The Wakhan Corridor

A buffer between two empires

In the late 19th century the British in India feared that the Russian Empire would keep expanding south through Central Asia.^[2] Moving south in the mid-19th century, Russia conquered the khanates of Khiva and Bokhara, which brought its border to the upper Amu Darya (the Oxus river).^[1] The British wanted a single buffer territory north-west of India to hold back both Russia and Persia.^[1]

In an agreement of 31 January 1873, Britain and Russia settled that Badakhshan and Wakhan, as far east as Lake Sari-Qul, belonged to Afghanistan, and that the Amu Darya formed Afghanistan’s northern border.^[1] A British–Afghan agreement of 12 November 1893 called for the line east of the lake to be settled too.^[1] Britain and Russia did that in an exchange of notes in March 1895, and a mixed commission then set up 12 boundary pillars between the lake and the Chinese border.^[1]

The result was a thin arm of Afghan territory between Russia’s possessions to the north and British India to the south.^[2] It gave Britain the buffer it wanted.^[2]

“This east–west corridor effectively served to mark the limits of British and Russian political expansion.”^[2]

The shape on the map

The corridor is usually said to run from the Afghan village of Eshkashem in the west to the Wakhjir Pass on the Chinese border in the east.^[1] That is about 300 km. To Afghanistan’s easternmost point it is about 350 km, because a westward bulge of Chinese territory splits the eastern end into two prongs, one reaching north-east and one south-east.^[1]

It is narrowest in its western third, 13–25 km across, and widest in the middle, 65 km, where it takes in a whole mountain range.^[1] For most of its length the northern edge follows rivers: the Panj and then the Pamir river, up to Lake Sari-Qul.^[1] From the lake, the last 218 km of the northern border follow mountain crests.^[1] The southern edge follows high ridges the whole way.^[1]

Passes over the southern ridges lead down to Chitral, and further east to Hunza and Gilgit, in territory controlled by Pakistan.^[1]

The Roof of the World

East of the village of Lyangar the corridor’s peaks and passes stand 5,000–6,500 metres above sea level, and the US Geographer called it “nearly ‘the Roof of the World’”.^[1] Glaciers once filled its valleys. They left flat, grassy floors, often wet and dotted with shallow lakes, which are known locally as “pamirs”.^[1] The mountains around them are called the Pamirs.^[1]

In 1983 the corridor still had only trails and tracks, and wheeled vehicles could hardly use them.^[1] Snowmelt makes travel hard from May to July, and the US Geographer judged September the best month to cross.^[1]

About 1,500 nomadic Pamir Kyrgyz live in two of these valleys, the Big Pamir and the Little Pamir.^[4] In 1978, after Afghanistan’s Saur Revolution, their leader Haji Rakhmankul Khan led an exodus of about 1,500 herders into Pakistan.^[4] Those who stay are so isolated that a supply trip to Pakistan takes five days by yak each way.^[4]

The Chinese end

For decades the corridor’s eastern end, facing China, was only a “conventional” line on maps, never formally agreed.^[2] In the early 20th century China claimed much of the Pamir region, including most of the corridor.^[2]

On 22 November 1963, in Beijing, China and Afghanistan signed a treaty fixing a 47-mile (76 km) border along the water divide of the Mustagh range.^[2] It crosses the Wakhjir Pass at 4,923 m and ends at a peak of 5,698 m.^[2] A protocol marking the line on the ground followed in Kabul on 24 March 1965.^[2]

In September 2023 Afghanistan’s Taliban government said it had begun rebuilding a 50 km road linking Badakhshan to Xinjiang, at a cost of US$5.16 million, and in January 2024 it said the road was nearly finished.^[3] As of 2025 China had no customs facilities at the Wakhjir Pass.^[3]