While everyone is thinking Wakhan is a low hanging fruit
Let’s think a little.
You could do it today by using heli based landings of SSG to take posts and using
drones to cover the narrow defile east of Ishkashim, jamming Taliban comms and softening outposts near the Oxus River’s headwaters. Simultaneously, either another heliborne insertion or even C-130s could parachute in a light infantry battalion(are they even at any readiness for paradrops??) atop Keyghobad Pass, cutting off reinforcements from the south. Artillery teams emplaced on rear ridgelines and airstrikes would punch precision rounds at any Taliban positions spotted below, while engineers rapidly breach minefields along the Lake Chaqmaqtin axis.
So yes - in 48 hours you could “take” Wakhan but then what?
TTA can mobilize local Badakhshan militias and leverage chinese built roadworks to interdict Pakistani supply lines. Internationally, China and Russia have cautioned against violations of Afghan sovereignty, while Islamabad’s Western partners are weighing sanctions after civilian casualties reported in Kabul.
Even if Pakistani troops garrison the few dozen miles of rocky ridge that separate Wakhan from Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan, there’s zero modern road or rail. You’d be looking at hundreds of millions in mountain tunnels and highways just to move anything more than a handful of containers.
Turning Wakhan into Pakistan’s next Karakoram Highway would be a decade-long, billion-dollar white elephant and that’s assuming all your neighbors say “okay” and don’t demand a cut of the tollbooth.
