On the fifth-floor balcony of an exclusive apartment block in Karachi, Iqbal Amlani glares out at what he calls his “million-dollar view”: the Arabian Sea lapping at a shoreline that includes nearby Clifton beach, where city dwellers wade in the shallows. “It used to be a million-dollar view,” he corrects himself.
Spoiling his vista are hundreds of fuel tankers cluttering up the road outside his block and every other building nearby, said a report in the Guardian. The seafront road alone is crammed with roughly 500 trucks, each capable of carrying 60,000 litres, double-parked bumper to bumper, on both sides of a multi-lane road.
In total there are thought to be more than 1,000 in and around Clifton, a neighbourhood usually associated with the country’s most wealthy citizens.
Pashtun truck drivers from the north-west of the country began parking in the well-heeled streets, a short drive from Karachi’s port and oil terminal, in November 2011last year when Islamabad banned the transport of NATO supplies through its territory. The border closure was retaliation for the accidental killing by US forces of 24 Pakistani soldiers. Although Pakistan had previously closed the border in shorter protests, no one had expected the ban to drag on for so long this time.
The drivers, many of whom are sinking into debt, are desperate to get back to work even though some of the big Pakistani fuel suppliers fear the once hugely lucrative NATO logistics business will never recover.
For years Pakistan’s truck drivers provided the vital fuels that powered almost every aspect of NATO’s war effort in Afghanistan, from the diesel in the tanks of armoured vehicles to the fuel required for squadrons of aircraft and the countless generators powering air conditioners in austere military bases. For months now the drivers have been idling away their time drinking tea and playing games. “Every day we look at the papers or go to the fuel company office to ask when the border is going to open,” says Arif Shah, a 26-year-old driver who has been unable to pay five of the £345 monthly installments to service the loan on his tanker. It seemed like a good investment when demand was growing rapidly on the back of Barack Obama’s decision to send additional forces to Afghanistan for the surge in 2009. Shah could make far more on the month-long round trips to Bagram and Kandahar if he owned his own vehicle. One oil supplier estimates more than 2,000 trucks have been added to Pakistan’s national fleet in the past 10 years. “We stay here because we keep being told it will just be a week more, we just need to wait a little longer,” Shah said. “If we get back to work then everything will be fine.” Hopes of the border reopening rose, albeit slightly, on 12 April when parliament unanimously passed long-delayed recommendations that will govern future relations with the US. It banned outright the transport of arms or ammunition through Pakistani territory, but not food, fuel and other important goods.
However, the unpopular government of Asif Ali Zardari would almost certainly pay a high political price for resuming supplies in an election year, particularly as parliament also called for a complete end to lethal strikes by unmanned US drone strikes in Pakistan – something American officials say will not happen.
Imran Khan, the former Test cricketer who is now a leading opposition figure, has decried the move, predicting more suicide bombings by militants if the borders reopen. Amid such political uncertainty, one leading Karachi oil contractor said he did not expect supplies to resume until elections were called and a non-political caretaker government was installed for three months before voting. “Even if it opens up again we are never going to get the old market back because so much of the supply chain has moved to central Asia,” said Taj Afridi, the owner of al-Haj, one of the largest NATO contractors. He was referring to alternative routes the US has developed in recent years that pass through Russia and the former Soviet republics on Afghanistan’s northern border. Those routes, combined with some air freight, have allowed NATO to continue operations unimpeded. But the cost of keeping troops supplied has increased hugely in the last six months. US military officials say it costs $17,000 to ship a container through the northern route, compared with $7,000 through Pakistan.
“It’s more expensive, but it’s more reliable,” said Afridi. “NATO knows the Pakistani government is not stable. They cannot guarantee the routes won’t close again even if they open them.” A determined campaign by the Taliban to try to choke off NATO’s supplies by destroying trucks has also wrecked the profitability of the once highly lucrative business. Al-Haj did not make any profit in 2011 because so many trucks were destroyed by insurgents. The company alone lost 20 trucks a month, while the industry as a whole lost twice that number, an al-Haj executive said. The trucks are almost never attacked in Afghanistan. Instead gunmen armed with homemade bombs, which they attach to the back of the tankers, target vehicles in a variety of locations inside Pakistan. The drivers are nearly always spared and insurgents have enough information to distinguish between trucks bearing NATO fuel and those taking supplies to private Afghan petrol pumps. The final problem for Pakistan’s truckers is even more stark: by the end of 2014 NATO’s combat mission will be over. Even with a residual force likely to remain in Afghanistan, demand for fuel will be a fraction of what it once was.
