On October 4, Taliban officials inaugurated the 121-kilometer-long Wakhan Transit Road connecting Afghanistan to China via the Wakhan Corridor after approximately three years of construction work. The road stretches from Afghanistan’s Broghil border area, on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, along Badakhshan province’s Wakhan district, finally reaching the border with China. According to Afghanistan’s de facto government under the Taliban, beyond China, the road will connect the country with third parties like Central Asian countries and global markets.
This corridor is expected to play a significant role for Afghanistan’s trade as well as its regional transit. Its opening marks an important milestone for the Taliban since the corridor was ignored for years due to security concerns.
A remote region in northeast Afghanistan, the Wakhan Corridor is 350 kilometers long and 13 to 65 km wide. The corridor, which shares borders with Pakistan (through the Durand Line, which the Taliban has started referring to as a “hypothetical” line), Tajikistan, and China, was created as a buffer zone between the Russian and British empires in 1895-96 when the Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission awarded the area to Afghanistan. Once a part of the famous Silk Road trade route, the Wakhan Corridor has been closed for regular transit for almost a century now.
Taliban Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development Abdul Latif Mansour, speaking at the inauguration ceremony, said that the road held “political, economic, and strategic significance” for Afghanistan. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has prioritized such public projects, especially in provinces that are most in need,” Mansour said, according to Tolo News. He further emphasized the homegrown nature of the project, saying, “There are no foreign engineers or advisers; all the engineers are Afghans.”
Governor of Badakhshan Rahmatullah Najib highlighted the road’s opening as a milestone. “After 45 years of war in the country, the Afghan people are witnessing the completion of such a major project in one of Afghanistan’s most remote areas,” Tolo News paraphrased Najib as saying.
This project is said to have cost 365 million Afghanis ($5.6 million) and was funded by the Taliban’s Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development.
According to Afghanistan’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs’ website, this trade route will benefit Afghanistan by providing direct access to imports from and exports to China. The minister highlighted that China is Afghanistan’s largest trading partner, with annual trade exceeding $1 billion between the two countries. The website claimed that the Wakhan Corridor is now the “closest, safest, and most reliable” route for China to export its goods not only to Afghanistan, but to the Central Asian countries, and beyond: to the Arab world, Turkiye, Iran, and the European countries.
That assumption is questionable; China has direct borders with three Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – and has invested millions in upgrading its trade and transit infrastructure to the region. China already has well-developed rail links with Kazakhstan. The Khorgos Gateway, which opened for operations in 2012 on the China-Kazakhstan border, is the world’s largest dry port. And construction on the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway is underway. It’s unclear why China would choose to route exports to Central Asia via Afghanistan.
The benefits for Afghanistan are more obvious. Due to the ongoing conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan, trade across their border has come to a halt. That cuts off landlocked Afghanistan’s primary trade and transit route for reaching third countries. If the Wakhan Corridor route becomes fully operational, it will provide an alternative route for Afghanistan to trade with the regional countries, particularly with China. Afghanistan could then connect directly with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), rather than linking itself to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as previously discussed.
In 2016, Afghanistan – then under the Republic government – and China signed a memorandum of understanding to integrate Afghanistan into the BRI. The following year in December, foreign ministers from Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan agreed to discuss ways to extend the CPEC to Afghanistan. In 2023, Afghanistan – now ruled by the Taliban – again reiterated its intention to join CPEC. This was also discussed during last year’s trilateral foreign ministers’ dialogue in Kabul. However, there has been no further progress in this regard due to the ongoing conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Taliban government views the new road via the Wakhan Corridor as an opportunity to lessen Pakistan’s leverage. Islamabad has a history of closing the border crossings between the countries, affecting trade and inflicting heavy losses on Afghanistan’s economy. Thus, the de facto regime is jubilant with the inauguration of the Wakhan transit road.
As per Afghanistan’s Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs’ website, “With the opening of the Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan will be forever freed from the pressure of neighboring countries, which often exploit the Karachi route, Gwadar Port, and Chabahar for political purposes and cause heavy financial losses to our traders and compatriots every year.”
Even though the inauguration of the route is expected to alleviate the transportation challenges for the residents of Pamir and Wakhan, its role as a trans-regional route, or even just connecting Afghanistan to China, seems to be a distant dream.
Despite the Taliban regime’s completion of the road, China still has not opened its border with Afghanistan, arguably due to security concerns vis-à-vis the crossing. Moreover, China neither sent its representative to the inaugural ceremony on October 4, nor did it acknowledge the road’s completion diplomatically.
China built the road that the Taliban’s Wakhan transit road aimed to link up with over a decade ago. The goal wasn’t to increase trade, but to secure its militarized border with Afghanistan by advancing access for its armed patrols. The Taliban refer to the transit route as a trading link to gain access to Chinese markets; Chinese media refers to this approximately 76-kilometer-long border as a “major counterterrorism front line.” This media framing aligns with Chinese officials’ narrative that Uyghurs in the region have frequently visited the corridor in order to “return to Xinjiang for Jihad.”
China’s major security concern in Afghanistan is the potential threat from the members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group that seeks self-determination for the Uyghurs and independence of Xinjiang province from the Chinese government.
According to some estimates, there are over 3,000 Uyghurs living in Afghanistan. China has asked the Taliban to ensure that Uyghur separatists would not be allowed to use Afghan soil as a base for their activities in Xinjiang. Besides this, China wants the Taliban to extradite Uyghurs affiliated with ETIM to China.
China’s lukewarm reaction to the Taliban’s completion of the Wakhan transit route emanates mainly from its security concerns. Until the Taliban completely secure the route and convince Beijing that it will not be used as a route by ETIM members to infiltrate Xinjiang, the use of the Wakhan Corridor as a trade route between the two countries will remain a distant dream.
