Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the United Arab Emirates have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to assess a railway that would run from Kazakhstan through Uzbekistan and Afghanistan to Pakistani ports on the Indian Ocean.

The Kazakh transport ministry announced the accord. It commits the three countries to technical and economic evaluations of the proposed Central Asia–South Asia (CASA) railway before any construction begins. No timeline, route, funding amount or delivery date accompanied the announcement.

What does the MoU actually commit the partners to?

The signatories agreed to a study phase, not implementation. Their stated tasks include:

• conducting technical and economic evaluations of the corridor;
• analysing the available options for taking the project forward;
• studying what the Kazakh transport ministry called the “suitability of developing the necessary rail infrastructure”;
• considering the establishment of a dedicated working group.

The ministry framed the three-way partnership as a pairing of complementary capabilities. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan operate functioning national rail networks, it noted, while the UAE contributes technical expertise in infrastructure and investment projects.

“Bringing these capabilities together will enable us to move on to the practical development of the CASA project and the identification of the best mechanisms for its implementation”, the ministry said in its announcement.

Why does the corridor stop at study stage?

The missing link is infrastructure. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan both have established rail networks, but no comparable line crosses Afghanistan to connect them with Pakistan's ports. Without that middle section, Central Asian freight has no overland rail route to the Indian Ocean, keeping the region dependent on longer paths through Russia or China.

International interest in such a connection has persisted for more than two years, yet nothing tangible has been built. The region's geography and political conditions make implementation difficult — an operational constraint rather than a rhetorical one, since any trans-Afghan alignment must cross territory where security and governance conditions directly affect construction cost and service reliability.

Is this the first attempt at the route?

No. The new MoU follows a parallel initiative signed last year by Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, which agreed to study a trans-Afghan railway with a similar scope. That feasibility study has not yet produced a committed construction programme either.

The two initiatives overlap in both geography and purpose, raising the question of whether the new trilateral frame — with the UAE added as an investor and technical partner — can consolidate the earlier work or will run alongside it.

What happens next?

The immediate deliverable is analytical, not physical: evaluations, option studies and a possible working group. Whether the CASA railway advances to engineering and financing decisions will depend on what the technical and economic assessments conclude about building rail infrastructure across Afghanistan — the segment that has kept the Indian Ocean out of rail reach for Central Asia so far.