QATAR–UZBEKISTAN RELATIONS: BUILDING A GULF–CENTRAL ASIA STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
Zeynep Atalay-Ustun & Jad Salha
Qatar–Uzbekistan relations have entered a structured strategic phase, anchored by the opening of resident embassies in 2023, the elevation of bilateral ties to a strategic partnership in 2024 and the inaugural meeting of the Coordination Council for the Strategic Partnership in 2025. The Uzbek Foreign Minister’s high-level visit to Doha in May 2026 provides the moment to translate this momentum into a long-term partnership architecture. This policy brief, based on a joint workshop convened by the Center for International Policy Research (CIPR) and the Center for Foreign Policy Studies and International Initiatives (CFPS) on the sidelines of that visit, examines the strategic context of the partnership, the security and economic risks it must absorb, and the institutional, investment and Afghanistan-related opportunities it can credibly seize. It proposes a three-phased framework — institutional consolidation, an investment–trade bridge, and joint regional stabilisation — to convert today’s diplomatic momentum into a durable Gulf–Central Asia strategic partnership.
Introduction
The opening of the Qatari embassy in Tashkent in May 2023 and the Uzbek embassy in Doha in December 2023, the signing of the Strategic Partnership Agreement in Tashkent in April 2024, and the inaugural meeting of the Coordination Council for the Strategic Partnership in Doha in August 2025 mark the transition of the relationship from diplomatic engagement into a structured phase. The Uzbek Foreign Minister’s high-level visit to Doha in May 2026 provides the moment to convert this momentum into a long-term partnership architecture. On the sidelines of that visit, the Center for International Policy Research (CIPR) and the Center for Foreign Policy Studies and International Initiatives (CFPS) convened a joint workshop to assess the strategic context, the regional risks both countries must navigate, and the opportunities that a deeper Qatar–Uzbekistan partnership can credibly seize. The ideas and discussions in the workshop served as the basis for the development of this policy brief.1
The animating thesis of the workshop was that the Gulf and Central Asia are not two separate regions but one extended region, historically connected for a millennium and disconnected only over the past two centuries by colonial legacies and the Soviet period. Viewed through this lens, the Gulf and Central Asia are merging into a unified strategic arena. Within this space, Qatar and Uzbekistan emerge as natural, complementary partners due to their strong regional influence, shared roles as peace brokers, and proximity to active conflict zones. The workshop described the current moment as a ‘point of no return’: the era of great-power dominance over the regional order is fading, power is diffusing toward new regional centres, and middle powers must build their own ‘infrastructure of sovereignty’ — because ‘autonomy without resources is an illusion.’
Understanding the Strategic Context
The bilateral relationship is taking shape against a backdrop of radical transformation in the post-WWII world order. Multipolarity is strengthening, competition between major powers is intensifying, and the previous system of international institutions is weakening on both political and economic axes. Energy security has become the dominant variable in global politics, illustrated by the United Arab Emirates’ withdrawal from OPEC.
For both Qatar and Uzbekistan, this transformation is not abstract. The Middle East is under pressure from direct US/Israel and Iran military confrontation, the war in Gaza, Israeli operations in Lebanon and the West Bank, ongoing conflicts in Syria and Yemen, and continuing instability in Iraq. Central Asia faces growing cross-border concerns, with Afghan-origin drug trafficking and broader spillover risks from continuing instability in Afghanistan. Threats to Gulf oil facilities and transport corridors require cooperation with friendly states outside the immediate region; Uzbekistan was identified at the workshop as one such state.
Three categories of common risk run across both regions. Cross-border security threats, including terrorism, extremism and Afghan-origin narcotics, undermine state authority on both sides. Economic and energy risks — disruption of transport and energy corridors via Iran and Afghanistan, rising prices, declining investment in strategic projects — directly threaten the connectivity that gives both countries strategic depth. Geopolitical and strategic risks — great-power competition for regional influence, proxy conflicts, and pressure on regional development initiatives — narrow the margin for autonomous middle-power action.
The workshop’s diagnosis was that responding to this context requires Qatar and Uzbekistan to move from a reactive to a proactive posture, and from the pursuit of solutions to the management of issues. Durable solutions to most of the regional crises that surround the two countries are not on the table. Structured management is achievable; building it requires institutional coordination that does not yet exist.
Pathway to a Strategic Partnership: A Proposed Framework
Building on the workshop’s discussions, this brief proposes a three-phased framework to convert the current diplomatic momentum into a durable Qatar–Uzbekistan strategic partnership.
1. Institutional Consolidation
The first phase consolidates the existing institutional architecture into a vehicle capable of carrying strategic-level cooperation. The Qatar–Uzbekistan Coordination Council, chaired by the Qatari Prime Minister, who also serves as Foreign Minister, and the Uzbek Foreign Minister, already exists and held its first meeting in Doha last year with cross-ministerial representation. The phase should scale this body into a full Strategic Dialogue, modelled on Qatar’s existing strategic dialogues with major partners including the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. As noted at the workshop, Qatar’s most ambitious bilateral projects have historically emerged from these formal strategic dialogues, which provide the top-down political authority required to break bureaucratic deadlock. The joint Track-1.5 engagement between CIPR and CFPS, inaugurated at the May 2026 workshop, provides the analytical infrastructure to populate the Strategic Dialogue with substantive proposals.
