DUSHANBE, June 2, 2011, Asia-Plus — Tajik Ambassador to Pakistan Zubaydllo Zubaydov considers that ground communication between Tajikistan and Pakistan via Afghan territory is absolutely safe.
“Many people consider that it is dangerous to ship cargo via the territory of Afghanistan. However, hundreds of tons of Pakistani goods are arriving in Tajikistan via Afghan Sherkhan Bandar every day. There has no been case of robbery of those goods by any forces in Afghanistan. Afghan militants do not rob civilian goods,” Zubaydov told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, air routes from Dushanbe to the Pakistani cities of Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore will be launched soon.
Zubaydov noted that the issue of construction of highway connecting Tajikistan and Pakistan through Wakhan Corridor (Afghanistan) will be resolved in the near future.
“Tajik and Pakistani sides are actively working on this issue,” said Tajik diplomat, “The project documentation is practically finished. It is just necessary to sign a tripartite agreement between the governments of Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Wakhan Corridor is commonly used as name for the area located far northeastern Afghanistan which forms a land link or “corridor” between Afghanistan and China. The Corridor is a long and slender panhandle or salient, roughly 220 kilometers long and between 16 and 64 kilometers wide. It separates Tajikistan in the north from Pakistan in the south.
The corridor was a political creation of the Great Game. On the corridor”s north side, agreements between Britain and Russia in 1873 and between Britain and Afghanistan in 1893 effectively split the historic area of Wakhan by making the Panj and Pamir Rivers the border between Afghanistan and the Russian Empire. On its south side, the Durand Line agreement of 1893 marked the boundary between British India and Afghanistan. This left a narrow strip of land as a buffer between the two empires, which became known as the Wakhan Corridor in the 20th century. The corridor reportedly has 12,000 inhabitants.
