| Summary/Abstract |
Wakhan, northeast Afghanistan’s peripheral panhandle, is situated between Afghanistan’s borders with Tajikistan, China and Pakistan. Once subject of Great Game rivalry, it requires multiagency fieldwork to better understand its geopolitical vulnerabilities. Existing accounts of Wakhan are deemed inadequate and inappropriate, exceptionalising its wildness and wilderness, and drawing (in)civility distinctions that legitimise a near-divine right to dominion. Reassessing Wakhan in a boundary biography, the paper argues that by conceiving boundaries as local manifestations of international dynamics, marginal boundary regions can serve as tests for the ‘state’ of international affairs. The paper firstly assesses evolving understandings of boundaries before conceiving them as local manifestations of international dynamics. Existing narratives are then observed to render the region subaltern.
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