F.M. Shakil
Source: Al Mayadeen English
China is expanding its Belt and Road Initiative through Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor, seeking mineral resources and regional influence, while straining Pakistan ties amid diverging Taliban policies.
China and Afghanistan are working together to build the Wakhan Corridor, which will facilitate direct trade with Afghanistan besides increasing China's access to a range of Eurasian markets. China has been negotiating a deal with the Taliban since early last year in an attempt to create a foothold in this thinly populated and mountainous region.
In 2024, a delegation led by China's Ambassador to Kabul, Zhao Xing, and Taliban regime officials visited the Wakhan Corridor to inspect road construction up to the Chinese border. The Chinese diplomat also proposed laying a railway track alongside the road to diversify cargo transportation.
What is the geopolitical significance of the Wakhan Border?
The Wakhan Corridor, a slender, narrow strip that is the only linkage between China and Afghanistan, holds significant geopolitical significance as a crossroads connecting four countries: China, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan.
The reopening of this strategic corridor—a principal artery of the historic Silk Road that has been nonoperational for over a century—will not only enhance the scope of Beijing's multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) into Afghanistan and beyond but will also reduce Afghanistan's dependence on Pakistan for transit facilities and ease bilateral trade between Beijing and Kabul. The corridor will also provide an opportunity for the realization of Beijing's aspirations to penetrate the Eurasian markets via Afghanistan.
The corridor links Afghanistan’s northeastern region of Badakhshan province with China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. It delineates the boundaries between Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region and Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan to the south. The corridor holds significant importance for being a pivotal nexus connecting East Asia with Eurasia, South Asia, and South-Central Asia. Additionally, it serves as a critical conduit, enhancing connectivity among China, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
China has its fingers in many pies in the area. Beijing is looking to plant its flag in the region, not just to stretch the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and link it to Central Asia, but also to keep a watchful eye on the river of narcotics flowing from Taliban-held Afghanistan to China and to keep tabs on the tide of Islamist radicals heading into Xinjiang, China's only Muslim-majority province, where the government has been grappling with a separatist insurgency for quite some time.
Despite not being an active partner in this emerging geopolitical landscape, Pakistan still anticipates the potential of a new land route that will directly connect it to Central Asian markets, bypassing Afghanistan, with whom its relations have not been as cordial as they once were. Islamabad expects that the opening of this corridor would extend the reach of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) into the Central Asia region, and will thus generate additional transit and regular trade activities in its otherwise dormant Gwadar deep-seaport.
China's involvement in Afghanistan
Since the US-led NATO forces left Afghanistan under an agreement with the Taliban in 2021, China has significantly increased its engagement with the country, signing billions of dollars in contracts with Kabul, focusing on Afghanistan's rich mineral resources, and expanding the reach of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to Central Asia.
China's industrial explosion primarily depends on a consistent supply of iron, copper, petroleum, lithium, zinc, nickel, timber, and coal, among other base metals. If it does not secure an adequate supply of these metals, the development of its innovative technologies, including artificial intelligence, plug-in vehicles, and cybersecurity, will come to a halt.
China's industrial demand for minerals is drawn to Afghanistan due to its significant mineral reserves, valued at over $3 trillion, of which one-third is in lithium alone. In the words of Afghan Minister for Industry and Commerce, Nooruddin Azizi, the country's lithium mines alone are worth a trillion dollars in the international market. Lithium is critical for the global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy and is a vital ingredient in manufacturing batteries for cell phones, electric vehicles, laptops, and drones.
Chinese state-owned companies have so far secured significant $6.5 billion deals in oil, gold, copper, rare earth elements, iron, lead, and zinc exploration, while another contract worth $10 billion for lithium deposits is in the pipeline. Beijing has promised to create 120,000 direct jobs, plus infrastructure buildings.
“Afghanistan seeks China's support for international recognition and legitimacy, whereas China aims for its BRI’s westward expansion. However, Beijing, on the other hand, wants Afghanistan to make a clear and unambiguous commitment that it will not let any outside groups use Afghan territory to cause security problems for neighboring countries,” Majyd Aziz, a former president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and Employer Federation of Pakistan, remarked while talking to Al-Mayadeen English.
Majyd viewed that China was in a position to offer further incentives to strengthen its influence over the Taliban leadership.
“In Dushanbe, Beijing extended a grant amounting to $250 billion for the construction of residential facilities intended for the Tajikistan bureaucracy. The replication of this initiative in Kabul would enable them to reap the benefits,” he added.
Islamabad and Beijing’s divergent views on the Taliban
China's collaboration with the Taliban begins at a time when its steadfast ally, Pakistan, is experiencing strained relations with its long-standing partner in Afghanistan. Last year, Pakistani jets attacked the hideouts deep within Afghan territories of Pakistani Taliban, killing scores of people who Kabul said were civilians but Islamabad believed were militants.
Following the second bombing in nine months, there were multiple border clashes along the Chaman and Jamrud borders. When Afghanistan refused to comply with Islamabad's demand that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) safe havens be dismantled, relations between the two nations deteriorated. Afghanistan also restated a long-held accusation that parts of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region were illegally added to Pakistan when the Durand Line was formed during colonial times.
"China's and Pakistan's differing approaches to the Afghan Taliban are straining their mutual relationship and upsetting Pakistan's conventional area of influence," Dr. Ghulam Ali, Deputy Director of the Hong Kong Research Center for Asian Studies, told Al-Mayadeen English.
Dr. Ali indicated that China's affiliation with the Taliban differed significantly from Pakistan's antagonistic policy, causing friction between Beijing and Islamabad. Beijing's lack of confidence in Pakistan's security situation, he said, was evident in China's decision to bypass Gwadar Port, the centerpiece of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), by sending a significant cargo of 1,000 tons of steel coils to Afghanistan via the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in December last year.
"Interestingly, China has opted not to use Gwadar Port, a precious resource that offers them a 90% share of revenue, and instead sent a direct shipment to Afghanistan, passing through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in November 2024," he said.
He believes that the country's untapped natural resources are influencing Chinese Afghan policy but hastens to add that exploration will be difficult without stability.
He disclosed that Pakistan's military and intelligence organizations have a separate perspective and have always blamed other nations for their failings, which they have now shifted to the Taliban. China pursues its own Afghan policy, unaffected by the Pakistani military's stance.
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