There is no doubt that Afghanistan will shape Eurasia’s future. The question is whether that future will be defined by geopolitical rivalry or by economic connectivity. The international order is fragmenting, and the institutions established to manage it are finding it increasingly difficult to act.
For Kazakhstan, a middle power, that means stability must be built regionally rather than by external powers. Nowhere is this more evident than in Afghanistan, where Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has called for a strategy of replacing the “ Great Game ” with the “ Great Gain.” Nearly five years after the Republic in Kabul fell in August 2021, the policy of isolating the country has not produced the moderation its advocates promised.
It has instead deepened a humanitarian emergency whose effects reach far beyond Afghan territory, in narcotics flows and in the migration that touches Iran, Central Asia, and Europe. The lesson of recent decades is plain; any vacuum in Afghanistan, whether economic, humanitarian, or institutional, will be filled by destructive forces.
Kazakhstan’s strategy of pragmatic engagement toward Afghanistan Kazakhstan has answered with a deliberate strategy rather than a sequence of gestures. We call it pragmatic engagement without official recognition. Astana removed the Taliban from its list of banned organizations in December 2023 and kept the Afghan embassy in the capital in operation.
In June 2025, President Tokayev appointed a special representative to institutionalize Kazakhstan’s Afghanistan policy. The objective is clear. A stable and economically viable Afghanistan is essential for the security of the wider region. The surest way to achieve this is to help the country transition from a vulnerable recipient of aid to a producer and transit hub.
Kazakhstan’s high-level mission to Kabul in June 2026 showed how far that strategy has advanced. The June mission to Kabul marked the transition from diplomatic engagement to practical economic cooperation. Led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Economy Serik Zhumangarin, the Kazakh delegation held the first prime-ministerial-level talks between the two governments in four years.
Zhumangarin met Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund at the Gulkhana Palace, along with Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar, Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, and the governors of Herat and Kunduz. Akhund expressed gratitude to President Tokayev for his continued support for the Afghan people, described the relationship as important, and invited President Tokayev to visit Afghanistan.
The delegation delivered 318.8 tonnes of humanitarian aid. It deployed a team of doctors for a week of clinical work, and the two sides also established a joint chamber of commerce and discussed cooperation to combat narcotics and extremism. The substance of the talks, though, lay in the economy.
Bilateral trade reached $541.8 million in 2025, and the two governments have set a target of $3 billion under a roadmap agreed in 2024. The imbalance in that trade remains the central challenge. By the Kazakh side’s accounting, exports to Afghanistan exceeded $500 million.
In comparison, imports from Afghanistan remained near $23 million, an imbalance underscored by the modest scale of Afghan sales across the region, which reached only $216 million to all five Central Asian states combined in 2025. Kazakhstan has therefore opened its national retail networks to Afghan agricultural goods, the first such mechanism offered in the region, and launched a Trade House in Kabul to follow the one opened in Herat in 2024.