Pakistan has launched two new overland trade corridors through Iran and China after closing its main transit crossings with Afghanistan in October 2025 because of security concerns. The new routes, which became operational in April 2026, move cargo through Iran's Gabd-Rimdan border crossing and China's Sost Dry Port. The state has simply shifted the flow. Same cargo, different checkpoints, same logic of control.
More than 14,000 metric tons of cargo have already moved through the two corridors. Pakistan presented the routes as a permanent alternative for Central Asian countries seeking access to global markets without relying on Afghan transit. That pitch came during a coordination ceremony in Karachi attended by senior representatives from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Trade, in this setup, is not some free-floating miracle. It runs through border regimes, customs systems, and state-managed chokepoints that decide who gets to move and who gets stuck.
The Border as a Switch
Pakistan indefinitely closed the Torkham and Chaman crossings in October 2025 following persistent cross-border militancy. The closure pushed trade away from Afghanistan and into corridors routed through Iran and China. The result is a cleaner map for officials and a messier one for everyone who depends on movement that doesn't require a minister's blessing. The state calls it diversification. Ordinary people experience it as another reminder that borders are levers, not lines.
The first convoy carried frozen meat and other exports to Tashkent and Bishkek through Iran. Pakistan also dispatched its first export shipment from the Karachi Export Processing Zone to Kyrgyzstan via the Sost Dry Port under the TIR regime. The 3,300-kilometer Bishkek-Karachi corridor, operating under the Quadrilateral Traffic in Transit Agreement, has since completed its first reciprocal commercial shipments, with Kyrgyz transport fleets delivering minerals and textiles to Pakistan. Every one of those movements depends on paperwork, permissions, and the machinery of transit agreements. The apparatus never sleeps.
Gwadar, Customs, and the New Gatekeepers
Separately, the Hemani Group transported a 23.9-tonne consignment to Kyrgyzstan using the Pakistan Single Window electronic customs system. The new network also expands the use of the TIR transit regime and the Pakistan Single Window system, which electronically processes customs documentation for cross-border shipments. That means more digitized control, more centralized processing, and fewer illusions about who owns the route. The software may look modern. The power structure is the same old border state with better branding.
Uzbekistan has already begun using the Gabd-Rimdan route to transport agricultural equipment and industrial raw materials. The new corridors provide Central Asian countries, including Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, with overland access to the Arabian Sea through Pakistan while bypassing Afghanistan. Pakistan is also expanding the role of Gwadar Port within Phase 2 of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Located about 400 kilometers east of the Strait of Hormuz, the port is expected to handle increasing cargo volumes moving through the new land corridors as regional trade routes continue to diversify.
That expansion ties the corridors to a larger state-led logistics project, one that concentrates movement through ports, dry ports, customs platforms, and transit agreements. The language is all about access and efficiency. The reality is a chain of institutions deciding who can pass, under what terms, and through which gate. The people hauling the cargo don't run the system. They just keep it moving.
The Karachi ceremony, the electronic customs systems, the transit agreements, the port expansion — it all adds up to a regional trade architecture built by states for states and the firms that can work with them. Afghanistan gets bypassed. Border closures get repackaged as strategy. And the machinery of control gets a fresh coat of paint.