2. The Investment–Trade Bridge
The second phase addresses the central commercial gap of the bilateral relationship. According to Uzbek government figures,3 the joint project portfolio amounts to roughly USD 10 billion across 28 projects — of which USD 2.4 billion is ongoing and USD 7.6 billion prospective — while bilateral trade in 2024 totalled just USD 6.7 million, with imports (USD 5.3 million) significantly exceeding exports (USD 1.4 million). This investment–trade asymmetry reflects the limited integration of production chains and the absence of trade-facilitating infrastructure. Two complementary mechanisms were proposed at the workshop. A Fast-Track Regime would establish an exclusive administrative corridor for Qatari trade partners on a single-window principle, accelerating licensing, certification and customs clearance for priority cargo and reinforcing joint ventures in energy, agro-industry and IT. The Uzbekistan–Qatar Trade House would create a permanent platform — not occasional exhibitions — to give Uzbek brands sustained presence in Qatar, particularly in organic food, textiles and handicrafts, while doubling as a logistics-and-marketing hub adapting Uzbek exports to premium consumption standards. The Italian and French trade agencies in Doha, with their sustained engagement of Qatari business and financial institutions, were cited as the operational model to follow.
3. Joint Regional Stabilisation
The third phase deploys the institutional architecture and the commercial bridge in service of the regional environment that conditions both countries’ security. Afghanistan is the natural anchor for this phase, given the distinctive combination of Tashkent's neighbour-level engagement with Kabul and Doha's diplomatic position with the Taliban. The phase should advance two parallel tracks: a political track, encouraging Taliban compliance with international obligations and facilitating the resolution of Pakistan–Taliban tensions; and a socio-economic track, restoring Afghan infrastructure and integrating Afghanistan into regional economic projects. The Trans-Afghan Railway is the flagship infrastructure project capable of giving this phase concrete substance. In parallel, a joint regional security architecture is required to manage cross-border threats and asymmetric risks. Such an architecture should be regionally led rather than externally managed.
Hard Security and Strategic Risks
Four strategic risks frame the security context in which the partnership must operate. The first is Israel: under its current government, Israel has proven a primary source of regional instability, with bombing of capitals, the invasion of Lebanon, the Gaza genocide and the destabilisation of Syria. The second is the IRGC-led leadership of Iran: three decades of Qatari accommodation and mediation have failed to translate into Iranian restraint, illustrated by Iran’s decision to attack Qatari territory in the immediate aftermath of US and Israeli strikes on Iran. The third is the systemic fragility of states across the region — Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. The workshop noted that both Israel, through unilateral military action against these states, and Iran, through sponsorship of non-state actors that erode the centrality of state institutions, have actively degraded state capacity in the region. The fourth is the erosion of the global liberal order: the world is moving toward a Cold-War-style east/west forced choice. China is not yet at Soviet-era projection capability, but the trajectory points there, and a fully bipolar moment would significantly compress the strategic autonomy currently enjoyed by middle powers.
The operational implication is that Qatar and Uzbekistan cannot rely on great-power-managed security frameworks alone to address asymmetric threats — AI-engineered drones, weaponised disinformation, proxy violence — that those frameworks were not designed to handle. Addressing these threats requires local security cooperation that great-power partnerships cannot substitute for. The workshop accordingly identified a clear gap: there is no existing regional mechanism to coordinate hard security and defence between the Gulf and Central Asia. A dedicated follow-up workshop was proposed to develop concrete recommendations for closing this gap.
Investment and Connectivity
Beyond the Fast-Track Regime and the Trade House, the workshop identified five investment tiers in which Qatar and Uzbekistan are particularly well placed to deepen cooperation.
Aviation and logistics, anchored by the Tashkent New International Airport project — described at the workshop as more than an airport, but as a connection point for governance, supply chains and investors — provide the most immediate entry point. Qatar Airways can contribute training, cargo facilities and Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) capability, none of which currently exist at the required standard in Central Asia, and which Uzbekistan’s targeted 180-aircraft national fleet by 2030 will require. Equity partnership via the Qatar Investment Authority, which manages approximately USD 526 billion in assets,2 sits naturally with Uzbekistan’s WTO reform trajectory. A digital economy and AI track, anchored by the digital transformation partnership signed between Invest Qatar and Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Digital Technologies in February 2025, can leverage Uzbekistan’s deep tech-talent pool — including tens of thousands of programmers trained through the country’s national IT initiatives — to support Qatar’s diversification away from hydrocarbons and contribute to its sovereign cybersecurity stack. An energy transition track, focused on renewables and electricity export, aligns with global decarbonisation trends and the strategic priorities of both countries. Agriculture and food security have been a critical priority for Qatar since the 2017 blockade. Uzbekistan is well placed to supplement Qatari production during the summer months, when local agricultural output drops sharply.
The workshop surfaced three additional commercial angles. The first is a triangle model in critical minerals, combining Qatari finance, Uzbek mineral resources and a possible offtaker like the United States. The second is the supply of Uzbek agricultural carbon credits to Qatar, opening an alternative supply route for Qatar’s carbon offset needs as the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) begins to impose carbon-pricing costs on Qatari exports to the EU from 2027. The third is the joint development of sovereign technology and cybersecurity capacity: Uzbekistan has spent the past five to six years building domestic software, with the national banking system now running entirely on a domestically built product, providing a credible alternative to the American and Chinese systems that currently dominate the regional market.
Qatar’s investment posture is itself a strategic asset for the partnership: a commercial and developmental approach without geographic or political ambitions in Central Asia, well-aligned with Uzbekistan’s reform trajectory and central to Qatari capital’s broader reorientation toward the Global South. Cooperation will, however, need to absorb real structural constraints on the Uzbek side — Uzbekistan’s landlocked position and consequent transit dependencies, a fragmented investment-promotion machinery, dominance of state-owned enterprises and a still-evolving legislative framework — most of which can be addressed through long-term concession structures, public–private partnerships and phased investments with review clauses, all areas in which Qatar has substantial experience.
Afghanistan as the Joint Opening
Of all the issues discussed at the workshop, Afghanistan is where the Qatar–Uzbekistan partnership is most distinctive. Afghanistan is dropping out of the global agenda — but, as the workshop emphasised, if the world forgets Afghanistan, Afghanistan will force itself back into attention. Both Tashkent and Doha already maintain pragmatic dialogue with the Taliban, and CIPR has been engaged on Afghanistan since 2017, organising Track-1.5 dialogues. Uzbekistan, in turn, is among Afghanistan’s most constructively engaged neighbours. Tashkent has no hostile agenda toward Kabul and has direct interests in Afghan stability — and its training, education and capacity-building programs inside Afghanistan continue with Taliban cooperation.
Three ideas, drawn from the workshop, should be promoted jointly by Doha and Tashkent on the international stage. First, Afghanistan should be reframed as a strategic opportunity, not only a threat: long-term stability cannot emerge from security mechanisms alone but requires economic interdependence, infrastructure, trade and employment generation. Second, the international community should adopt ‘creative engagement’ with the de facto authorities — pragmatic dialogue and active encouragement of economic reform. Third, Uzbekistan and Qatar should jointly promote and, where feasible, jointly realise major infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, of which the Trans-Afghan Railway is the natural flagship — a project on a scale the country has never before seen.
Outlook
Qatar–Uzbekistan relations have outgrown the diplomatic phase. The institutional scaffolding is in place; the commercial portfolio is real; and the regional context provides both the urgency and the opportunity to convert the relationship into a strategic partnership of consequence. The next phase requires three convergent moves: scaling the existing Coordination Council into a full Strategic Dialogue at the level of Qatar’s other strategic dialogues; closing the investment–trade asymmetry through the Fast-Track Regime and the Trade House; and using the unique Tashkent–Doha combination on Afghanistan to anchor a joint contribution to regional stabilisation. As the workshop concluded, the relationship should no longer be described as ‘promising’ — it should continue to demonstrate what practical GCC–Central Asia cooperation actually looks like.
Endnotes
- [1] Joint workshop convened by the Center for International Policy Research (CIPR, Doha) and the Center for Foreign Policy Studies and International Initiatives (CFPS, Tashkent), held in Doha on the sidelines of the Uzbek Foreign Minister’s high-level visit, May 2026. The workshop was conducted under a modified Chatham House Rule; views are attributed to participating institutions but not to individuals.
- [2] Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, QIA fund profile (swfinstitute.org). QIA does not publicly disclose its assets under management; all figures in the public domain are third-party estimates and vary by methodology.
- [3] Portfolio figures: Uzbekistan Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade (gov.uz). Bilateral trade figures: Uzbekistan–Qatar trade and investment cooperation data, Review.uz, citing Uzbek government statistics.
About the Author
Zeynep Atalay-Ustun is Researcher at the Center for International Policy Research (CIPR)
Jad Salha is Research Assistant at the Center for International Policy Research (CIPR)
About the Center for International Policy Research
Center for International Policy Research (CIPR) is a research center with focus on economic, political, energy and security issues in the GCC region. Based in Doha, CIPR specializes in political risk analysis, government and corporate advisory, conflict advisory, track II diplomacy, humanitarian/development advisory, and event management in the GCC region and beyond. The CIPR aims at becoming a primary research and debate platform in the region with relevant publications, events, projects and media productions to nurture a comprehensive understanding of the intertwined affairs of this geography. With an inclusive, scholarly and innovative approach, the CIPR presents a platform where diverse voices from academia, business and policy world from both the region and the nation’s capital interact to produce distinct ideas and insights to the outstanding issues of the region.