Wakhan Corridor

Geography

At its western entrance, near the Afghan town of Ishkashim, the corridor is 18 km wide. The western third of the corridor varies in width (13 -) and widens to 65 km in the central Wakhan. At its eastern end, the corridor forks into two prongs that wrap around a salient of Chinese territory, forming the 92 km boundary between the two countries. The Wakhjir Pass on the Afghanistan–China border, which is the easternmost point on the southeastern prong, is about 300 km from Ishkashim. The easternmost point of the northeastern prong is a nameless wilderness about 350 km from Ishkashim. On the Chinese side of the border is the Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The northern border of the corridor is defined by the Pamir River and Lake Zorkul in the west, and the high peaks of the Pamir Mountains in the east. To the north is Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region. To the south, the corridor is bounded by the high mountains of the Hindu Kush and Karakoram. Along its southern flank, two mountain passes connect the corridor to neighboring regions. The Broghil Pass provides access to Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, while the Irshad Pass links the corridor to Gilgit-Baltistan. The Dilisang Pass, which also connects to Gilgit-Baltistan, is disused. The easternmost pass, as indicated above, is the Wakhjir Pass, which connects to China and is the only border connection between that country and Afghanistan.

The corridor is higher in the east than in the west; (the Wakhjir Pass is 4923 m in elevation) and descends to about 3037 m at Ishkashim. The Wakhjir River emerges from an ice cave on the Afghan side of the Wakhjir Pass and flows west, joining the Bozai Darya near the village of Bazai Gumbad to form the Wakhan River. The Wakhan River then joins the Pamir River near Qala-i-Panjah to form the Panj River, which then flows out of the Wakhan Corridor at Ishkashim.

The Chinese consider Chalachigu Valley, the valley east of Wakhjir Pass on the Chinese side connecting Taghdumbash Pamir, to be part of the Wakhan Corridor. The high mountain valley is about 100 km long. This valley, through which the Tashkurgan River flows, is generally about 3-5 km wide and less than 1 km at its narrowest point.{{Cite web | trans-title = Xinjiang Border Tour: Reporter arrived at the Chinese westernmost point of Wakhan Corridor | access-date = 5 February 2017 | archive-date = 18 August 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160818022353/http://news.sina.com.cn/c/p/2011-07-07/114022773076.shtml | url-status = live

History

Although the terrain is extremely rugged, the Corridor was historically used as a trading route between Kabul and Kashgar. It appears that Alexander the Great, Song Yun, Huisheng, Xuanzang, Marco Polo, and many others came this way. The Portuguese Jesuit priest Bento de Goes crossed from the Wakhan to China between 1602 and 1606. The area was visited under the watchful eyes of the Russians by Thomas Edward Gordon in 1874, and in 1891 by Francis Younghusband, followed by Lord Curzon in 1894. While visiting Wakhan in May 1906, Aurel Stein reported that 100 pony loads of goods crossed annually to China.

Early travellers used one of three routes:

• A northern route led up the valley of the Pamir River to Zorkul Lake, then east through the mountains to the valley of the Bartang River, then across the Sarikol Range to China.
• A southern route led up the valley of the Wakhan River to the Wakhjir Pass to China. This pass is closed for at least five months a year and is only open irregularly for the remainder.
• A central route branched off the southern route through the Little Pamir to the Murghab River valley.

The corridor is, in part, a political creation from The Great Game between British India and Russian Empire. In the north, an agreement between the empires in 1873 effectively split the historic region of Wakhan by making the Panj and Pamir Rivers the border between Afghanistan and the then-Russian Empire. In the south, the Durand Line Agreement of 1893 marked the boundary between Afghanistan and British India (now Pakistan). This left a narrow strip of land ruled by Afghanistan as a buffer zone between the two empires, which became known as the Wakhan Corridor in the 20th century.

The corridor has been closed to regular traffic for over a century built in the 1960s and improved in the 2020s, but only rough paths beyond. These paths run some 100 km from the road end to the Chinese border at Wakhjir Pass, and further to the far end of the Little Pamir.

Jacob Townsend has speculated on the possibility of drug smuggling from Afghanistan to China via the Wakhan Corridor and Wakhjir Pass, but concluded that due to the difficulties of travel and border crossings, it would be minor compared to that conducted via Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province or through Pakistan, both having much more accessible routes into China.

The remoteness of the region has meant that, despite the long-running wars of Afghanistan since the late 1970s, the region has remained virtually untouched by conflict, and many locals, mostly composed of ethnic Pamir and Kyrgyz, are not aware of the wars in the country.

The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan asked the People's Republic of China on several occasions to open the border in the Wakhan Corridor for economic reasons or as an alternative supply route for fighting the Taliban insurgency. The Chinese resisted, largely due to unrest in its far western province of Xinjiang, which borders the corridor. , it was reported that the United States had asked China to open the corridor.

In July 2021, the area came under the Taliban control for the first time during the group's summer offensive. It was reported that hundreds of ethnic Kyrgyz nomads along with their livestock attempted to flee north into Tajikistan. The corridor is patrolled by forces of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which took over responsibility from the previous NATO-trained Afghan National Security Forces.

As of June 2023, there had been discussions between the foreign ministers of China and Afghanistan concerning the opening of the strategically significant corridor to enhance the trade ties between Beijing and Kabul. Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi both met on the sidelines in Tibet during the third Trans-Himalaya Forum for International Cooperation, to discuss the possibilities of improving trade ties. Though the Taliban government finished a 50-km road through the corridor to reach the Chinese border, Beijing seems disinclined to open the border, due to security concerns. By 2025, China had also constructed a high, green fence along the border. The Taliban has been highly secretive about the construction of the road, but the road and its approaches appeared to improve trade and living standards substantially for the Corridor's native inhabitants, according to one Austrian journalist.

In 2024 an independent analysis conducted at the University of Texas at Austin which relied on open source intelligence suggested the corridor consists of, "primarily dirt roads and footpaths that abruptly end before reaching the border."

Notes

References

;Citations ;Sources

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