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Wakhan Corridor

The Wakhan Corridor or Wakhan Salient is a long and slender land corridor that forms the northeastern-most extremity of Afghanistan in the Pamir Mountains. It is roughly 210 kilometres (100 mi) long and between 20 kilometres (10 mi) and 60 kilometres (40 mi) wide. ^[1]. It is named after the Wakhan region of Afghanistan's Badakhshan province. The corridor, which connects Afghanistan to China in the east and separates Tajikistan in the north from Pakistan in the south, was a political creation of the the Great Game. The Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission of 1895-1896 demarcated the land as a buffer between British India and the Russian Central Asia. ^[1] Once part of the Silk Road, the Wakhan Corridor has been closed to border traffic for almost 100 years due to political reasons.^[1] Today, the corridor is sparsely populated with 10,600 Wakhi farmers and Kyrgyz herders.^[1] It has been among the peaceful regions of Afghanistan having largely escaped the wars that have ravaged the country since 1979.^[1] It is Afghanistan's main habitat for snow leopards. ^[1]

[edit] Geography

"Lake Victoria, Great Pamir, May 2nd, 1874", watercolor by Thomas Edward Gordon^[2]

The Pamir River, flowing out of Lake Zorkul, forms the northern border of the corridor. The Wakhan River passes through the corridor from the east to Kala-i-Panj, joining the Pamir River to become the Panj River.

In the south, the corridor is bounded by the high mountains of the Hindu Kush, crossed by the Broghol pass, the Irshad Pass and the disused Dilisang Pass^[3] to Pakistan.

At the eastern border, the Wakhjir Pass through the Hindu Kush at 4,923 m (16,150 ft), is one of the highest in the world^[1]. The Wakhjir Pass has the greatest official change of clocks of any international frontier (UTC+4:30 in Afghanistan to UTC+8, China Standard Time, in China)^{[citation needed]}. The border with China is among the highest in the world.

According to the paper by Townsend (2005)^[4], the pass "is closed for at least five months a year and is open irregularly for the remainder."

The corridor was once part of the Silk Road, but as a through route has been closed to regular traffic for over 100 years.^[1]

[edit] People

The Wakhan Corridor

The Corridor is sparsely populated, with total population estimated at around 10,600.^[1] The main people present in the corridor are the Wakhi, along with smaller numbers of yurt-dwelling Kirghiz ^[1]^[5] herders. According to a 2003 report by the United Nations Environment Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization, the population suffers from lack of education, poverty, ill health, food insecurity and opium addiction.^[6]

Townsend (2005) discusses the possibility of drug smuggling from Afghanistan to China via Wakhan Corridor and Wakhjir Pass, but concludes that, due to the difficulties of travel and border crossings, even if such trafficking occurs, it is minor compared to that conducted via Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province or even via Pakistan, both having much more accessible connections into China.^[4]

Alastair Leithead on BBC News 24 on December 26, 2007, presented an half-hour feature about the corridor, focusing particularly on the work of expatriate British Doctor Alexander Duncan, which provided a significant piece of extended media reporting from this inaccessible area.^[7] He has also covered the Pamir Festival in the area.^[8]

[edit] Strategic role

Afghanistan has asked China on several occasions to open the border in the Wakhan Corridor as an alternative supply route for fighting the Taliban insurgency, however China has resisted, largely due to unrest in its far western province of Xinjiang which borders the corridor.^[9]^[10]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j FACTBOX-Key facts about the Wakhan Corridor. Reuters. June 12, 2009
^ "Lake Victoria, Great Pamir, May 2nd, 1874"
^ The pass was crossed by a couple in 1950 and by a couple in 2004. See J.Mock and K. O'Neil: Expedition Report
^ ^a ^b "China and Afghan Opiates: Assessing the Risk" (Chapter 4). June 2005
^ Mock and O'Neil, Expedition Report (2004)
^ United Nations Environment Programme; Food and Agriculture Organization. Afghanistan: Post-conflict Environmental Assessment Report.
^ BBC News: Doctor on call in Afghanistan
^ Pamir Times
^ Afghanistan tells China to open Wakhan corridor route. The Hindu. June 11, 2009
^ China mulls Afghan border request. BBC News Online. June 12, 2009

[edit] Books

M. Nazif Mohib Shahrani, The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation to Closed Frontiers and War. University of Washington Press, 2002. ISBN 0295982624.