Central Asia has been searching for the sea, almost all its modern history. Trade in the area has always been heavily channelled through two rather than one. Meanwhile, though, Russia, which is a far more important partner in regional trade than either of these two countries, even though it sits more centrally to Central Asia's markets than they do, is a diminishing presence, with its trade with China falling from 58 percent of regional trade in 1995 to about 19 percent today.
Pakistan, saddled with a far less central role in Central Asia's markets, registers barely at all in that picture. Its bilateral trade with the region stood at just over 2.4 billion dollars in fiscal year 2025, a fraction of what China alone moves through the region in a single year. This gap is the real subject of this piece, not because Pakistan lacks the geography to close it, but because it has spent the better part of a decade unable to use the geography it has.
Central Asia has had to rethink its options in the wake of two disruptions in recent years. In the Somali crisis of 2022, and following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a fifth of the world's oil and gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz, while in the case of war insurance on ships transiting the Gulf, it rose from about 0.12 percent of a ship's value to as high as 3 percent to 8 percent in just weeks for a single mid-sized tanker.
These crises were sufficient to push Central Asia to look south. What is not talked about is that the path it was most appropriate for traffic was never Iran, and never high passes of China. It passes through Afghanistan, it was, it is.
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