High road to China? A road to the Afghan-Chinese border is not what it might seem
High Road To China? A road to the Afghan-Chinese border is not what it might seem
WRITTEN BY FRANZ J. MARTY
21 July 2021
FAIZABAD, BADAKHSHAN, AFGHANISTAN — Currently, a group of Afghan workers are inching their way forward in a barren valley in the farthest northeastern corner of Afghanistan. Their objective is unprecedented: to build a road through one of the most remote corners of Afghanistan to the Chinese border. While this is a historical feat that is changing the lives of locals, reports already touting the yet to be finished road as a major economic connection to China that will transform the region are questionable as it is not even clear yet whether the road will become an official and open border crossing.
The roof of the world
The already built part of this road connects the Little Pamir, a high altitude plateau at the end of the Wakhan Corridor, a panhandle of Afghan territory wedged in between Tajikistan and Pakistan, with the rest of Afghanistan. As the additional part of the road currently under construction is set to run right to the remote Afghan-Chinese border, it also opens up the possibility of a direct road connection between the Little Pamir and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China’s far northwest.
This is of historic proportions as the Little Pamir has — apart from an old Soviet-era track from Tajikistan that has never been open to the public and fell into disrepair — never been connected with a road to the outside world. Accordingly, the Little Pamir has so far only been accessible via multi-day treks on arduous trails in unforgiving bleak mountains that could only be traversed via undeveloped passes. These passes as well as the Little Pamir itself lie at such high altitudes — even the plateau of the Little Pamir at the foot of the mountains is located at around 4,000 metres above sea level — that the Little Pamir and nearby Great Pamir are known as “Bom-i Dunyo”, meaning “The Roof of the World” in Persian, one of Afghanistan’s official languages.
Given these difficult conditions, the Little Pamir is only sparsely populated by around 900 ethnic Kyrgyz whose interactions with surrounding areas are limited. In the past, the Kyrgyz of the Afghan Pamirs had, like their fellow Kyrgyz in other parts of Central Asia, roamed the grasslands and valleys of the wider region as nomads and only stayed in the Afghan Pamirs in summer. However, anthropologist Ted Callahan explains, “[a]s the international borders of the Soviet Union, China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan became more clearly defined — and politically sensitive — during the twentieth century, one small population of Kyrgyz nomadic pastoralists found themselves confined to [permanently] living on the Roof of the World”.
As the Afghan Pamirs only provide pastures for livestock but no arable land, the Afghan Kyrgyz are dependent on trade. This trade is primarily conducted via the Wakhan and to a much lesser extent, if at all, with Pakistan and Tajikistan, where traversing the border is illegal due to the lack of official border crossings.
While local reactions to the road are overwhelmingly positive, not everyone is happy though. Some Kyrgyz are apparently disillusioned by their past experience of promises of development in the Little Pamir that never materialised and remain sceptical that the road will change this.
Relations with China, which shares a merely 76 km border with Afghanistan that runs through almost impassable mountains east of the Little Pamir, are practically non-existent. The Afghan-Chinese border can only be crossed via two so far undeveloped mountain passes, the Tegermansu (approximate coordinates: 37.218942, 74.834918) and the Wakhjir (approximate coordinates: 37.095833, 74.482333), both reaching altitudes of almost 5,000 metres above sea level. And although these passes could be crossed on foot, they don’t see any travellers. “We never go to the Chinese border”, Haji Sultan, a Kyrgyz living in the Little Pamir told the author via telephone on 9 June, “China has a very strict [border] regime and we don’t want to get troubles”. Turod Beg, another Kyrgyz from the Little Pamir, confirmed this, adding that the Chinese would have “cameras” to surveil the border and would notice anyone approaching. Another report also indicates that the Chinese have fenced off at least the Tegermansu Pass.
That said, for around a year Chinese forces did not only patrol their side of the border but also conducted joint patrols with their Afghan counterparts in the Little Pamir. However, such joint patrols in the Little Pamir were suspended in late 2016 after they became publicly known and apparently created some embarrassment for the Afghan government, which denied that such patrols ever existed. As there was no road to the Little Pamir back then, these patrols or at least the ones including vehicles must have entered the Little Pamir via the poor Soviet-era track that crosses the Afghan-Tajik border at a point where it runs over the far northeastern edge of the plateau.
