Afghan authorities have officially inaugurated a 121-kilometer (75-mile) gravel road stretching across the remote Wakhan Corridor in Badakhshan province to the border of China’s Xinjiang region. The opening marks the completion of a two-year infrastructure project aimed at establishing Afghanistan’s first direct overland road connection with China. However, key questions … [Read more...]
The Wakhan Corridor: A Buffer Whose Time Has Passed, and a Crossroads Whose Time Has Come
Tariq Saeedi The Wakhan Corridor is one of the strangest lines ever drawn on a map. --- A narrow finger of Afghan territory some 350 kilometres long and, in places, barely 13 kilometres wide, it reaches out from Badakhshan Province to touch China's Xinjiang region, separating Tajikistan to its north from Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan to its south. It was not born of trade, … [Read more...]