Azizullah Shinwari was a young truck driver when his left leg was blown up in a landmine blast while carrying trade goods in his truck to Afghanistan during the government of Dr Najeebullah in the neighbouring country.

He does not remember exactly the year when the incident took place. Since his left leg was amputated over three decades ago and he could no more drive his truck, Azizullah started part time job of bringing auto parts and other foreign goods from across the Afghan border to the Pakistan side of Torkham first on mules through unfrequented routes and later in a handcart after the fall of Taliban and reopening of the border to earn a livelihood for his family.

Walking with the help of crutches, Azizullah, now 55, carried on with his ‘business’ for almost 30 years while disposing of his responsibilities as a smuggled goods carrier, bringing in and taking back the ailing Afghan, both men and women, across the border and also sometimes loading their personal belongings and luggage on his handcart to earn some money. He continued supporting his family, which has by now swelled to 14 members including his eight children, two daughters-in-law, two grandchildren and his elderly father and mother.

“With meagre financial resources, I pulled out my three sons from school at an early age few years ago and employed them as handcart pushers as well to augment my daily earnings as it was becoming difficult to make both ends meet,” Azizullah told Dawn while sitting idle in an almost deserted restaurant in Torkham.

With a grim and dejected voice, he said that with the new border management policy, the Pakistan government implemented in June last year, he and all his three sons lost their ‘business’.

“I borrowed Rs15,000 from friends and relatives to make passports for my three sons to make them eligible for cross-border movement at Torkham but the border forces refused to allow us resume our decades-old handcart business,” Azizullah, a resident of Landi Kotal, said with teary eyes. The tears rolling down his cheeks stopped him from narrating his ordeal any further.

Most pushcart owners and vendors have shifted to Punjab or Sindh in search of jobs

The political administration had since September 2015 issued temporary identification cards to over 2,000 handcart owners and labourers working in Torkham that were cancelled in March this year thus rendering them jobless as they were not allowed to get near the border crossing without possession of their national passports.

Next to tell his saga of 25 years of continuous ‘load carriage’ with his handcart and at times on his broad shoulders on both sides of the Torkham border was 45-year-old Shah Mehmud, also a resident of Landi Kotal. He said that he too was thinking of pulling out his three children from school as he could not afford their education expenses owing to suspension of his job and no earnings since June last year.

Shah Mehmud was very critical of Pakistan government policy of imposing the condition of possessing passport for local residents’ cross-border movement. He insisted that tribes and families living near the border everywhere in the world were exempted from such types of travel restrictions.

He said that most of the poor labourers, cart pushers and small time vendors were either sitting idle in their homes with no sources of income or had gone to Punjab and Sindh in search of jobs.

“One of my co-workers, who also happened to be a relative, has now taken up the job of a dishwasher at a Peshawar restaurant after losing his hand cart business,” said Shah Mehmud.

He said that majority of his co-workers belonged to poor families and had less or no education. “With poor or no educational qualification, most of them are not eligible for any government or private jobs. They are compelled to take up odd jobs while risking their already poor health,” he added.

He demanded of both the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and federal government to exempt poor handcart pushers, numbering in thousands, from such harsh border restrictions and allow them to continue with their legitimate earnings.

Shah Mehmud said that handcart owners should be allowed to help the incoming and returning Afghans by carrying their extra luggage or the elderly and ailing people up to the border crossing and back to the local taxi stand in their hand carts. He said that he along with his two younger brothers, who were supporting a family of 21 members, had been rendered jobless owing to the new restrictions.

Officials said that although they started issuing new computerised registration cards to local custom clearing agents and Afghan students studying in private schools on Pakistan side of the border but no such plan was in the pipeline for registering the handcart owners and labourers.

The new border management policy had also cast its negative effects on restaurant owners, shopkeepers and taxi drivers.

Twenty five-year-old Yar Raz, a restaurant owner, told this scribe that only five or six out of the total 40 restaurants were then operating as most of the handcart and pushcart operators, daily wagers and labourers and even small time businessmen were affected badly by the new policy.

He said that he had at least 25 waiters at his family had three restaurants in Torkham prior to last year implementation of the new border rules. “Now we have only one restaurant left open and that too is operated by us three brothers. We have closed the other two restaurants and relieved almost the entire staff as we hardly manage to earn the monthly rent of our sole restaurant,” said Yar Raz. Raqeebullah, a tandoorwala (baker), said that the quantity of flour from which he would bake fresh breads had reduced from 150 kilograms on daily basis to only 50 kilograms due to slum in his business. “The number of Afghans regularly frequenting between the two neighbouring countries have considerably reduced from 25,000 to 4,000 while local traders, shopkeepers, daily wagers and handcart pushers have also abandoned their jobs,” he added.

He said that he too had to relieve three workers at his tandoor out of the total five. He is now assisted by one of his younger brothers and a nephew. “It is very unfortunate that a good number of our skilled labourers and young workers have been rendered unemployed owing to the strict border crossing rules,” said Raqeebullah expressing his apprehensions that some of them may fall in wrong hands due to their young age and lack of proper education.

Naseebullah, a taxi driver, told Dawn that although they were not supposed to possess passports as they didn’t cross the border yet majority of his colleagues had to sell out their taxicabs or had to divert to less lucrative routes.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2017