The road
This situation on the Roof of the World is now changing. While the Great Pamir still can only be reached on foot, the Afghan government has recently built a road from Sarhad-i Broghil, where the only road in the Wakhan used to end, to Bozai Gonbad, the main Kyrgyz settlement in the Little Pamir. “Construction of this about 60 km long road started in 2019 and was finished at the end of 2020”, a civil servant from Afghanistan’s National Rural Access Programme in Badakhshan told the author in an interview.
End of Wakhan Corridor. Credit: Author provided.
Main image: The simple unpaved road at the end of the Wakhan Corridor that is set to run up to the remote Afghan-Chinese border (April 2019). Image credit: Tobias Marschall.
In June 2021, several sources who had travelled the road described it as a simple unpaved track, sometimes blasted or hammered out of pure rock, sometimes cumbersomely dug across shingle escarpments. That said, Khalil Rahman Omaid, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Works, told the author that the Ministry hopes to asphalt the road in the future; however, upon further inquiring, he acknowledged that there is currently no concrete plan for such an improvement. For now, the road therefore apparently still looks like it did in April 2019, when Tobias Marschall, a PhD candidate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, took the photographs published along with this article. Or worse. “A stretch of 9 km of the road between Sarhad-i Broghil and Bozai Gonbad was destroyed last winter due to snow and snowmelt”, said Haji Sultan. “Local people repaired the road again”, he added; however, several sources indicated that lorries would still have trouble passing at least one spot of the road. How difficult driving a lorry along a simple unpaved road in the Wakhan is, can also be seen in this documentary from 2016 showing a trader’s travel up to Sarhad-i Broghil, where the terrain is easier than on the stretch from Sarhad-i Broghil to the Little Pamir.
Nonetheless, cars and lorries are now reaching the Little Pamir from Sarhad-i Broghil, something that had never happened before in history. One indication of how extraordinary this is, is the fact that in 2009 the construction of a road in the difficult mountains at the end of the Wakhan was deemed “infeasible”.
That said, the second phase of the road project, connecting Bozai Gonbad with the height of the Wakhjir Pass where the Chinese border lies, is currently underway. “20 per cent of this 49.7 km long road has been built”, Omaid told the author on 16 June, “the rest is set to be completed during the remainder of 2021 and 2022”. Omaid further confirmed that the construction of this road in the Little Pamir, which costs 369 million Afghani (approximately USD 4.7 million), is fully financed by the Afghan government without any Chinese involvement.
Connection to China?
“At the moment, the road in the Little Pamir is only an access road for local people”, Omaid explained, “but we hope that it could become a transit route and attract Chinese investment”. However, despite media reports already touting the road as a major connection to China or a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and some local Kyrgyz expressing hope for a connection to China, whether such a transit corridor will ever materialise is far from clear. Indeed, asked about details on a direct connection to China on the Wakhjir Pass, Omaid acknowledged that “the Afghan government would like to open a border crossing but has so far not had official meetings with China in this regard”.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan did not reply to requests for comment on the road or a possible border crossing. However, if past experience is any guide, China is likely reluctant to have open cross-border traffic via the Wakhan. As the joint border patrols in 2016, as well as the author’s interactions with Chinese officials in Kabul during the past years, suggest, the Chinese apparently see the Wakhan as a potential infiltration route for Uyghur jihadists who are residing in Afghanistan and — at least in their propaganda — vow to bring their jihad to their homeland in Xinjiang. That Uyghur jihadists who are currently in Afghanistan would or could threaten China via the Wakhan Corridor is, however, highly unlikely for multiple reasons. This has not dampened Chinese paranoia toward such a scenario though, which makes it improbable that China would agree to open borders at the end of the Wakhan.
The latter was confirmed by Callahan, who has also spent time on the Chinese side of the border where a road that runs close to the Wakhjir Pass already exists. “The Kara Chukur Valley on the Chinese side of the Wakhjir Pass hosts a Chinese military base and is a restricted zone. Accordingly, even if a direct road link between China and Afghanistan through the Wakhjir Pass should materialise it would be doubtful whether it would be opened to commerce, not to speak of to the public”, he told the author. “Indeed, while it is hard to imagine that the Chinese have not at least tacitly agreed to the current road construction in the Little Pamir, Chinese interest in a direct road connection to Afghanistan appears limited at best. For example, the larger Belt and Road scheme shows that it was designed to avoid Afghanistan, not connect it”, Callahan added.
