Welcome to the free-for-all at Torkham - the main border crossing on the Khyber Pass route between war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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 Rs40 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 - a 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 travelers cross with rudimentary vehicle searches and no visas.
Men, women and children walk through the main iron gate, showing papers to no one.
Torkham lies on the 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.
Poorly paid and struggling to make ends meet, they see backhanders from smugglers and traders as par for the course.
“It is our right. The government isn’t giving us anything,” snaps Wadood Khan, an elder from the Afridi tribe that peoples the ranks of tribal police.
Police at Torkham say they pocket Rs1,500 to 2,000 a day - a massive bonus to a monthly salary of Rs5,800-7,500 rupees. Offered Rs200 by one trucker, a policeman chucks the notes on the ground in disgust at such a meagre offering.
“Everybody takes bribes here. Money pours like rain here,” said Syed Gul, 35, a cart pusher from Nangarhar province across the border. “The tribal police are looting us. At every checkpoint they take money from me and also here at Torkham,” Mirza Jan, an Afghan trucker said.
The Frontier Corps say they have clamped down on smaller smuggling routes but acknowledge Torkham is a problem.
“It’s been going on here 60 years. It’s not something you can switch on and off. It will take time,” said Major Fazal-u-Rehman, a Frontier Corps spokesman.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 28th, 2010.
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