From Silk Road to Steel Road: The Trans-Asian Railway

Photo From CNN.com

A quick glance at the map, with both the modern era and centuries past in mind, is all it takes to confirm that the most flourishing cities of human civilization tend to gravitate toward coastlines and their seaports. Commercial success in places like Venice, New York, Lisbon, and Hong Kong were the result of a long history of maritime trade coupled with ideal geography. The world's hinterlands, whether deep in the North American Rockies, the Pampas, Patagonia, and high deserts of inner Argentina, or the sparsely populated interiors of Russia or Australia, are all areas that were only delicately penetrated by traders, pioneers, explorers, and any other harbingers of mass migration and expansion. The isolation of these lands from the coast, and the long journeys required on foot or meager vehicles, stood as obstacles in stark contrast to the swift travel on coastal and high seas as well as the introduction of canals that let ships come inland.

In 1829, the steam engine was introduced, and from that year onward the world was transformed by the potential of railways to carry men and goods across vast expanses of land like never before. By 1900, the map of the world was greatly affected by the revolutionary relationship between rail, commerce, and empires. In 2014, new railroads still offer powerful possibilities for the peoples, governments, and economies of Central Asia that lie straddled between economic superpowers on the coasts. While the Silk Road once tied together trade from east to west, it is now a Steel Road that offers a new future through conflict ridden and downtrodden lands.

The Trans-Siberian Railroad is well known term that symbolizes the very geography of Russia--stretching from east to west in a curious way that leaves it with one foot in Europe and one in Asia. However, the sprawling geography of Asia should not be oversimplified, as the Trans-Siberian railroad is also a sort of yardstick, along which can be measured a changing spectrum of culture, geography, and history from the Asian west to east. Additionally, the idea of such a west to east line draws attention away from the existence of porous states and societies running north to south, with less homogeneity between themselves than there may be across the Russified northern expanse called Siberia. Indeed, what lies to the south of Siberia is a myriad of cultures and states.

The Trans-Siberian Railroad - Photo from TransSib.ru

Furthest west, in the Caucasus region, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan sit on the frontier of several regions, essentially a pivot point between Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Russia itself. Across the Caspian Sea, Turkic speaking peoples inhabit a variety of countries ending in "-stan", a Persian term denoting a place or land. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are all former Soviet Republics which are enjoying a novel independence while sitting upon  wealth of mineral resources, oil and gas, not to mention potential rail routes that could compete with the Russian hegemony to the north or sea routes to the south. The Persian legacy persists in Tajikistan as well as Iran itself, both rugged countries with abundant resources, the latter being a massive producer of oil and natural gas as well as a highly structured society that is a powerful exporter of culture and politics. Finally, Pakistan and Afghanistan serve as buffers, extensions, and wildlands between the economic hubs in Indian, China, Iran, and Russia, with their own potential in oil and minerals as well as trade routes.

Adding Europe and even the Middle East to this list of economic hubs illustrates the concept of transporting goods and resources between them. In such a wild interior, only a handful of trade routes exist in the form of roads, pipelines, limited waterways, and railways. By the end of the 1990s, the void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states was being filled by resurgent economic growth as well as an influx of outside aid and investment into the Asian interior. the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) eventually developed a forward looking plan based off of dozens of individual studies for a Trans-Asian Railway (TAR), including concepts for both north-south and east-west networks.

ESCAP determined a group of specific criteria for the railroad's routes and endpoints. These include "capital to capital links (for international transport) ... connections to main industrial and agricultural centres ... to major sea and river ports ... to major container terminals and depots". Much of the railway infrastructure exists already, but a map was produced showing a complete plan for the major east-west links after the gaps were filled in. Fundamentally, this map demonstrates a plan to offer maritime economies access into the Central Asian and Caspian region--with Iran, Russia, China, and all having independent links to the interior without sharing ports of entry. India, however, remains limited by its need to cross through Pakistan, an unstable neighbor, and by the limited development in Afghanistan leaving no rail links to the bustling economies further north. Europe as well is limited by access through the Ukraine, and hence Russia, or else through Turkey or the Black Sea region. Both of these are simple misfortunes of geography, as Afghanistan remains difficult to develop as well as unstable due to the rugged Hindu Kush range, while the division of Western Europe from Central Asia is due to desert, sea, or mountain barriers that foster instability in the Middle East and the Caucasus.

