ON 4 October, the Taliban Administration inaugurated a 121-kilometre road through the Wakhan Corridor, running from Broghil, opposite Pakistan’s Chitral district, to the zero point on the Chinese border. The unpaved road cost barely five and a half million dollars and climbs toward the Wakhjir Pass at nearly 4,900 metres, snowbound for much of the year. Measured in tonnage, it rivals nothing on the Karakoram Highway. In strategic terms, it is the most significant change to Pakistan’s northern geography in decades, because for the first time Afghanistan and China have a direct land link that does not pass through Pakistan.

The Wakhan was drawn as a buffer. The Anglo-Russian settlement of 1895 left this thin strip in Afghan hands so that two empires would never touch. Pakistan’s regional leverage has rested on the opposite proposition: that it is the bridge. Landlocked Afghanistan depends on Karachi and the Torkham and Chaman crossings for its seaborne trade, while China’s westward ambition, embodied in CPEC, runs through Gilgit-Baltistan to Gwadar. Both relationships rest on Pakistan being the indispensable route. The Wakhan Road dents that monopoly.

The first vulnerability is leverage over Kabul. Islamabad has repeatedly closed border crossings during security crises with the Taliban, using trade as an instrument of pressure. Every closure has strengthened Kabul’s case for alternatives through Iran, Central Asia and now China. A Taliban........

© Pakistan Observer