Nearly a decade into the war in Afghanistan, photographer Benjamin Rasmussen was tired of the usual media narrative of suicide bombings, corruption, and insurgency.
In 2010, Rasmussen's sister was working in the aid and development community in Afghanistan. But the only headlines he ever saw about the country focused on the ongoing war.
He felt like the American media was failing to educate the US public about how complex Afghanistan actually was, from its multitudes of tribes and ethnicities to its deep history and varied landscapes.
When he heard about the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of land in the far northeast of Afghanistan bordering Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Western China, Rasmussen knew he had to document it.
In a harsh, beautiful landscape bounded by the Hindu Kush mountains in the south, around 12,000 Afghanis live off the land, unaffected by the Taliban, the US, or Hamid Karzai. The region's geographical isolation, harsh climate, and lack of strategic value has kept all troops — Afghani as well as foreign — out of the area for decades.
Rasmussen visited in the summer of 2010 to document the strange and beautiful world. He shared some photos with us here, but you can check out more at his website.
The Wakhan Corridor is notoriously hard to reach. To get there, you have to drive, ride on donkeys, and hike the 250-mile journey from Kabul or fly into Tajikistan and cross the border from the North. Both ways are difficult, but traveling by land requires going through Taliban-held lands.
The atmosphere in Afghanistan is tense and dangerous, until you reach the Wakhan Corridor. Here, the atmosphere becomes more relaxed. Because there are no roads into Wakhan and the terrain is so harsh, no US, Afghan, or Taliban soldiers enter the region.
Many in the community have no idea that the Taliban was ever in power or that the US army invaded. The last troops to enter Wakhan were the Soviets, who built the only road leading to the area. They left in the 1980s.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider