Uzbekistan Promotes Connectivity to Enhance its Regional Leadership 

WASHINGTON - Uzbekistan’s goal of securing new trade routes to the Indian Ocean — the focus of a conference this week featuring many of the region’s top diplomats — has been complicated by rising uncertainty about the future of a major country along the way: Afghanistan.

The goal of enhancing regional connectivity between Central and South Asia is a long-standing one; landlocked Central Asia would gain access to markets and trade routes to the south while South Asia would acquire access to resources and opportunities to the north. Until now, however, such schemes have mostly proven to be pipe dreams. And Uzbekistan bears part of the blame. For decades, Tashkent’s late leader, Islam Karimov, resisted many connectivity ideas, getting into spats with neighboring countries and battling over how to share water and electricity. But his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has improved relations with those neighbors, dropped resistance to some of these connectivity schemes, and positioned Uzbekistan as a potential leader.