page_title: Wakhan Corridor
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Wakhan Corridor / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The Russian-India border, c. 1865, before the creation of the Wakhan Corridor.
context_page_description: The Wakhan Corridor is a narrow strip of territory in Afghanistan, extending to China and separating Tajikistan from Pakistan and Kashmir. The corridor, wedged between the Pamir Mountains to the north and the Karakoram range to the south, is about 350 km long and 13–65 kilometres wide. 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 United Kingdom and Afghanistan, creating the Durand Line. This narrow strip of Afghanistan acted as a buffer between the Russian Empire and the British Empire. Its eastern end bordered China's Xinjiang region, 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.
context_section_description: 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.
  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.
caption: The Russian-India border, c. 1865, before the creation of the Wakhan Corridor
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