Many people describe it this way: like an arm extended from Afghanistan to China.
This arm is the Wakhan Corridor.
Broadly speaking, its length is more than 400 kilometers, running east-west, and it is about 100 kilometers long in China.
Its geographical orientation is as follows: the northern Pamir Plateau is adjacent to Tajikistan on the southern edge, the eastern end of the Hindu Kush Mountains in the south is bordered by Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, the Pamir River and its tributary in the upper reaches of the Amu Darya River in the west, and the Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the east.
Therefore, here is a place called "Three Kingdoms of Chicken Singing" by our border guards, and in the Border Defense Company of Kok Turuk, there is also such a stone stele with the words "Chicken Singing Three Kingdoms". The Kok turuk Border Defense Company is one of the border defense companies stationed in the Wakhan Corridor in our country, where we also have two Mingtie Cover Border Defense Companies and tokmansu Border Defense Companies. "Three countries of chicken chirping" means that "one rooster chirps, three countries can hear", these three countries are China, Afghanistan, Pakistan.
As for its history, we have said many times in previous texts that the reason why more than 300 kilometers today belong to the Afghan belt is because in 1895 the British Empire and the Russian Empire demarcated the Anglo-Russian "quarantine zone" and gave it to the Afghan Kingdom. At that time, on the eve of the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Qing Dynasty government was powerless to look west. Even in 1963, the two countries demarcated the border with the Line of Actual Control between the two sides.
A much more distant history is that in China's Tang Dynasty, not only the Wakhan Corridor, but also the 8 governors' palaces under the jurisdiction of the Anxi Protectorate, including Yueshi, Great Khan, Written Feng, Xiuxian, Tiaozhi, Qisha Prefecture, Kunxu Prefecture and Yueban Prefecture, almost encompassed today's Afghanistan, and the Tang Dynasty administered it for 90 years, until after the Battle of Qiluo, it bid farewell to "Afghanistan".
At the same time, the Pamir Plateau has always been China's territory, historically, people called it "Eight Pa", although there is no modern clear scientific concept, the boundaries of each Pa are blurred, but "Eight Pa" together is still a very clear geographical concept. From north to south, they are: Heshkuduk Pamir, Sarez Pamir, Langkuri Pamir, Archur Bermir, Grand Pamir, Little Pamir, Taktun Bash Pamir, Wakhan Pamir. The Wakhan Pamir is located in the Wakhan Valley, where the Pamir and Wakhan rivers merge to form the Puchi River, and the Wakhan Corridor is roughly within this geographical extent.
"Eight Pas" is a land of heroes, always accompanied by the footsteps of Chinese heroes, until 1892, a British explorer named Dunmore, saw a stone stele inscribed with such a text in the Tashkent Museum, on which the text was: On the top of the mountain, ten thousand people raised their hands and surrendered, Chinese soldiers came from four directions, as if into no man's land, the two leaders saw that resistance was meaningless, and led the crowd to escape. The Chinese army is like a tiger and leopard chasing hares and foxes!
You can see that this is a description of a battle, which battle? In 1759, the Qing army expelled Dahe Zhuo, and the Chinese army pursued it all the way to Badak Mountain. After the war, the Qing Dynasty government erected a stone stele on the shores of Lake Yashkuri, where the last battle took place, which described in detail the expulsion of the big and small and Zhuo battles in Manchu, Han and Uyghur languages, called the "Qianlong Jigong Monument".
In history, the "Qianlong Jigong Monument" is called "Pingding Huibu Le ming Isi'er Kur Naur Monument", which stands in isi Erkur, that is, Yeshe Kul, that is, Yeshe Kul. Yeshlkule was originally named Isi'erkur, so named because of the Issy'erkur (also known as Yeshil Pond) to the south. After the Qing Dynasty erected a monument here, it was also known as Su Man, and now it is called Su Man Tash. A mixture of Tajik and Kyrgyz, meaning "stone with writing". In addition to the display of martial arts, the monument also has the significance of demarcation: in the Guangxu Decade (1884), China and Russia signed the "Treaty on the Continuation of the Kashgar Boundary", from the Uzbeli Pass, "the Russian boundary turns to the southwest, and the Chinese boundary goes all the way to the south". However, this place now belongs to Tajikistan. The stele also has some of the bases in the historical photos left.
