Landlocked Central Asia has spent 30 years searching for reliable routes to warm-water seaports. For Uzbekistan, the most populous country in the region with over 37 million people, access to warm-water ports has been both an economic bottleneck and a strategic priority.

In early 2026, a new option moved from concept to reality: the Gabd–Rimdan–Gwadar/Karachi Corridor. While often called “Uzbekistan’s Gabd Corridor”, the route is also sometimes referred to as the Gwadar–Gabd–Iran–Turkmenistan–Uzbekistan Corridor. The route is actually a Pakistan–Iran–Central Asia transit corridor centred on the Gabd border terminal on the Pakistan–Iran frontier. For Uzbekistan, it represents the first operational alternative to the disrupted Afghan routes.

Gabd is located near Gwadar in Pakistan and links directly with the Rimdan border terminal in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan Province. The Gabd Corridor is a new overland trade route, operationalised in April 2026, connecting Pakistan’s seaports to Central Asia. The Gabd–Rimdan overland corridor allows goods to bypass Afghanistan entirely. The corridor begins at the Pakistani seaports of Karachi or Gwadar, continues to Gabd, then to Rimdan on the Iranian side. The route then extends north through the Iranian city of Birjand to Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) and terminates in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The Gabd Border Terminal was constructed in March 2024 near Gwadar and activated by Pakistan’s National Logistics Corporation for TIR traffic. This route is shorter and considered safer and more modern than the route through........

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