evidence: For all these reasons, Afghanistan has been a priority area for the United States, as evidenced by no less than 12,864 declassified CIA FOIA documents mentioning the territory. This article attempts to synthesize the CIA’s reasoning from the declassified documents from 1979 to the most recent ones, in order to understand this region of the world at a time when American troops are withdrawing and China is strengthening its military presence in the Wakhan corridor and beginning negotiations with the Taliban. [...] The CIA mentions the importance of Afghanistan since the beginning of the People’s Republic of China xiv. Since China and Afghanistan share a border in the Wakhan Corridor, every internal disturbance has repercussions on national affairs, including Islamic terrorism in the Xinjiang. As such, the relationship is a two-way street—if the threat of religious extremism spills over into China, Beijing is also able to destabilize foreign forces in Afghanistan. [...] The election of Joe Biden marked a change in the American military posture with the announcement of the withdrawal of troops with a final date of September 11, 2021. At the time of writing, Afghanistan seems to be returning to religious tensions and the comeback of the Taliban leaderships in national politics, which suggests that the situation going forward will be similar to that before the 2001 U.S. intervention. Beijing will then be in a position to decide whether to interfere militarily or to continue to control only the Wakhan Corridor from its base in Tajikistan.