US Could Lend A Helping Hand To Taliban That Is Surrounded By China, Pakistan and the Islamic State
Faultline Between Taliban And The Sino-Pak Nexus
While China has definitely been a reliable partner for Taliban it has not exactly been forthcoming in certain matters where the latter wants it to be. One such issue is the development of Wakhan Corridor that connects Afghanistan to the Xinjing province of China via the Wakhjir Pass.
It is Taliban’s view that the Wakhan Corridor can enable it to reduce Afghanistan’s dependency on Pakistan’s ports and border crossings for trade and commerce, which the latter has been leveraging to force the Taliban to reign in the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a.k.a. the Pakistani Taliban which aims to establish a Sharia-based regime in the Pashtun-dominated regions of Pakistan, and operates along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with the material, monetary, and moral support from the Afghan Taliban.
Furthermore, the creation of a transit route along this corridor will facilitate the Taliban’s swift mobilization of its forces in response to potential threats from Pakistan.
For instance, in late July 2021, amidst the turmoil in Afghanistan entailing Taliban’s summer offensive on one end and the slow collapse of the previous US-backed Afghan government on the other end, the Pakistani military reportedly moved into the Wakhan Corridor and occupied around 400 meters of land.
Islamabad’s objectives were two-fold. First, was to secure this area to prevent its use as a transit point by anti-Pakistani Baloch and Pashtun insurgents, and the second one was to create favourable circumstances for eventually building a transit road through the corridor to reach Central Asia while bypassing Afghanistan.
However, in July 2022, Taliban reinforced its control over the area decisively by dispatching its forces in the Karambar Pass/Lake area of Wakhan and releasing a footage shortly after, depicting its fighters destroying the alleged Pakistani posts there.
This significant but under-reported incident goes to show how important it is for Taliban to develop the Wakhan corridor however, it lacks sufficient funds to build roads and bridges along to realize its complete geo-strategic potential, and has therefore been repeatedly requesting China to invest in the development of this corridor.
Now, the Wakhan Corridor holds some geostrategic promises for China as well. The corridor was once a part of the ancient Silk Route, which China intends to revive through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to showcase the relevance of its civilizational past and the cultural values inherent to Chinese people due to that past, to the world in this day and age.
So, developing this corridor should be very important to Beijing as well, given its historic relevance to the erstwhile Silk Route. Other than that, Wakhan corridor could cut the time travel for trade transits between China and Central Asia, and also enable China to strengthen its trade with West Asia (or the Middle East) and Europe.
At the same time, however, Beijing also needs to be mindful of the fact that this corridor connects Afghanistan – a safe haven for several Islamist insurgents – to its restive Xinjiang province where the Uyghur Muslims have been resisting its cultural imposition entailing attempts at forced Sinicisation.
So, the improvement of mobility along the Wakhan corridor also holds prospects for rise of separatist tendencies within the Uyghur muslim population in its Xinjiang province, as the transit routes along this corridor could exponentially increase the chances of successful infiltration by several Islamist militant organisations as well as terror groups like the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP).
As a result, Beijing’s mindset is largely tilted toward maintaining the Wakhan corridor as a strategic buffer against potential threats from Afghanistan, and it has been dragging its heels to develop the corridor by having adopted the position that it is not economically feasible to construct transit routes along the corridor due to its challenging mountainous terrain.
There is a historical precedent to Beijing’s position that goes back to the 19th Century when the Czarist Russian empire and the British empire in India altered Afghan borders to make the Wakhan valley a buffer zone between their respective territories.
Interestingly, there has also been an assertion by regional experts of a joint Sino-Pak cross border military action inside Afghanistan in early 2022.
So, in early 2022, the security environment along the Afghanistan–Pakistan frontier was tense, with several documented clashes between Pakistani border guards and Afghan Taliban forces. And, according to an analytical article published by Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst (CACI Analyst), this period of heightened friction coincided with a coordinated cross-border military action by Pakistan and Chinese forces inside Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor.
