Article
The Belfer Center''s Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, the
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Conflict Management
Group hosted a conference on the Eurasian Corridor on April 23 as part
of BCSIA''s Caspian initiative. Due to its growing international
significance, the development of the Eurasian Corridor
is being closely watched by all the states involved. The Eurasian Corridor
conference was the first of its kind at Harvard, and intended to draw
attention among the academic and policy community to the significance of
the development of the communication and transportation routes.
The Eurasian transportation corridor, also known as the "new silk
road," was developed in 1993 by the three South Caucasus states of Armenia,
Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and the five Central Asian states of Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The corridor, consisting of every
form of transportation, is now a major alternative route for the
transportation from Asia to Europe.
The region as a whole is rapidly becoming one of great geostrategic
significance. Estimates of as much as 200 billion barrels of oil reserves
in the Caspian Sea have turned the spotlight on Central Asia and the
Caucasus since the conclusion of the first major international contract for
oil exploration and production four years ago. As a result of the outbreak
of conflicts in the Caucasus in the late 1980s, Russia''s communication
routes with the region have been severed and its economic influence has
declined, while cross- border trade with Turkey and Iran, and commercial ties between the states of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, and Western countries, have all steadily increased. *