The Great Divide: Afghanistan's Border Wall And Its Impact

Afghanistan does not have a border wall, but its neighbouring countries have built barriers along their shared borders. Pakistan, for instance, has been building a border barrier since March 2017 to prevent terrorism, arms and drug trafficking, and refugee influx. The country has also constructed a 1,100 km trench along its border with Afghanistan. Additionally, China shares a 92 km border with Afghanistan, and the Wakhan Corridor serves as the only potential link between the two countries. The corridor is a narrow strip of mountainous terrain that connects Afghanistan's Badakhshan Province with China's Xinjiang region.

The Afghanistan-Pakistan border barrier

The border is marked by eight official crossing points and nearly 1,000 military forts, with more than 1,200 border posts on the Pakistani side. The Balochistan portion of the border is marked with roughly 600 forts, and there are over 400 forts in the northwestern area alone, complete with cameras and watchtowers. The barrier is designed to impede the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban from freely crossing the border to coordinate and launch attacks against the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The initial plans to build a fence along the border were proposed in September 2005 and backed by the United States. However, the plans were not fully implemented until 2017 due to a lack of funds. As of April 2023, 98% of fencing and 85% of fortifications have been completed, with the project predicted to cost at least $532 million. The fencing of the border has presented challenges for civilians living in the area, including restricting the movement of families with relatives on both sides of the border and harming subsistence farmers whose lands straddle the border.

The border barrier has been a source of tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with Afghanistan disputing the legitimacy of the Durand Line as a colonial imposition that divides the ancestral homelands of Pashtun tribes. Despite these objections, Pakistan considers the border it inherited from the British after its independence as legal and final.

The Durand Line

In recent years, Pakistan has been constructing a border barrier along the Durand Line to prevent terrorism, arms and drug trafficking, as well as refugees, illegal immigration, and infiltration. The barrier consists of two sets of chain-link fences, with surveillance cameras and infrared detectors. Cross-border movement will only be allowed through 16 formally designated crossing points. The project is expected to cost at least $500 million.

The Afghanistan-Iran border

The border begins at the tripoint with Turkmenistan in the Harirud River before proceeding overland just to the east of the Iranian town of Taybad. The border then follows a series of short straight lines, passing through the Daryache-ye Namakzar and the Daqq-e Patergan salt lakes. Two 'beaks' of Iranian territory protrude into Afghanistan along this section. The middle 'Turkish section' consists of a series of straight lines through a plain, with some mountains to the south, ending at Kuh Siah mountain, where the border veers sharply to the east. It cuts through Hamun Lake before turning south, where it follows the Juy-e Siksar River down to the confluence with the Helmand River. The border is then formed of a long straight line segment going southwest to the tripoint with Pakistan at the Kuh-i-Malik Salih mountain.

The border between Persia and Afghanistan was formalised in the period 1872-1935 by a series of third-party arbitrations, stemming from the Treaty of Paris (1857) in which Persia and Afghanistan agreed to refer any dispute between them to Britain for arbitration. A series of skirmishes between Afghanistan and Persia in the 1860s prompted Persian king Naser al-Din Shah Qajar to request that the British formalise the Afghan-Persia boundary. A rough delimitation was proposed in 1872 by a committee headed by Sir Frederic John Goldsmid following a line from Banda to Kuh-i-Malik Siah (a hill at the modern Afghanistan-Iran-Pakistan tripoint) via the Helmand River. Both parties eventually accepted this proposal, however, it was not implemented further at that time.

The Goldsmid boundary proved to be inadequate, especially given the shifting of the course of the Helmand, and thus a more precise boundary was drawn up in three sections over the following decades: the northern section by General C.S. MacLean, British consul general for Khorasan and Sīstān, in 1888-91; the southern section by Colonel Sir Henry McMahon in 1903-05; and finally, the middle section by Turkey’s General Fahrettin Altay in 1934-35. After each demarcation, boundary pillars were erected, leading to a total of 172 pillars in the non-riverine sections of the border.

The boundary itself was not disputed after 1935, however, disputes over the allocation of water resources in the region continued for many years and were not finally resolved until 1973.

In recent years, there have been clashes between Iranian and Afghan guards at the border, raising fears of a new conflict. The two countries have accused each other of initiating the shooting, which has resulted in casualties on both sides. The reasons for the clashes are still unknown, but the shooting at the border post between the Afghan province of Nimroz and Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province comes as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi accused Afghanistan's Taliban rulers of restricting the flow of water to Iran's eastern regions in violation of the 1973 Helmand Water Treaty.

The Afghanistan-China border

The border marks the greatest terrestrial time zone difference on Earth, with a 3.5-hour difference between Afghanistan's UTC+4:30 and China's UTC+08:00. It was established in an agreement between the British and the Russians in 1895 as part of the Great Game, although the Chinese and Afghans did not agree on the border until 1963.

Both sides of the border are protected areas: Wakhan National Park in Wakhan District, Badakhshan Province, on the Afghan side, and Taxkorgan Nature Reserve in Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County, Kashgar Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on the Chinese side. The border area was a thoroughfare on the Silk Road, and it is believed that the famous Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang travelled this pass when returning to China around 649 AD.

In recent times, the main pass, Wakhjir Pass, is believed to be used as a low-intensity drug smuggling route, transporting opium made in Afghanistan to China. Afghanistan has asked China on several occasions to open the border in the Wakhan Corridor for economic reasons or as an alternative supply route for fighting the Taliban insurgency. However, China has resisted due to unrest in its far-western province of Xinjiang, which borders the corridor.

The Wakhan Corridor

The corridor is about 200 miles long and varies in width from 8 to 40 miles. The northern border is formed by the Pamir River and Lake Zorkul, while the southern border is bounded by the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountain ranges. The corridor is higher in the east, with the Wakhjir Pass reaching an elevation of 16,152 feet, and descends westward toward the Afghan town of Ishkashim, where the corridor is 11 miles wide.

Due to its remote location and rugged terrain, the Wakhan Corridor has remained untouched by the recent conflicts in Afghanistan. However, there are concerns that the Islamic practices of the Wakhi may be deemed insufficient by the Taliban, and that the Kyrgyz ethnic minority may face opposition.

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