Kazakhstan’s Evolving Afghanistan Policy

As the global community experiences a turbulent and unpredictable period, Kazakhstan, alongside other countries, faces a range of challenges and risks. A timely reorientation and adjustment of both its external and internal policies may enable the country to effectively cope with these challenges and even extract benefits from them.

For example, the Ukraine war exposed vulnerabilities stemming from Kazakhstan’s intensive economic and trade relations with its northern neighbor, Russia. In light of this, the Kazakh government has increasingly focused on developing resiliency in managing the security, trade, and logistical challenges it is facing today. Among those challenges are various restrictions regarding northern trade routes, as well as concerns about the potential introduction of secondary sanctions. Dealing with these challenges, the Kazakh authorities realized the importance of finding new markets, trade routes, and economic opportunities for the country.

In this environment, Kazakhstan has emerged as a model for revising its foreign policy in favor of cooperation with South Asia in service to this quest for new prospects. This move can be looked at as an attempt to diversify away from its heavy dependence on Russia, paired also with a carefully crafted balanced position toward both the United States and Russia. 

There is an alternative way to view these shifts, however, according to which Russia is possibly an actor gently pushing Kazakhstan toward the south, as Moscow can also benefit from trade routes to through Central Asia. As was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin last July, “the international transport corridor ‘North-South’ will provide Russian goods with a shorter route to the African continent and back to Russia.”

Regardless of the motivation, there has been a noticeable increase in Kazakhstan's interest in South Asian countries, particularly Afghanistan. Indeed, in December Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry decided to exclude the Taliban from its list of terrorist organizations.

Afghanistan’s market (as an importer of industrial and agricultural products) and its position (as a trade route that can connect Central Asia to countries such as Pakistan, with significant ports) are both critically important to Kazakhstan and shape its emerging new Afghanistan policy.

Kazakhstan's Trade Relations With Afghanistan

Kazakhstan’s support for Afghanistan is rooted not just in considerations of regional stability but also Astana’s own economic interests in growing trade links through Afghanistan into South Asia.

Although Kazakhstan has never officially recognized the Taliban government in Afghanistan, it has been pragmatic about contacts with the Taliban and maintained economic and trade relations with the country. The first high-level interaction between Kazakhstan and the Taliban government occurred on September 2021, less than a month after the Taliban assumed control. Kazakhstan's then-Ambassador to Afghanistan Alimkhan Yessengeldiyev met with Acting Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Kabul, where they committed to strengthening economic cooperation. 

Collaboration for the revival and extension of trade and economic links contributed to a substantial increase in trade turnover between the two nations. In 2022 the volume of trade between Kazakhstan and Afghanistan reached a record $987.9 million, twice as much as the previous year ($474.3 million). By November 2023, the trade between the two countries had decreased to $583 million, with it unlikely to have jumped dramatically in the final month of the year.