17, 31, 2025, May 11). Over thirty years of independence have seen Central Asian political elites reluctantly invest in intra-regional connectivity. The few examples of new railway tracks constructed in Central Asia post-independence, for example, trace to interests in gaining access to external actors and reducing neighboring states’ capacity to interfere with or disrupt transit. The Kazakhstan–Turkmenistan–Iran railway (Uzen–Bereket–Gorgan), completed in 2014, for example, was not only built to establish a new connection between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, which were already linked via the Uzbek rail network, but to provide Kazakhstan with a bypass to Iran and Persian Gulf ports (see EDM, May 17, 2013, September 22, 2014, March 31). Rather than an example of intra-regional cooperation, Astana sought to break Uzbekistan’s transport monopoly, which had previously controlled all southern cargo flows in the region (University of Central Asia, 2012). [1] Turkmenistan secured its own independent outlet to Iran as early as 1996 via the Tejen–Sarakhs-Mashhad line, whereas the Caspian route, linking Kazakhstan directly to the Iranian border while bypassing Uzbekistan, was completed a full eighteen years later.
Trans-border cooperation in Central Asia has historically been limited. [2] Instead of building new bridges and connecting burgeoning production nodes between 1991 and 2016, Central Asian countries more often dismantled the Soviet-era infrastructural networks that once connected them. The Karimov-era shuttering of railway links between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan demonstrated how isolationism triumphed over regional logics (Azattyq Asia, April 6, 2012). Uzbekistan did not complete work on restoring the Galaba–Amuzang railway line, which reconnects Uzbekistani railways with southern Tajikistan, until 2018 (see EDM, March 12, 2018). While this move was driven by the immediate need to normalize bilateral trade, it also reflected a strategic long-term extra-regional vision to integrate into the emerging Trans-Afghan logistical corridor.
Given the regional inclination toward cross-border impediments, several Central Asian checkpoints were closed for much of the independence era. This negatively affected interregional trade. For example, Astana closed the Kichi–Kapka checkpoint on the Kyrgyz–Kazakh border immediately after the 2010 “color revolution” in Kyrgyzstan (Kabar, November 28, 2019). This crossing remained blocked for almost nine years, even after the situation in Kyrgyzstan stabilized. This suggests the policy extended beyond perceptions of direct threat to become a deliberate effort to increase the “friction of distance” between the two states.
Central Asia’s commodification of water and resultant “hydro-political distance” between upstream and downstream regional neighbors plays a large role in regional dynamics (see EDM, June 16). The Soviet-era irrigation infrastructure was politicized to serve unilateral water-distribution agendas. The degradation of irrigation infrastructure along the Fergana Valley, where transboundary water channels were subjected to autonomous control and inconsistent maintenance, illustrates how “sovereign water management” undermined both the domestic and transnational functionality of canals. Unlike the major transport corridors now selectively rehabilitated by external actors for global transit, these localized, life-sustaining irrigation systems often fall outside international infrastructure investment and enter terminal disrepair.
Control over water infrastructure at the source of fluvial systems (i.e., glacial melt, seasonal snowmelt, mid-mountain precipitation, and high-altitude groundwater/springs) affords Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan volumetric control of canals, irrigation networks, reservoirs, and hydropower generation facilities. This, in turn, gives them leverage in relations with more economically developed Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Downstream states have consistently framed water management as a matter of national security and vital sovereign interest, asserting that their populations maintain an entitlement to historical water allocations (Tengrinews, July 9, 2025).
This fracture manifests through the region’s riverbeds and hydrological arteries. It acts as a silent, deeply rooted spatial divide undermining prospects of a truly integrated regional electricity market. This divide prevents states from finding common ground by complicating the rhetoric used by diplomats and heads of state. Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov acknowledged this in May, referencing notorious difficulties “for the region’s countries to reach a unified agreement,” while arguing, “There is a growing consensus that we must find a balance of interests and develop mutually acceptable solutions based on a comprehensive approach, including the gradual introduction of effective economic tools for water and energy resource distribution” (Kaktus Media, May 6).
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, regional flights between capitals and major cities of Central Asia largely ceased. During the Soviet era, a dense network of Central Asian airports ensured connectivity between district centers. After 1991, many regional airports were abandoned due to a lack of state support and other factors. This effectively ended cross-border interactions for certain cities, and remote regions became more functionally distant. Only recently have efforts been undertaken to restore some of these routes, for instance in Manas city (former Jalal-Abad city) in Kyrgyzstan (24.kg, August 12, 2025).
This process of “distantiation” also appeared, until recently, in the region’s roads and railways leading to the Soviet Union’s metropolitan centers, primarily Moscow. After the Soviet Union collapsed, new vectors of economic opportunity prompted the building of roads and railways to the PRC’s borders. These efforts, however, failed to maintain extant or introduce new connections between the Central Asian republics themselves. Analysis of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region from 1990 to 2015 shows that most capital went into the oil, gas, and mining sectors (Boston Consulting Group, 2018). [3] These projects, in turn, were built to pump resources outward, not to create trade hubs within the region.
Only with intraregional investment growing to $1.3 billion in 2024 (42 percent more than in 2023) did Central Asian governments prioritize internal connectivity to avoid becoming mere transit corridors between neighboring great powers (Eurasian Development Bank, December 11, 2025). Many connectivity projects still fail to serve remote regions of Central Asian states and remain primarily tied to external initiatives. The China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan (CKU) railway, sponsored by the PRC, connects Kashgar (Xinjiang) to Andijan (Uzbekistan) through Kyrgyzstan’s Makmal and the southern border city of Manas. Even with support from the PRC and other international patrons, implementation of this and other Central Asia-based connectivity projects is proceeding relatively slowly. One conspicuous example is an approximately 280-kilometer (174-mile) alternative to the current 460-kilometer (285-mile) Almaty–Issyk-Kul Road (ANKASAM, August 4, 2023). This project has been discussed for more than 20 years as a way to expand tourism in the popular alpine lake destination, but as the Kazakh side recently announced, it is currently on hold—the project was not included in the current priorities (Kursiv.Media, September 29).
