Afghanistan’s new road to China ends at a closed border

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Taliban government hopes its Wakhan Corridor road will open new trade routes and reduce reliance on Pakistan.

At an altitude of nearly 4,900 metres, at the Wakhjir Pass, Afghanistan ends and China begins. Snow closes the pass for at least five months of the year, and people cross it only sporadically in the months when it is passable.

There is no official border crossing here, and yet, on October 4, Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government celebrated the opening of a road leading to the frontier – but crucially not crossing it.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development said the road through the Wakhan Corridor in Badakhshan province had been built in two phases for 365 million afghanis ($5.5m).

It is a basic road – an unpaved track covered with gravel. On the other side of the border, there is no Chinese customs facility, and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not commented on the road’s opening.

For the moment, the road leads to a closed border, with no indication of when Beijing might open it to commercial traffic.

The Wakhan Corridor is a narrow protruding stretch of land extending for about 350 kilometres (220 miles). It lies between Tajikistan to the north and Pakistan to the south, but is entirely within Afghan territory, connecting it with China.

The corridor’s unusual shape was determined by the competition between Britain and Russia over the region in the 19th century. An agreement between the two powers in 1895 delineated Afghanistan’s northern boundary with Russian territories (that now make up modern-day Tajikistan), and left Wakhan under Kabul’s control to separate the Russian-controlled land from British India.

China was not a party to the conflict, however, and Kabul and Beijing did not settle the border until 1963.

The area – on both sides of the border – is remote. But in recent years it has gradually become one of Asia’s most sensitive geopolitical crossroads, where China’s security concerns, Afghanistan’s economic ambitions, the interests of Pakistan and Iran, and Central Asian countries’ regional connectivity projects intersect.

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