Although Uzbekistan has been getting the most attention among coalition countries in Afghanistan looking for land routes to ship their equipment back home, Tajikistan also is encouraging western countries to do the same, and the United States and United Kingdom seem to be among the interested parties.
Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake visited Dushanbe last week and met with President Emomali Rahmon. After the meeting, Blake was asked if the U.S.'s withdrawal from Afghanistan would take place through Tajikistan. His response:
[A]s you all know, the President of the United States announced during his State of the Union speech that the United States would be halving the number of troops in Afghanistan by February of next year, but I don’t expect that that operation will take place through Tajikistan.
That appeared to be a shift in policy: the U.S. has been using the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan (KKT) route as a complement to the more heavily used Uzbekistan route to ship equipment to Afghanistan. And some media reported it as such: Asia-Plus headlined its article "Washington does not plan to use Tajikistan’s infrastructure for Afghan withdrawal," while Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote that his comments showed that "the U.S. doesn't consider Tajikistan to be a transit country."
A State Department spokesperson said Blake was only referring to troops, not to equipment, and referred The Bug Pit to the Pentagon for clarification of Tajikistan's status as a transit country. Commander Bill Speaks of the Office of the Secretary of Defense confirmed that "Yes, Tajikistan will be used as part of the NDN routes for retrograde of equipment." So that's cleared up.
In addition, the U.K. has expressed interest in transiting goods through Tajikistan, said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Davlat Nazriyev:
“If any country applies to the Tajik authorities on this subject, the Tajik authorities will consider this application in accordance with established order,” the Tajik MFA spokesman said.
“To-date, the United Kingdom has applied to the Government of Tajikistan on the issue of transit of its cargo through Tajik territory,” said Nazriyev. “In this connection, the United Kingdom has submitted an appropriate draft agreement for consideration of the Tajik side.”
Both the U.K. and the U.S. have been discussing what sort of leftover military equipment to give Uzbekistan in return for their cooperation, but nothing seems to have been made public about those discussions vis-a-vis Tajikistan. Wonder what goodies could be awaiting Dushanbe's military...
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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