Daily Times

“You are proceeding on a mission to construct a road linking Pakistan to China. Presently there will be no contact with you for some time. Detailed instructions will follow with the main body. This is the biggest challenge thrown to the Corps of Engineers. We want to make the road in competition with Chinese road builders who would be working next to you in their own territory with home facilities. Not only the Corps but also the whole country will look forward to your achievements. Wish you good luck and Khuda Hafiz”.

With above words, Commander Indus Valley Road Project Brigadier, Humayun bid farewell to 200 men of an advance party of the Khunjerab Force that was raised to build Karakorum Highway linking Pakistan with China in 1966. The Khunjerab Force that was a precursor to the legendary Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) was therefore the mother entity that gave birth to the concept of FWO.

The process of Sino-Pakistan cooperation had begun in the right earnest after the 1965 war, when a US-wary Pakistan started looking east to address its strategic vulnerability of overreliance on Western economic and military aid. Since the Chinese were also seeking to break their international isolation, the fortuitous concatenation of these interests resulted in a proposal to construct a ‘Friendship Highway that linked both countries.

The technical delegates of both countries met at Kashgar in January 1966 and worked out the modalities of the project. After five days of deliberations the two countries agreed to build a road linking Xinjiang Province of China with Pakistan. The road link was to be built in two years and the Chinese were to provide logistic support to our builders while working on their part of the road in their territory. A joint survey team fixed the junction point of the ‘Friendship Highway’ at a 4700 meters high point on the Karakorum watershed between the two countries in June 1966.

The first group of the Pakistani road construction Khunjerab Force boarded C130s under their dynamic young leader Captain Javed Nasir and landed at Hotien Airport in China on June 22, 1966. Two thick ropes were tied from the tail to cockpit and all ranks were made to sit in four rows huddled in grotesque poses holding the rope to stay safe as the aircraft swayed and buffeted in the mountain air.

When the plane landed at the Chinese airfield in Hotien, there were strange sounds coming from the pavement of the taxiway that crumbled like potato chips under the heavy weight of the US C130 Hercules aircraft landing gear. The Chinese runways were apparently not designed for the C130 landings in an era of Chinese isolation — a far cry from the infrastructural sophistication of today’s China.

The Khunjerab Force was equipped with Chinese camping gear, winter uniforms, construction equipment and rations, and driven from Hotien to Kashgar via Tashkurgan Pass to the Khunjerab Pass where they had to establish camp for the project. While getting acclimatised at a height of 20 kilometers short of the pass, over ninety percent of the soldiers went down with altitude sickness with two succumbing to their illness. These two men were the first shaheeds of the Karakorum Highway project. The Force landed at Khunjerab Top on June 30, 1966 and established camp. The next morning there were rumours of apparitions and jinns who shrieked and screamed throughout the night apparently at the impudence of the troops who had desecrated their abode of ‘Koh Qaf’.

The officer also heard the shrieks and screams throughout the night. The next morning he ordered the ground under his tent to be dug. The digging revealed that the place where the camp was established was in fact a frozen riverbed where the freezing and thawing produced dreadful noises as the soil particles of thick layer of moraine rubbed against the stony river bed.

With the jinn issue thus resolved the force set about its task of track construction. It was a unique project in the history of Pakistan Army where all ranks donned Chinese uniforms and worked with picks, shovels and other construction equipment. The officers worked like ordinary sappers without wearing any badges of rank in Chinese tradition. Many interesting incidents happened during the first season where the nearest human habitation was seven days of walk away at Sust. One day the Commanding Officer of the Force, Lt Colonel MZ Kidwai, while working with troops collapsed because he felt sudden chest pain and was carried to the regimental medical officer Captain Tarar.

When the plane landed at the Chinese airfield in Hotien, there were strange sounds coming from the pavement of the taxiway that crumbled like potato chips under the heavy weight of the US C130 Hercules aircraft landing gear. The Chinese runways were apparently not designed for the C130 landings in an era of Chinese isolation

The doctor examined the Colonel in a precarious state and in panic injected Coramine fluid directly into his heart. Miraculously the intervention worked and the Colonel recovered, years later when the Colonel went for a routine examination his physician told him that he had in fact suffered a mild heart attack at Khunjerab and that his body had formed a natural bypass due to his physical resilience and that he owed his life to the incident at Khunjerab.

Despite hardships only one incident of desertion happened during the project when a soldier absconded towards Pakistan. After walking for two days he turned back towards his camp arriving in a haggard condition. No questions were asked as he quietly picked up his shovel to re-join the road-building group. The road alignment followed Khunjerab River emanating from Khunjerab Glacier and moving through a gorge with steep gradients. The road alignment was kept above the high flood level through a painstaking ‘S bend’ construction technique.

As the winter approached the Chinese got worried and supplied the force with more equipment asking all the while about the winter relief plans. They had planned to close their camp by end September and to reopen it the next May but the relief of our troops was not in sight due to lack of information at main headquarters about the ground conditions. Providentially the debonair Air Chief, Air Marshal Nur Khan who was on a routine helicopter trial mission flew over the area.

He got curious upon seeing Pakistani features in Chinese uniforms on land. He immediately landed keeping the helicopter on running rotors due to rarefied air. After a stay of 15 minutes during which he got a short briefing and a cup of tea he flew back. On his arrival at Rawalpindi he met the Commander-in-Chief and apprised him of the lack of relief plans for a body of 1500 troops at Khunjerab. A relief plan was subsequently made and the troops were made to march all the way to Passau near Hunza carrying their equipment.

The Force was again sent back to work the next summer. After two years the Force managed to construct a thirteen kilometers long and four meters wide track capable of upholding three-tonne lorries at 30 mph, a superhuman undertaking indeed, that too on heights ranging between 13000 to 15000 feet.

The work on the Karakorum Highway was disrupted during 1971 Indo-Pak War after which it restarted in 1972 under the patronage of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The eighth wonder of the world, a 616 kilometers long highway, connecting Thakot to Khunjerab, was finally inaugurated on June 1978 taking a toll of 11 officers, 25 junior commissioned officers, 531 soldiers, and 246 civilian labourers. Frontier Works Organisation, the proud legatee of the Khunjerab Force tradition, is again in the forefront of another titanic undertaking under its present dynamic leadership for yet another Sino-Pak strategic link, ie CPEC.

If CPEC is the veritable vehicle of our future economic progress then FWO can rightly claim itself to be its engine. The challenges now bear an uncanny resemblance to those halcyon days of 1966 when a new road linked promised the dawn of a new era of economic and strategic cooperation between the two countries.

The FWO nowadays has come a long way from those humble beginnings of 1966. It now boasts of a trained workforce second to none in the national construction industry capable of undertaking challenging projects in all kinds of conditions.

The organisation’s ability to work undeterred under adverse security environment makes it a true strategic enabler. Presently engaged in development of roads as well as rail links, connecting Gwadar and the rest of Balochistan with the hinterland, is in the forefront of a communication revolution in the country. The diversification of the organisation’s portfolio to include national development projects in oil pipeline infrastructure, hydro power, and cement sectors is all geared towards the realisation of a dream that was initiated on the craggy Karakorum peaks in 1966.

The organisation’s impressive pedigree has been highlighted by the achievements of the redoubtable Khunjerab Force and it is upto us now to make optimum use of this strategic enabler to usher in a new dawn of economic prosperity for the country.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST and can be reached atrwjanj@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, September 11^th 2017.