evidence: When a small group of armed insurgents in cars arrived in a village in the Wakhan Corridor, it put a sharp focus on Beijing’s role in this nation shattered by more than four decades of war. [...] Afghanistan and China share a 74-kilometre border in the remote Wakhan Corridor, a narrow stretch of land in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province between the Pamir, Hindu Kush, and Karakoram mountain ranges. [...] Meanwhile, residents of the Wakhan Corridor – most of whom are from the Tajik, Wakhi and Kyrgyz ethnic minorities and belong to the Shiite Ismaili sect of Islam – fear persecution at the hands of the Taliban, who adhere to a strict interpretation of Sunni Islamic doctrine.