Ahmadinejad is due in Kazakhstan this week. Besides fishing rights in the Caspian and energy policy talks, I imagine the old railroad plan might come up. There are a number of infrastructure plans in progress across Central Eurasia, though how many are permanently ‘in planning’ and how many are soon to be made reality is not easy to definitively ascertain. From the ridiculously unrealistic ideas to the more practical, there is quite a wide gradient. Many of these projects are more or less bound to the amount of loose change in petro-stan coffers. With the current economic crisis and the oil price’s plummet, some of these plans are probably being postponed, while others canceled outright. However, it doesn’t do the hurting countries any good to publicly cancel plans, so I’m curious as to which of the major infrastructure plans are still underway.
Uzen’ – Gorgan Railway
Almost a year ago, Russia announced that its rail-link with Turkmenistan would be complete by 2011. The rail link first came to my attention in 2007 with these two stories. My question now is – was that dependent on $100/bbl oil? Also, who is in charge on constructing which legs of the rail link? Iran and Russia already have extensive rail networks, with Russia’s including numerous connections with Kazakhstan. The issue has been connecting Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan through the very sparsely populated Western Ust-Yurt Plateau between the Aral and Caspian Seas. There are many under-developed, inhospitable areas of Kazakhstan, but I can’t imagine one I’d want more NOT to traverse, short of a tour of the nuclear wasteland outside Semipalatinsk. There has traditionally been a road linking Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan that follows the coast of the Caspian, but I don’t know if the plan is to widen this to add rail, or to take a different path altogether.
Perhaps for these, or other, difficulties, the plan has been postponed. This is coming directly after a renewed hope for the Iran-Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan-Russian connection. I can see two reasons why the plan will be reconsidered, if not canceled outright. First, if a driving impetus was connecting Russian and Iran, the planned Armenian-Iran link would accomplish that to some extent. I’m not an economist, but I haven’t heard as much about Armenia’s economic difficulties as I have about Kazakhstan’s. That being said, I’d welcome Caucasus-followers to add more in the comments.
To help illustrate how bleak this rail’s scenery would be, I’ve thrown together some images of possible routes for the planned rail. The news from last year stated the route was to connect Uzen, which is on the very south-western tip of Kazakhstan’s rail system, and the Iranian city of Gorgan. The story above didn’t mention which Turkmenistani city the rail would have connected through, if any – though Turkmenistan’s president was stated as being strongly in favor. That being said, imagine a line following either the Caspian shore, or one cutting through the desert. Either way, it’s not a heartening place to have mechanical problems.
This post was written by...
Michael Hancock-Parmer – author of 158 posts on Registan.net.
Michael earned an MA in Central Eurasian Studies in 2011 and remains a student at Indiana University pursuing a dual PhD in Russian History and Central Eurasian Studies. He served 6 months in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan in 2005. After the events in Andijan and the subsequent closure of the program, he served 2 years in southern Kazakhstan, returning to the Midwest in 2007. His general area of interest is on post-Timur Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, centered on the Syr Darya river valley.
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