The Taliban completed their road to the Chinese border – but were met with a frosty silence from across the frontier, according to multiple local reports.
As explained by a feature published by IntelliNews in May, the Islamist politico-militant group that governs Afghanistan are the latest rulers of the country to dream of “opening up Wakhan Corridor, the mountain valley that connects three worlds”. But the road has been built only in the hope that China will play ball. Still addressing sensitive considerations such as what would an open border with Afghanistan mean for the Chinese territory that borders the country, majority-Muslim Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), Beijing is yet to show whether it will do so.
RFE/RL has reported that for the early October inauguration of the road, China did not send representatives or officially acknowledge the event. The militarised boundary remained firmly shut, with images from the inauguration showing Chinese security cameras watching from behind razor wire.
Zhu Yongbiao, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at China’s Lanzhou University, told RFE/RL that the chances of Beijing opening the mountain pass border checkpoing any time soon “are extremely low.”
“Afghanistan's economy is very small and its value to China is negligible,” Zhu reportedly said, adding: “Meanwhile, the financial costs and security risks associated with opening the route would be substantial.” Afghanistan’s main exports to China are pine nuts, dried apricots and gemstones.
The Wakhan Corridor is a narrow, protruding strip of land in northeastern Afghanistan, sandwiched between China, Pakistan and Tajikistan.
The 350-kilometre (217-mile) mountain valley is nestled high in the Pamir Mountains in the province of Badakhshan. The width of this rugged strip of land dividing Tajikistan from Pakistan is just 13 km (eight miles) in places. Likely once trodden by luminaries including Alexander the Great and Marco Polo, its potential is fascinating.
If the high valley was made generally accessible and developed for modern trade flows, it would serve as a fabulous, even stupendous, link between Central, South and East Asia. Landlocked Central Asia would finally gain a clear road into Pakistan and thus the access to the ocean sought for so long by the region, Pakistani commerce would enjoy a short path into Central Asia and Afghanistan would have a direct trade passage into China. It would also become a route to the world’s second largest economy likely favoured by Iran.
Analyst Nargiza Umarova – who lately wrote a commentary titled, “The Wakhan Corridor's Increasing Role In Central Asia-Afghanistan-China Interaction”, published by The Central-Asia Caucasus Analyst – observes that “the Wakhan Corridor represents a unique intersection of historical legacy and modern strategic potential”. However, as any analyst au fait with the territory’s history will also tell you, the corridor is fraught with challenges, including security risks and geopolitical rivalries.
In opening up corridors for international trade, in this part of the world, China’s chosen path has diverged from Wakhan, instead concentrating on the utility provided by the $62bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It stretches from Kashgar in Xinjiang, across the Karakoram mountain range on China’s border with Pakistan and through to the Pakistani strategic deep-water port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea.
In Beijing’s thinking, Afghanistan and Central Asia should enjoy access to CPEC infrastructure via link-through routes opened up on Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, but this concept runs counter to the ambitions of the Taliban to conduct trade with China through Afghanistan’s own sole border with its giant neighbour at the end of the Wakhan Corridor.