At the regional scale, the Middle Corridor is a connective development strategy that could amplify Central Asian states’ role in trans-Eurasian transit. Too rarely considered, however, is its potential to generate invisible divides through several critical dimensions. It connects the PRC with Europe via Central Asia while incentivizing the modernization of port infrastructure at Aktau and Kuryk (Kazakhstan) on the Caspian Sea. It also provides impetus for expanding logistics centers across Central Asia. This may be viewed positively, but only if one does not consider how this corridor is largely driven by extra-regional imperatives, such as circumventing sanctions or restoring new routes for Chinese goods to the European Union. Central Asian states are compelled to develop a common infrastructure framework that overtly relies on the patronage and cooperation of extra-regional actors. Risks abound from geopolitical and geo-economic shifts that could marginalize such networks.
Rather than fostering Central Asian unity, the corridor could polarize emerging hubs within the economically stronger states of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan from those of economically weaker countries. Measuring the success of the Middle Corridor not merely by the kilometers of track laid, but by the minutes saved at border crossings raises the prospect of connectivity hierarchies. As a 2026 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report conveys, “The coexistence of multiple and unharmonised license and permit requirements for each country along the route is exacerbated by deficient border procedure co-operation, reducing network performance, competitiveness, and attractiveness” (OECD, 2023). [4] In such circumstances, the region’s peripheries could become “transportation dead-ends.”
Large-scale transit flows often fail to generate local employment and instead create “invisible borders” between transnational capital and local small businesses. Unable to integrate into sophisticated global supply chains, the latter struggle to maintain a viable market share. The concentration of OBOR-funded projects and development initiatives in Kyrgyzstan’s Chui oblast illustrates this point as both a boon and a threat (The Diplomat, December 9, 2025). Even when projects reach remote regions, they often take the form of “dotted lines,” connecting extraction points directly to borders and bypassing local communities. This creates sharp internal boundaries between modernized logistical nodes and increasingly distanced hinterlands.
Discrepancies in technical standards, phytosanitary norms, and digital protocols—particularly between Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) members and non-members—act as barriers that are often more effective than barbed wire in stalling genuine integration. For instance, Uzbekistan is the largest supplier of early-season vegetables, melons, and fruits to Kazakhstan. The border between the two countries, however, frequently became a site of prolonged traffic jams due to strict requirements imposed by the Kazakh side in compliance with EAEU regulations. The scale of the problem was such that the governments of both countries had to establish a special working group, and in August, the parties agreed to eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers for 19 product categories. (GazetaUz, August 6). Digital standards regulation is a border platform on which the PRC and the United States compete in Central Asia. Currently, embracing all possible digital standards and remaining relatively open to innovation, Central Asian states may soon fall prey to cyber-geopolitics that require joining a “bloc” in an emerging global digital bipolarity.
Coordination and implementation of “soft” infrastructure in Central Asia remain sluggish. For example, experts from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have proposed developing an “Invest in Central Asia” brand, which Kyrgyzstan seeks to make tangible through a platform called the Central Asian Investment Promotion Agency Network (CA-IPAN) (Institute for Advanced International Studies, 2025). [5] This single investment portal for the region would ostensibly promote the region’s countries under a common brand and cooperative ideal, but it leaves broad questions unanswered about how it might satisfy all stakeholders and translate into tangible outcomes across the territories of various Central Asian states (Vecherniy Bishkek, June 19).
The border regime resulting from the mid-2020s agreements between Central Asian states is, most certainly, worth celebrating and recognizing for its prospects of heretofore unachieved regionalism. Prudence, however, requires attending to the considerable constraints and barriers to productive integration that remain. New border regimes create new forms of distantiation even as they forge new connectivities. Regional cooperation must evolve into a mechanism that fosters transparency, sustainability, and equity if there is any hope of addressing shared challenges. Invisible borders are neither new nor insurmountable in the pursuit of institutional cohesion on the way to integration.
Notes:
[1] Elena Kulipanova, International Transport in Central Asia: Understanding the Patterns of (Non-)Cooperation, Working Paper No. 2 (Bishkek: University of Central Asia, 2012), https://www.ucentralasia.org/media/4m3jk2kv/uca-ippa-wp2-international-transport-in-central-asia-eng.pdf.
[2] Sergei Golunov and Assel Bitabar, “Central Asian Cross-Border Cooperation,” in Bridging Borders: Central Asian Cross-Border Cooperation in a Comparative Global Perspective (Cham: Springer, 2025), 71–106, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-84253-5_3.
[3] Leyla Abdymomunova et al., Investing in Central Asia: One Region, Many Opportunities (Boston Consulting Group, December 2018), https://web-assets.bcg.com/img-src/BCG-Investing-In-Central-Asia-report-RUS_tcm9-247777.pdf.
[4] OECD, Realizing the Potential of the Middle Corridor (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1787/635ad854-en.
[5] Ibrahim R. Mavlanov et al., Стратегии продвижения Центральной Азии как единого инвестиционного направления (Institute for Advanced International Studies and Astana International Financial Centre, December 2025), https://aifc.kz/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ca_investment_strategy_uz_kz_collaboration_v_rus-21052026.pdf.
