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Pak-Afghan border: a smugglers delight

Posted on: Mon June 28, 2010

TORKHAM: Trucks belching exhaust fumes. A crush of humanity descending on both sides. Hawkers flogging luxuries and tiny smugglers scampering past guards engrossed in pocketing backhanders.

Welcome to the free-for-all at Torkham the main border crossing on the Khyber Pass route between war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan, a country bogged down in fighting militants. For millennia the historic pass winding through the mountains has been a lifeline for armies, smugglers and traders from the sub-continent to central Asia.

Torkham is a business hub that operates beyond the law. Bribery is the order of the day. People, goods and vehicles cross freely without checks while needy families force their children into work.

Mohabbat Khan, 10, told that he looks older than his age, retorts: Come with me and push this wheelbarrow for a year, then I ll tell you the same. Like other children running wheelbarrows back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan, carting those too infirm to walk, tatty luggage or black-market goods, his day began at dawn.

He works more than 10 hours a day, pocketing up to 40 rupees per cross-border trip. He says the money is to pay for fuel to burn in the stove at home. He says the money is for his sisters dowries.

Mohabbat lives in Bacha Mena, a village at the top of the Khyber Pass. His father died when he was two. When he was in second grade, his mother yanked him out of school, saying he was strong enough to push a wheelbarrow.

 I remember school but my mother and brothers told me I was doing the right job, they told me I m brave, said Khan, wearing cast-off clothes and shoes.

Although children younger than 14 in Pakistan are not legally entitled to work, labour laws don t apply in Torkham part of Pakistan s semi-autonomous tribal area.

Dusty Pakistani and Afghan flags snap in the wind alongside the huge iron gate that marks the border, with an incongruous sign reading May peace prevail on earth , in English and Pashto.

Tribal police, paramilitary forces and officials man the border, but travellers cross with rudimentary vehicle searches and no visas.

Men, women and children walk through the main iron gate, showing papers to no one. An AFP reporter joined the throng, walking into Afghanistan for a drink and returning unchecked.

Torkham lies on the still-controversial Durand Line, which British imperialists drew through millions of Pashtun tribesmen to separate Pakistan from Afghanistan. Many in the region refuse to recognise the border.

 Do you want hashish, a small boy asks, as dozens of mostly Afghan children and other youth crisscross the border hauling spare parts, ghee and cooking oil, dry fruit, electric appliances and cloth. Hotels offer green tea and traditional food. Taxi drivers hustle for passengers and money changers shuffle grubby notes in the bazaar. Policemen with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders man the terminals, where hundreds of private and Nato supply trucks are parked.

Courtesy : The News