Central Asia and the United States: What was (and wasn’t) discussed at the B5+1 Forum

Earlier this month, Kyrgyzstan’s capital hosted the second B5+1 Forum, a Washington-devised initiative to promote business ties between the five countries of Central Asia and the United States.

This suggests that Central Asia is being taken seriously, and that key actors see it as a contributor to international prosperity. In a further signal of the forum’s significance, the event was attended in person by President Donald Trump’s Special Representative for South and Central Asia, Sergio Gor.

The official agenda was busy and varied. It focused on diversifying the region’s economies by expanding agriculture, boosting tourism, strengthening the financial sector, and positioning Central Asia for the digital age.

And perhaps inevitably, critical minerals dominated. Deliberations on this topic were granular, technical, and pragmatic, touching on issues ranging from geological exploration and corporate cooperation to legislation and regulatory harmonization.

Something was missing, however.

The rationale of the B5+1 Forum is to bring American and Central Asian business leaders and government officials together to foster trade and investment. But as the proceedings at the Sheraton unfolded, it became clear that a more comprehensive, longer-term discussion addressing broader and emerging challenges was largely absent.

Amid all the emphasis on the promise of critical minerals exploration, for example, the impact on communities near deposits, environmental safety, and the involvement of local communities in decision-making were barely addressed.

Questions of transparency, accountability, and good governance, which are crucial both for protecting citizens’ rights and for managing long-term investment risk, were largely absent. Good governance is not a peripheral concern: it underpins the sustainability and bankability of investments themselves.

As business opportunities expand, we must consider not only access to resources and markets, but also the consequences of the decisions being made.

Against this backdrop, the near-total absence of climate change on the agenda was striking. Central Asia is highly vulnerable to climate shocks, yet the issue was treated as a secondary concern.

Speakers highlighted how U.S. companies could use their technological edge to help farmers increase crop yields. But less attention was paid to how drought-resistant crops or systemic approaches to sustainable agriculture could ensure that this productivity endures. The United States has vast experience to bring to the table on this front.

The embrace of artificial intelligence and other forms of digital innovation is generating excitement and hope in Central Asia, as elsewhere in the world. And yet, it is imperative that we are all aware of possible pitfalls.

Expanding banking services, electronic payments, and digital ecosystems implies building data centers and server capacity. That will require significant amounts of electricity and water for cooling, resources that are already in short supply. This conundrum too never received a proper airing in Bishkek.

When attention turned to the development of tourism, we heard heartfelt appeals to environmental safety, the protection of biodiversity and fragile ecosystems, and the preservation of the region’s historical and cultural heritage. Concrete solutions are sorely lacking, though.

One recurring theme was that countries in the region are drawing closer and interacting more actively with one another. In practice, however, the technical work of reducing customs barriers, aligning standards, and harmonizing legislation is moving slowly, if at all.

The absence of a formally structured regional union means there are no binding commitments to align regulatory frameworks. A further complicating factor is the participation of some countries in the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are in, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are out). In practical terms, that limits the room for maneuver in other regional cooperation formats. The relentless development of Central Asia’s trade and investment relations with China is another elephant in the room.

Diversifying transport and logistics routes, including the so-called Southern Corridor, was repeatedly invoked, but in terms so general as to verge on abstraction.

Nobody asked how different transport corridor initiatives intersect with existing trade regimes and geopolitical commitments.

For example, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are members of the Eurasian Economic Union, China continues to expand its trade routes, and the United States promotes alternative corridors. How do these overlapping frameworks interact in practice? Where do they reinforce one another, and where might they create friction? What are the trade-offs? That line of inquiry never materialized.

And building a transport corridor is not just laying rail. It creates towns, labor migration, land disputes, environmental stress, inequality. Those downstream effects were not seriously examined. Speakers focused on customs harmonization and physical bottlenecks, but not on how these projects reshape societies.

None of this detracts from the significance of the forum. Most present must have sensed that some kind of history was being made.

At the same time, much of the real engagement appeared to be happening beyond the official panels, in closed formats and informal spaces. That makes the lack of a public reckoning with human security, transparency, and accountability all the more striking.

In a twist of serendipity, another major event was taking place around the same time, just 10 minutes away from the Sheraton, and another of Bishkek’s high-end hotels, the Hyatt.

While different in format, the 6th EU-Central Asia Civil Society Forum, held under the auspices of the EU’s Global Gateway Initiative, shared some themes with the B5+1 Forum; digitalization and sustainable development in particular.

People in those two conference rooms addressed overlapping themes, but their exchanges unfolded in parallel, largely in their respective silos. Business and strategic planners focused on investment. Civil society actors concentrated on rights, sustainability, and accountability.

The EU event approached sustainable development and digitalization from a civil society perspective. The B5+1 Forum centered on transport and minerals from an investment angle. Infrastructure, development, and governance are interconnected issues, yet no one attempted to connect the two tracks.

Thus, the brief walk between the venues became a quiet metaphor for a deeper divide: power versus accountability, investment versus consequence.

The B5+1 Forum offered a compelling blueprint for deeper U.S.-Central Asia economic engagement and for a more confident regional future.

But if questions of equity, environmental sustainability, and accountability remain peripheral, the benefits of that engagement may prove uneven, breeding frustration rather than shared advancement.

The real test of this format will be whether future iterations are bold enough to integrate human security into the core of the economic vision, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

Aida Aidarkulova is Executive Director at CAPS Unlock.