Kashgar's Afghan Frontier, the Wakhan Corridor, a Chinese Outpost in Tajikistan and the Taliban

South-west of Kashgar, past Tashkurgan, China touches Afghanistan. The border is only about 76 km long, high in the Pamirs at the end of the Wakhan Corridor, a thin strip of Afghan land that the British and the Russians drew in the 19th century to keep their empires apart. There's no open crossing. The only pass, the Wakhjir, sits at about 4,800 metres and is usable a few months a year.

Beijing calls this border a counterterrorism front line. That's how it explains almost everything it does in the region, Kashgar included.

Photo: Benoît Vicart, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

A base Beijing says isn't there

In February 2019 the Washington Post reported something both Beijing and Dushanbe denied. Chinese troops were stationed in Tajikistan, at a compound of about two dozen buildings and lookout towers near Shaymak in the Murghab district, about 12 km from the Afghan border and 30 km from China. They'd been there at least three years. Soldiers with Xinjiang unit patches shopped in Murghab's market.

In October 2021 the Tajik parliament approved a new China-funded base at Vakhon in Gorno-Badakhshan, for Tajik police. China has since offered to fund nine border facilities in Tajikistan. Officially none of this is a Chinese military presence abroad. In practice the security perimeter that starts at Kashgar's checkpoints now runs over the mountains into a neighbouring country.

The Taliban are Beijing's partner now

China kept its embassy open when the Taliban took Kabul in 2021. In September 2023 it sent a new ambassador. On 30 January 2024 Xi Jinping accepted the credentials of the Taliban's envoy, the first government anywhere to do so, while saying it wasn't formal recognition. Russia took that last step in July 2025.

The deals followed. A Chinese state company is still trying to start the Mes Aynak copper mine, sitting on top of an ancient Buddhist city, under a contract first signed in 2008. A 25-year oil deal in the Amu Darya basin, signed in January 2023 with a Xinjiang-based firm, was cancelled by the Taliban in 2025 for breaches. On 4 October 2026 the Taliban opened a gravel road to the Chinese border, built with their own money. It ends at a closed pass. Beijing sent nobody to the ceremony.

The threat Beijing points to, and the one it built

Beijing's case rests on Uyghur militants. A UN monitoring report in early 2026 said the Turkistan Islamic Party has between 800 and 3,000 fighters, mostly in Syria, with a growing presence in Afghanistan's Badakhshan, and that its leader reportedly lives in Kabul. One UN member state said some had been given Taliban ID papers. That's a real problem, and the Taliban's promises to control it are worth little.

The danger is also real for Chinese citizens in the region. In November 2025 two attacks launched from Afghan territory killed five Chinese workers in Tajikistan, three at a gold mine in Khatlon and two working on a Chinese-funded highway in Darvaz. China's embassy told its nationals to leave the border area. When the road crews went back in 2026, they worked under armed guard.

None of that justifies what happened in Kashgar. The camps held farmers, teachers, imams and grandmothers. The leaked police files list what they were held for, and it reads like studying scripture and praying. The threat Beijing points to is a few thousand men abroad. The system it built at home was aimed at millions.

Who the border keeps out

The Wakhan stays closed. China doesn't want trade through it, and it doesn't want people coming the other way. That's the whole policy. Keep Afghanistan's militants out, keep Xinjiang's Uyghurs in, and buy help from Kabul, Dushanbe and Islamabad.

The front line runs through Kashgar.