The article in question was published in November 2024, and is co-authored by Aigerim Turgunbaeva – an independent journalist focusing on Central Asia who has written for several international publications including the likes of The Guardian, Reuters, and The Diplomat, etc. – and Dr. Fayazuddin Ghiasi, a former Afghan government official before the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
“In early 2022, the situation evolved when the Pakistani military, in coordination with Chinese forces, crossed into the Afghan side of the corridor to adjust border demarcations originally established under the 1895 Russo-British agreements. This move provoked widespread backlash on Afghan social media, prompting the Taliban to deploy forces to reassert the historic boundary,” stated the article by these two authors.
Apparently, even this incident has not been widely reported and lacks corroboration by any other reputed media outlet. Nevertheless, if the stated assertion in the article is factually true, then it indicates that Beijing and Islamabad have a coordinated stance on the issue of the potential security risks associated with the Wakhan Corridor for China and Pakistan, respectively.
That said, Taliban has begun the reconstruction of aroad through the Wakhan Corridor on its own by having awarded the contracts to an Afghan company, ‘Afghan Sadaqat Company’. The work is happening in two phases, with the first phase of around 50 kilometers ongoing and the contract for the second phase of around 71 kilometers awarded in March 2025.
While announcing the contract for the second phase, Taliban stated that the entire 121 kilometers-road reconstruction project is expected to complete by March 2026. However, only a month before this announcement, the Washington Post reported, citing satellite imagery from a commercial firm called ‘Maxar’, that the construction work had been stalled since the past seven months. So, it remains uncertain whether Taliban will be able to fulfil this deadline.
Also important to note here, is that there are no credible reports of Chinese authorities having undertaken or even committed to building any major infrastructure like paved highways or customs crossings on their side of the Wakhan border.
So, as of present, it is only the Taliban that appears to be committed to reviving this corridor as a route for trade with China, with the Taliban officials at different levels repeatedly bringing up the issue of starting traffic and trade through the Wakhan Corridor in their respective bilateral discussions with their Chinese counterparts.
China and Pakistan, on the other hand, appear united in maintaining the corridor as merely a buffer zone, and this is probably also why there are differences between Taliban and China on what infrastructure initiative Afghanistan should be incorporated into.
China is willing to involve Afghanistan in its controversial China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative, while the Taliban regime in Afghanistan insists that it should be allowed to partake in the larger Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
In addition to that there have also been recent instances of friction between the Taliban regime and China that indicate at brewing trust issues between the two sides.
For instance, in June 2025, the Taliban cancelled a 25-year, US$540 million worth oil extraction deal with Chinese firm Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co. (CAPEIC), signed in January 2023, accusing the Chinese company of deficiencies in its drilling and exploration work of the designated oil wells, failure to employ Afghan nationals, and failure to fulfil its social, environmental and capacity-building commitments.
While the US-based National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed unnamed Chinese employees of the joint venture involved in this project who said that the Taliban seized control of the joint venture oil fields by coercing the Chinese representatives at gunpoint to abandon their equipment and their Kabul bank account holding millions of dollars.
It is not possible to check the veracity of the accusations levelled by either side but one thing is clear that the incident has definitely increased the perceived risk of doing business in Afghanistan, particularly for Chinese firms.
Islamic State’s Challenge To The Taliban
China certainly has reasons to be concerned about the spillover risk of the instability in Afghanistan which reflect in its cautious engagement with Taliban as well as the risk of doing business with the Taliban-regime.
However, part of China’s policy on Afghanistan is also influenced by Pakistan which intends to contain Afghanistan for its own strategic purposes that have been discussed before briefly. That said, there is a limit to how much Pakistan can influence China’s engagement with Afghanistan.
It is plausible that in the years 2021-22, China may have supported Pakistan’s plans to acquire a part of Wakhan corridor, as it could have potentially enabled the development of a transit route there as a northern branch of its CPEC initiative that could have connected directly to Central Asia while bypassing unstable parts of southern Afghanistan.
However, since 2024, there appears to have been a shift in the Chinese stance in recent years. For instance, in August 2024, China’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zhao Xing, visited the Wakhan Corridor together with the Taliban regime officials to inspect the construction work on the road along that corridor up to the border with China, giving way to speculation that Beijing may be contemplating a shift in its stance.
Hence, Pakistan cannot simply rely on its close relations with China to continue its policy of containment of Afghanistan, and therefore it is said to have in place, another line of effort which allegedly entails supporting the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) inside Afghanistan who could act against the Taliban as well as the Tehri k-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
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