After Qianlong, the power of the Chinese Qing Dynasty in the Pamir declined, and after Zuo Zongtang regained Xinjiang, he sent a small number of troops across the Selecul Mountains to establish a post on the Pamir Plateau, including Sumantash, a local boundary monument that had been erected during the Qianlong period. However, at that time, Russian troops continued to enter this part of the Pamir Plateau, and after several engagements between the Chinese and Russian armies, the Qing army was defeated and could only withdraw to the east of the Selekkur Mountains. In the end, China has barely preserved the Pamir Plateau in this section of Tatunbashi, which is the area where Xinjiang borders Tajikistan today and the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan today.
That is to say, before the founding of the Republic of China, due to the lack of national strength, we had already lost the rest of the Pamir. Fortunately, according to the report of the People's Liberation Army Daily a few years ago, in today's Kek turuk border defense company, on the mountainside behind the camp, there is also a bunker, and there is a machine gun bunker in the bunker, which was left behind when the Kuomintang troops were stationed -- in September 1949, Xinjiang was peacefully liberated, the Kuomintang troops stationed in the Wakhan Corridor firmly grasped the control of the national border in the complicated border situation, and not a single outpost in the entire defense area of the Wakhan Corridor abandoned the soil and fled. All of them insisted on waiting until the PLA troops received them on the ground and smoothly changed their defenses, thus making outstanding contributions to safeguarding the territory of the motherland.
Today, although we do not know how many touching stories have been lost by this historical material, in the face of it, it is very easy to think of the Handula in the Karakoram Mountains, also the outpost set up by Zuo Zongtang after he regained Xinjiang, and in March 1950, when the special agent company of the 15th Regiment of the Fifth Division of the Chinese People's Liberation Army entered Setula, it was handed over with a soldier of the Panguo Army who was still stationed there.
At that time, the Nationalist army had not seen anyone in the weather for three or four years, and when they saw the People's Liberation Army, their first words in tattered clothes turned out to be: "Oh, someone has come to change the defense!" Then he saw that the PEOPLE's Liberation Army's clothing was different from his own, and said: "Alas, how did you change your clothes again?" "This story that can make people cry, tells people that on the frontier of the motherland, no matter which dynasty or generation of soldiers, they are guarding our land with every inch of land, and for this, they have paid not only youth, but also life.
It is precisely because of the last garrison of the nationalist soldiers that we later have the Wakhan Corridor in a broad sense, which is about 100 kilometers long in our country. At present, in the face of the Wakhan Corridor, many people in addition to describing it as an arm extended from Afghanistan to China, still emphasize the importance of its strategic position, but also ignore such a factor, that is, the mountains and rivers can also be changed, the Wakhan Corridor in ancient China as the most important passage to India, but with the opening of the Karakoram Highway (China-Pakistan Highway) today, its strategic position has been greatly reduced, and when China builds the Karakoram Highway, it deliberately avoids the Mingtie Gadasaka of the Wakhan Corridor in addition to the political instability. It is also to circumvent the disputed areas of Kashmir.
Today's China is no longer the China of the past, and the ancient India and modern India in the history books are two completely different concepts, but whether it is ancient India or modern India, now we go there again, because the Karakoram Highway, the Wakhan Corridor is no longer a necessary concept for us. This is our transformation of mountains and rivers and geography. It is also for this reason that the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan is not even accessible by road between us. Therefore, this arm that Afghanistan extends to China can only be an arm, and whether it can hold hands with China warmly depends on China and afghanistan. The entire Wakhan Corridor is only a passage between China and Afghanistan, and in the reduced strategic value, it is somewhat declining.
The pictures in this article are from the network, thanks to the original author!