From ESCAP's report on Development of the Trans-Asian Railway

The development of multiple railways will primarily benefit the Central Asian republics, giving them more direct control over who they sell and ship resources to, rather than having to exclusively export through Russia, China, Iran, or whichever neighbor offers the best transport. Mongolia, for example, benefits economically, but also has little say in its trade with China, as the Chinese government builds highways stretching up to the Mongolian border thus offering routes for mineral exports. Kazakhstan, with rich deposits of oil and gas in its west and minerals in the east, can find clients in every direction as it continues to develop. The key function of these new railways is to fill in the gaps in the interior, using specific routes through the high mountains of the continental interior. Railways can rarely support more then a four percent grade, thus making routes though rugged mountain ranges and foothills meticulous but possible. More limiting, however, is that freight trains are challenged beyond a one percent grade--thus, despite the open and empty wilderness of Central Asia, the new rail routes are still particularly few and undetermined.

Rail development has particularly accelerated on a micro-level scale, and the remaining feat is to simply link existing networks. Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan all require junctions to one another and hence increased access to China and Iran, while China itself would be connected overall to Europe by linking these networks. In the Caucasus region, Georgian and Azeri networks connecting to Turkey--and hence Europe--offer a way around dependence on the Russian rail networks, and can bring economic development to the poorer regions of Georgia and even Armenia. Iran, as well, would find better access to the Caucasus as a result of such development. Russian trade is what is truly at risk, as Russian has a long land border with resource-rich Central Asian countries rather than a plethora of seaports with access to maritime routes like Iran, India, and China do as they look to the south and the east.

From the Afghan Ministry of Public Works

Curiously, the missing link lies in Afghanistan. The US-led coalition in Afghanistan has a chief goal of establishing stable Afghan self-governance and sovereignty, but this is less an economic goal than a moral one. The beneficiaries of such stability are those countries that would find railway access accompanying peace--countries like Iran, China, and India, who can access to Europe and one another via a potential rail link in Afghanistan. Thus, as the US considers the feasibility of stabilizing Afghanistan, these other countries are poised for economic intervention and participation despite their lack of military commitment. Current routes in Afghanistan stretch across the north from the Iranian border in the east, at Herat, to the Uzbek border in the north, and then from the Uzbek border across the east to the Pakistani border in the south.

These Afghan routes current support a small amount of trade, but require expansion to support anything of significant volume. While Chinese and Indian companies are beginning to extract copper and iron from large deposits found in Afghanistan, the funds to support a drastic railway construction project are still still difficult to come across. While Kazakhstan, with it's own sizable pools of natural resources, is able to generate its own funds as well as attract outside investment, Afghanistan struggles primarily due to the threat of government collapse and ongoing civil war. In theory, Afghanistan has much to offer as a crossroads as well as a source of mineral wealth, but in reality it is nothing more than a risky investment.

Part of the newest railway in Afghanistan - Photo by the American Embassy in Kabul

The overall idea of rail development in Central Asia is paradox--while railways will bring about stability, wealth, and improved international and intercultural relations, the lack of those very things is what limits railroad expansion. In addition, geography, while conquerable, is a towering obstacle in the face of economic and human development. The mountains and culture of Central Asian are stalwart, and the connection of coastal powers through a taming of the interior may prove difficult in the decades to come just as it was ephemeral for empires of trade and ideology of the modern and ancient eras. As development continues in much of Central Asia, it is Afghanistan that has become--and will remain--the crucible of globalization on land.