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Karachi to Kabul: Road Warriors

May 13, 2013 | Foreign Policy

Pashtun truckers have a tradition of elaborately decorating their vehicles with brightly colored paint, embossed metal plates, and jingling chains hanging from the bumpers. Pictured here in Karachi is Omar Azaz, who is from the border town of Landi Kotal and works as a "conductor," or driving assistant, on this Nissan fuel tanker truck. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Aikins started his journey in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, home to some 16 million people, where he sought out a trucker who would be willing to take him to Afghanistan. The aerial view above shows the main yard of the port city's Shireen Jinnah Colony, a neighborhood near the oil terminals where hundreds of tankers load up with fuel to supply the U.S. and NATO military presence in Afghanistan. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

In 2011, the Pakistani government closed down the two main Afghanistan supply routes through Pakistan in response to an errant U.S. airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. As a result, many truckers were left without work in Karachi for seven months. Here, Azim Khan, a tanker driver Aikins met in Shireen Jinnah in July 2012, stands atop his truck, where he slept every night during the supply line closure. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Thanks to the spike in demand for trucking that has accompanied the U.S. war in Afghanistan, particularly the surge that began in 2009, Shireen Jinnah has expanded rapidly in the past several years. Thousands of craftsmen and merchants — largely Pashtuns who have migrated from the northwestern tribal areas — depend on the trucking industry for their livelihoods. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Aikins first visited Karachi in the summer of 2012, two weeks after a deal was struck to reopen the routes, but with no luck finding a driver, he returned home to Kabul. When he returned to Karachi in the fall, container trucks had finally started moving supplies across the border, but the oil tankers and their drivers remained idle because of security concerns in the Pakistani tribal regions. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

During the supply route closure, "people were desperately short on cash," Aikins writes in his book, "not only the truckers but the entire ecosystem that depended on their wages: trucking assistants, mechanics, tire salesmen, hotel owners, fruit vendors, truck artists, and butchers." In July, Azim Khan, the driver who slept in his truck, told Aikins: "Even the hashish dealers are suffering!" Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Nasir Khan is an apprentice mechanic from the Pashtun border town of Landi Kotal who came to Karachi to find work. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Azim Khan sits inside the cab of his tanker truck. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Abdul Nisar, a Punjabi speaker from Lahore, sews seat upholstery in Shireen Jinnah. "Business was very good when NATO was running," he told Aikins. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Ibrahim is from Tank District, in northwest Pakistan, and sells tires in Shireen Jinnah. He told Aikins his business was down by half last year. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Sayed Saifullah (center) and his sons, Fareed, 18, and Syed Jahangir, 9, stand in front of their one-room, tire-jack shop. The boys' mother lives back in their village outside of Quetta; they share a one-room apartment with their father in Karachi. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

A young Pashtun boy runs down the road in Shireen Jinnah. Thousands of Pashtuns have migrated from the tribal areas seeking work in Karachi, part of a larger pattern that has changed the city's ethnic balance and political leadership. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Khaksar Ali, left, is president of Shireen Jinnah's local office for the Awami National Party, a largely Pashtun secular nationalist group that controls the colony. The ANP has become increasingly powerful in Karachi over the past several decades, and especially since the war in Afghanistan, as the Pashtun population has grown to an estimated 5 to 6 million -- the world's largest urban Pashtun population. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Karachi's privately owned system of buses, like the colorfully ornamented one here, is dominated by Pashtuns. The vehicles bear their distinctive decorative style. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

The area around the Shireen Jinnah truck lot is crammed with stores, workshops, and vendors that supply the truckers with everything they need. Sayed, left, sells cloth from his vendor cart. "If people can't afford to buy food, how can they buy clothes?" he told Aikins. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Habibullah, originally from Quetta, sells juice to the truckers of Shireen Jinnah. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Din Muhammad and his donkey haul drinking water to supply the truckers of Shireen Jinnah. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

A boy rolls a tire through Shireen Jinnah. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

A ragpicker goes through a trash pile in Shireen Jinnah. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

On his second trip to Karachi, Aikins was finally introduced to two truckers willing to take him to Afghanistan: Jahangir and Ahmad, Pashtun brothers from Landi Kotal. Jahangir purchased their truck, the 1993 Nissan diesel hauler above, about four years ago. It originally brought fuel for the NATO supply lines, but when the line closure struck, the brothers switched to transporting private cargo containers. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

An oil tanker truck pulls out onto the main road in Shireen Jinnah. By the time Aikins left Karachi with Jahangir, Ahmad, and his fixer and translator, Sardar, he discovered that heavy rains had flooded the highway west of Sindh, cutting off one of the two main truck routes into Afghanistan: a roadway that runs through the province of Balochistan and the Khojak Pass before crossing into Kandahar, Afghanistan. Instead, Aikins's crew would have to go up through Peshawar and into the tribal areas, which are generally off limits to foreigners, before crossing the famous Khyber Pass into eastern Afghanistan and onward to Kabul. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

The route they set out on is about 1,000 miles long and is known for police who demand heavy bribes from NATO truck drivers. In fact, not far outside Karachi, the group "was quickly introduced to two of the trip's principal impediments: bribery and breakdown," Aikins writes. After paying off a cop who pulled them over, the men then had to get the truck's muffler repaired in Sindh province by the mechanic pictured here. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

After making it through Sinh and then scorching Punjab, the group arrived in the border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which means "Land of the Khyber Pashtuns." Here, two truckers enjoy a meal under a mural in Karak, a town in the province, at one of the many truck stops that line the highways from Karachi to Kabul. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

Classic Bedford trucks await their cargo in a rain-flooded neighborhood of Peshawar, about 30 miles from the Afghan border. Bedfords were originally brought to the region by the British prior to the creation of Pakistan. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

The main valley of the border town of Landi Kotal, which sits at the top of the famous Khyber Pass between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Aikins spent a night at Jahangir in Ahmad's family compound in the town — a mud-brick structure that houses dozens of their relatives — where he had a close brush with an attack next door. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

The author sits in the cab of the truck behind Jahangir as they enter the final pass to Torkham on their sixth day of travel. Without a certificate from the Pakistani government that would grant him permission to be in the restricted tribal areas, Aikins was unsure if he would be able to make it through the border checkpoints. Read his book — Bird of Chaman, Flower of the Khyber — to find out how his journey ends. Image by Matthieu Aikins. Pakistan, 2013.

The author sits in the cab of the truck behind Jahangir as they enter the final pass to Torkham on their sixth day of travel. Without a certificate from the Pakistani government that would grant him permission to be in the restricted tribal areas, Aikins was unsure if he would be able to make it through the border checkpoints. Read his book — Bird of Chaman, Flower of the Khyber — to find out how his journey ends.

Click here to purchase FP and the Pulitzer Center's new e-book by Matthieu Aikins, Bird of Chaman, Flower of the Khyber.