Difficult maintenance
Other practical reasons that could prevent the road in the Little Pamir from ever becoming an important thoroughfare are the difficult conditions in the utterly remote mountainous terrain. Without laborious clearing with heavy machinery, the road will be closed for several months in winter depending on the severity of the snowfall. And this is not the only problem as snow, regular floods, and landslides will critically impact the road which means that it will require very frequent maintenance. Indeed, as mentioned above, local people already had to repair a significant section of the road between Sarhad-i Broghil and the Little Pamir after the first winter and Chinese border forces also mentioned that bad roads and flash-floods blocking roads are the biggest difficulty in similar terrain on the Chinese side.
Afghan workers on the road that cuts through difficult terrain between Sarhad-i Broghil and Bozai Gonbad (April 2019). Image credit: Tobias Marschall.
In spite of this, it remains to be seen whether or how the road in the Little Pamir will be maintained. “There is no maintenance plan [for the road in the Little Pamir], as there is no budget”, says a civil servant in Badakhshan who spoke under the condition of anonymity. This was contested by Omaid, who assured that every year the Ministry of Public Works allocates funding for road maintenance according to the needs of every province and this will also cover the road in the Little Pamir. Details, however, are unclear, “because a maintenance plan can only be made once the road is completed”, Omaid stated.
Others, though, underscore the importance of planning for maintenance well in advance. “I have visited many places in Nuristan [a remote eastern Afghan province bordering Badakhshan], where there had been expensive road projects but, after only a few years, it was impossible to tell that there ever had been any type of road there as no one thought about maintenance”, observed David J. Katz, who worked in Nuristan’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in 2006 and 2007. Given that many roads across Afghanistan, including major main roads, are at best poorly maintained, the road in the Little Pamir might therefore be befallen by the same fate as the mentioned ones in Nuristan.
Benefits for locals
Despite these limitations and potential pitfalls, the road is certainly a major feat and is already significantly impacting the lives of the Kyrgyz in the Little Pamir. “We are happy about the road”, Haji Khudoi Nazar, a Kyrgyz whose face the winds of the Pamir have lined with deep wrinkles, told the author. “Before, it was a five-day foot march from my village [at the edge of the Little Pamir] to Sarhad-i Broghil; now we can go by car in one day”.
While travel has become easier for residents and outside traders alike, several locals, in particular, highlighted the importance of the road for bringing sick people faster and more comfortably to a hospital further down in the Wakhan or in Badakhshan’s provincial capital Faizabad. With respect to trade, however, it is noteworthy that several inhabitants of the Wakhan confirmed that the easier transport route has not (at least so far) led to a decrease in prices of goods sold in the Little Pamir. Nevertheless, Afghan Kyrgyz leaders are, according to Marschall, still hopeful “that the road will lead to further general improvement such as the construction of schools and clinics, a stronger state, and the enhancement of trade relations”.
While local reactions to the road are overwhelmingly positive, not everyone is happy though. Some Kyrgyz are apparently disillusioned by their past experience of promises of development in the Little Pamir that never materialised and remain sceptical that the road will change this. “Every year someone comes and asks about our problems, but no one ever helps to solve them”, a young Kyrgyz angrily interrupted the author’s conversation with Haji Khudoi Nazar in Faizabad at one point. “Some poorer Kyrgyz households also fear that the road might destroy principles of mutual support and their traditional lifestyle which undergirds their everyday interactions”, Marschall added based on his field research.
For others like Haji Sultan, the progress does not go far enough. “Only one part of the Little Pamir is connected to the road while other settlements still remain cut off by rivers and long distances over the plateau”, he said. Yet others, like Turod Beg, for whom the connection to Sarhad-i Broghil is not that important and who places their hopes on a direct link to China, might be disappointed in the likely case that the route to China either will not materialise at all or fall short of expectations.
That said, more generally, another observation of Haji Khudoi Nazar raises the question of to what extent a road — or any other development for that matter — can fix the problems of living in as harsh conditions as found in the Little Pamir. “My wish is that we can get some better place to stay during winter and only spend the summers tending our livestock in the Little Pamir”, he said when asked about what would be the best for his people.
Given all the aforementioned and despite the benefits that the road has brought to the Little Pamir, the end of the Wakhan is set to remain an austere backwater and is unlikely to ever become a major trade route.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Franz J. Marty is a freelance journalist based in Afghanistan. While he focuses on security matters, he covers a broad range of topics and has written several articles on Chinese interests and involvement in Afghanistan. He tweets at @franzjmarty. Image credit: Tobias Marschall.