Historical Maritime combat

On one hand it is helping trade and stability in the new states On the other it

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"On one hand, it is helping trade and stability in the new states On the other, it is opening the way for Iran. I expect we'll be standing on the sidelines, wagging our finger, but without much spirit." The US has backed its secular Nato ally, Turkey, against Iran in the region and although Turkish businessmen are becoming ever more successful throughout the region, Ankara has been sidelined by its own weakness and geo-political difficulties in routing oil pipelines through Turkey.Whether Washington likes it or not, Iran has been doing better in Central Asia and the Caucasus in the past couple of years. It is the descendant of the Baghdad Pact and other anti-Soviet alliances of the old "northern tier" but has gone in a different direction than was ever intended by its architects in Washington."We don't know quite what to do about the Sarakhs opening," said a US official in Central Asia. Leaders of states like Iran and Turkey and the new countries of Central Asia flocked to an inaugural ceremony for the newly built 300-km Mashad- Tedzhen connection at Sarakhs, a remote dust-blown outpost on the border between Turkmenistan and Iran. Sarakhs was once a spot where British players of the old imperial Great Game against Moscow entered or left then-friendly Persian territory. Yesterday's opening is a symbol of the advantage that Iran, now anti-Western, has gained in the new game that pits it not only against Russia but also Turkey, China, other regional states and Western oil and mining multinationals.The opening will be followed by a gathering today of leaders of the Economic Cooperation Organization, which groups 250 million people in the non-Arab Middle East and Muslim south-west Asia. The Great Game for oil, trade and power in Central Asia took a new turn away from Russia yesterday with the opening of a railway link that gives the first alternative rail route into the region from Iranian ports in the Gulf, from Turkish factories, from London or Peking. The fortnight it would probably take you to reach Peking will need a Gladstone bag full of visas and several Passepartouts to deal with surprises.

"If you could survive it," a leading railway expert said yesterday, " you would at least have a tale to tell.". A six-hour bus-trip then connects you to the railway line in Iran.Once in Iran it is another day to Mashad, and you should be in Samarkand later that same day (with luck) One more day and you are in Tashkent, from where there is an "excellent" service to Alma Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan, according to railway experts. Assuming you left Waterloo on a Thursday morning, it is now Saturday morning - and by good fortune, the regular Alma-Ata to Peking service leaves at 1900 that night.This southern alternative to the mighty Trans-Siberian is not a trip, however, that is likely to drag out into mind-numbing days. And anyway, a mysterious rise in the water level of Lake Van - shortly after reports of a Loch Ness- like monster - has flooded the rail ferry jetty. But an pounds 18 sleeper ticket will allow you to skirt around the danger area on a 40-hour ride to Kars on the flanks of the Caucasus. For several months, even armoured trains have not dared go to Iran through Turkey's south-eastern Kurdish war zone.

But the trains through Eastern Europe to Istanbul will give you a bumpier ride as you skirt around the region's various embargoes and front lines.Another three days takes you to Tehran, though this poses a problem. Though some technical problems remain, the 185-mile stretch of new track opens the possibility for rail travellers to go from London to Peking without having to go to Moscow. Currently, those undertaking the journey have to go through Eastern Europe to Moscow and then take the Trans-Siberian express to the Mongolian border, a week-long journey.Instead, after going through the Channel tunnel, they will be able to take the train from Paris to Budapest, then through to Istanbul, a journey that takes four days.The Orient Express, if you can afford it, will still take you in luxury as far as Venice. If you have two weeks to spare, speak half-a-dozen languages, have a high tolerance for hard living and love trains, then the holiday of your dreams has just become possible. True adventure now lies along a new line opened yesterday that could, in theory, take you from London to Peking via the Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bokhara, in 14 days To celebrate the occasion, the Iranian engine Pride pulled dignitaries from the eastern city of Mashad through Sarakhs to Tedzhen in Turkmenistan, thus for the first time linking Iranian railways into the ex-Soviet system in Central Asia. I could not put my finger on it but, in an obscure way, I felt the sex and violence were related. Certainly this was a murky world I hardly expected to find in the Russian provinces Moscow would seem a safe and innocent place after this.. Now I realised they must have been preparing for the funeral.Later, I read all about it in the local paper.