Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan's Badakhshan Province

 

The Wakhan Corridor

 

The Wakhan Corridor is a panhandle 217 miles long but less than 9 miles wide, ending in Afghanistan’s short border with China that measures just 47 miles across. It was created by Russo-British negotiations in 1895, resulting in a commission that designated the valley as a buffer zone between the two empire’s territories—nominally administered by the emir in Kabul.

 

To the Corridor’s north lies the Tajikistani region of Gorno-Badakhshan, the site of a small but fierce civil war in the 1990s. To its south lies greater Kashmir, fiercely disputed between India, Pakistan, and China. At the far eastern end of the Corridor, meanwhile, across the snowy Wakhjir pass, is Xinjiang.

 

The terrain here is notoriously difficult—one reason the Taliban never took it over even when they ruled most of Afghanistan. The Corridor’s western reaches are famous for their dramatic floodplains of the river Panj, which are framed on either side by bare, steep-sided mountains. Moving east, the river’s tributaries lead upward to the “Little” and “Big” Afghan Pamirs, pastures known for their harsh winters and impressive altitude. “There’s barely anywhere so remote or rugged,” said James Willcox, whose company has been running tours to the area for over 14 years. “It’s breathtaking.”

 

In the high plateaus near Lake Chaqmaqtin, photographer Frédéric Lagrange passes through Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor.

 

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Wakhan Corridor

The Wakhan Corridor is a narrow area of land in the north-eastern Afghanistan, separating Pakistan from Tajikistan, which also provides Afghanistan a tiny border with China at the same time. The corridor was part of the ancient Silk Road — the oldest transit route from China to Central Asia. In the 19th century, the corridor became the legacy of a geopolitical contest between British ruled India and Russian Empire; known to the world as the ‘Great Game’.

 

Geography

The Wakhan Corridor forms the panhandle of Afghanistan's Badakhshan Province. At its western entrance near the Afghan town of Ishkashim, the corridor is 18 km (11 mi) wide. The western third of the corridor varies from 13–30 km (8–19 mi) in width and widens to 65 km (40 mi) 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 (57 mi) boundary between the two countries. The Wakhjir Pass, which is the easternmost point on the southeastern prong, is about 300 km (190 mi) from Ishkashim. The easternmost point of the northeastern prong is a nameless wilderness about 350 km (220 mi) from Ishkashim. On the Chinese side of the border is the Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

“Lost on the Roof of the World”, Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan.

The Wakhan Corridor is a small stretch of land in eastern Afghanistan, compressed between the Hindu Kush mountain range, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and China. This territory is home to the Wakhi and Kirghiz people who lead lives virtually unchanged for centuries, battling an extremely rugged environment without roads or amenities.

https://vimeo.com/86460876

 

The Wakhan Corridor

(Pashto: واخان دهلېز‎, romanized: wāxān dahléz, Urdu: واخان راہداری Persian: دالان واخان‎, romanized: dâlân vâxân)

is a narrow strip of territory in Afghanistan, extending to China and separating Tajikistan from Pakistan. From this high mountain valley the Panj and Pamir rivers emerge and form the Amu Darya. A trade route through the valley has been used by travellers going to and from East, South and Central Asia since antiquity.

 

The corridor was formed by an 1893 agreement between the British Empire (British India) and Afghanistan, creating the Durand Line. This narrow strip acted as a buffer zone between the Russian Empire and the British Empire (the regions of Russian Turkestan, now in Tajikistan, and the part of British India now in Pakistan and the contested region of Gilgit-Baltistan). Its eastern end bordered China's Xinjiang region, then ruled by the Qing dynasty.

 

Politically, the corridor is in the Wakhan District of Afghanistan's Badakhshan Province. As of 2010, the Wakhan Corridor had 12,000 inhabitants. The northern part of the Wakhan, populated by the Wakhi and Pamiri peoples, is also referred to as the Pamir.

 

History

Although the terrain is extremely rugged, the Corridor was historically used as a trading route between Badakhshan and Yarkand. It appears that Marco Polo came this way. The Portuguese Jesuit priest Bento de Goes crossed from the Wakhan to China between 1602 and 1606. In May 1906, Sir Aurel Stein explored the Wakhan and reported that at that time, 100 pony loads of goods crossed annually to China. There were further crossings in 1874 by Captain T.E. Gordon of the British Army, in 1891 by Francis Younghusband, and in 1894 by Lord Curzon.

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 the United Kingdom 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 Russian Empire.  In the south, the Durand Line agreement of 1893 marked the boundary between British India and Afghanistan. This left a narrow strip of land ruled by Afghanistan as a buffer between the two empires, which became known as the Wakhan Corridor in the 20th century.

This is the spectacular meeting place of the two major mountain ranges, the Pamir and the Hindu Kush.Photograph: Jeremy Suyker for zenith

 

The corridor has been closed to regular traffic for over a century and there is no modern road. There is a rough road from Ishkashim to Sarhad-e Broghil built in the 1960s, but only rough paths beyond. These paths run some 100 km (60 mi) 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, who are mostly composed of ethnic Pamir and Kyrgyz, are not aware of wars in the country.

 

The closure of the Afghan-Chinese border crossing at the Wakhjir Pass, on the east end of the Wakhan Corridor, has left the valley bereft of trade.

 

The government of Afghanistan has 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 have resisted, largely due to unrest in its far western province of Xinjiang, which borders the corridor. In December 2009, it was reported that the United States had asked China to open the corridor.

Wakhan Corridor - Wikipedia

 

A Valley Between Giants

The 350km long Wakhan Valley runs between Tajikistan and Afghanistan.Photograph: Jeremy Suyker for zenith

 

 

Wakhan Corridor: The winding path along the Panj River Valley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbK8MMraK_w