The seventh Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Baku on Oct.15 adopted the Baku Declaration, admitted Laos as the 29th member, extended Azerbaijan’s chairmanship through 2028 and appointed a new Secretary General.
The CICA Charter, which would complete the forum’s transformation into a full international organization, was not yet adopted, and leaders called for continued work on it. The next two years are therefore the moment of graduation. How CICA defines its purpose in the charter will decide whether it becomes a working instrument or remains a dialogue club.
We argue that the organization should make one link explicit, the link between conflict prevention and secure, efficient connectivity. The disruption of Asia’s transit corridors over the past year shows why this link cannot wait, and it is squarely in Kazakhstan’s interest.
A forum that kept its distance from hard security Kazakhstan proposed CICA in 1992 because Asia had no common security structure, and it still has none. ASEAN, the SCO, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council each cover a subregion, while the continent’s most dangerous disputes run between states belonging to different groupings.
CICA is the only format where India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, China and its maritime neighbours all sit together. That breadth came at a price. Decisions are taken by consensus, and the forum has generally steered clear of conflict resolution. The notable exception came at the first summit in Almaty in June 2002, at the height of the India-Pakistan standoff after the attack on India’s parliament.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf both attended, and while they did not meet directly, Vladimir Putin relayed messages between them on the margins. In 2004 members adopted a Catalogue of Confidence Building Measures that included military notifications and consultations on border incidents.
In 2007, however, they agreed to begin with economic, environmental and human measures and to postpone the military-political ones. Although military-political confidence-building measures have since been developed and implemented, their practical role in preventing disruptions to regional connectivity remains limited.
Given the diversity of the membership, the caution is understandable. It has also left CICA without a role in the crises that now matter most to Asian trade. The past 12 months have shown how quickly conflict closes trade routes. The war that began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb.28, 2026 disrupted the International North-South Transport Corridor and the southern branch of the East-West route through Iran, cutting Central Asia’s shortest access to open water.
Southern routes became unusable or uninsurable for extended periods, and freight was rerouted at higher cost. Further east, Pakistan closed its five main trade crossings with Afghanistan after clashes in 2025, and a year later they remain shut. Trade between the two countries had been estimated at about $2.35 billion a year.
The closure also halted transit of goods from China, Malaysia and Vietnam. Mediation by Qatar and Turkiye produced a ceasefire in October 2025, but fighting resumed and escalated to Pakistani air strikes on Kabul in February 2026. In May 2025 India and Pakistan had already exchanged strikes for four days.