Central Asia and the Policy of Plunder and Pillage
(Translated)
Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 584 - 28/01/2026
By: Ustaadh Ahmed Hadi

The China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway project ranks among the largest strategic initiatives in Central Asia, aiming to link Kashgar in western China, with Kyrgyzstan, and then Uzbekistan as far as Andijan, establishing a vital international corridor for trade and transit between China, Central Asia, and Europe.

The total length of the line is approximately 523 kilometers, including about 213 km inside China, roughly 304 kilometers inside Kyrgyzstan, and a short segment inside Uzbekistan to connect with the existing network. The total cost of the project is estimated at around $4.7 billion, financed as follows: approximately $2.3 billion provided in long-term loans from Chinese banks, primarily the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China. Roughly $2.3 billion financed through the equity capital of the joint project company. The shares are distributed as follows: China 51 percent, Kyrgyzstan 24.5 percent, Uzbekistan 24.5 percent.

Official implementation of the project began on December 27, 2024, with construction planned to take approximately five years. Its financing has been secured in recent days. The project encompasses more than 50 bridges and around 29 tunnels, owing to the challenging mountainous terrain, particularly in Kyrgyzstan.

This railway line aims to shorten cargo transit times between China, Central Asia, and Europe, reduces reliance on traditional routes through Russia, strengthens the role of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan as regional transit hubs, and bolsters China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

This project is not merely a railway but a significant economic and geopolitical corridor, largely financed by China through loans and equity capital, while Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan contribute smaller shares and shoulder some long-term financial burdens.

China is progressively seizing control of Central Asia’s mines, especially Rare Earth Elements (REEs) and other mineral wealth, while rapidly building railway lines to transport these resources out of the region. To this end, China has imported tens of thousands of workers from its own territory to carry out these projects.

The riches of Central Asia are subject to plunder, pillage, and division among four major powers: Russia, China, the United States, and the European Union - as these resources are extracted and exported in raw form, without delivering any genuine added value to the countries of the region.

Although the Central Asian states possess enormous wealth, more than ten million of its people who are able to work have been living as migrant workers abroad, for more than thirty-five years, suffering humiliation and exploitation, as if they were slaves.

Has the time not come to appoint a ruler who does not surrender his subjects as slaves to the kafir states, who safeguards his people’s dignity, who does not plunder the Ummah’s wealth by exporting it as raw materials, but instead builds factories and industrial plants, and properly harnesses the earth’s bounties to make his Ummah enjoy prosperity and honor from its own wealth?!