Daily Times

Women, elders and especially underage people involvement in transporting smuggled goods in recent years has expanded dramatically across the bordering gates of Pakistan with Afghanistan. Through, the hide and seek between teenage smugglers and border police are become routine on the official crossing points between the two neighboring countries.

After the announcement of resuming trade and pedestrian among the two countries implementing coronavirus-related protocols, hundreds of children, women and senior citizen move between borders every day. Among them, children recruited by smugglers are hiding goods such as cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and mobile phones in their clothes and carrying other things including auto parts, batteries, electronics and bitternut etc in their backpacks.

Gulab Din is 12 years old having two sisters and one brother hailing from Landikotal, the capital town of Khyber, newly merged district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He has the only bread winner of the home working as child labor among the one of the major border crossing between the Pakistani city of Torkham and Afghanistan.

Gulab daily tries to steer his way through crowds of people with a wheelbarrow overloaded with sacks of crockery and other goods in the Torkham border town connecting the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar to Pakistan’s North West province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Every day, from 7am to 4pm, he tries to moves all kinds of goods illegally across the border to earn and feed their family.

The young smugglers cover the distance following meandering routes through ragged mountainous not far off from the Torkham border carrying as many cartons as they can on their fragile shoulders. This deadly game of the teenage smugglers gets problematic when, they are spotted by the border forces and they try to evade them by climbing passing trucks.

There are approximately 1500- 2000 children, aged from eight to 17, are involved in wage labor in the Torkham town, a border area of Pakistan. Many of these children do not attend school and most of them do not have access to medical care, drinking water and other essential service.

However, on daily basis, these smugglers are trying to mammoth quantity of goods including cloth, electronics, mobile phones, betelnut, chewing tobacco, cigarettes, auto parts and narcotics are moved into Pakistan from Afghanistan without payment of duties and taxes.

On the issue, we have talked to the Rahat Shinwari via phone. He is the local journalist and reporting on the border related issue. He calls the border among one of the source of income for locals explain that border is blessing for locals and especially for tribal people because they lack jobs and opportunities to earn but sadly instead of following law, locals trying to exceed and break the border rules.

The Landikotal base journalist through light over the smuggling on the border via children said that these young children recruited by smugglers, which carry out such trade at the cost of education and their future. He condemned such activity said that during such operation on the border, some of these children are arrested, some are sexually exploited while some become drug addicts which are ruthlessly exploited, Shinwari explained.

The local journalist explains that the government has allowed specific amount of Ganda (Sack) which are legally allowed and one can earn 1000 – 1200 PKR each without risking their lives but instead of following legal way, these underage people are trying to get smuggle maximum Ganda which exceed the limits allowed by the government and border management authorities, Shinwari added.

The Khyber Pass journalist lauded that such activities are in notice of the government and it’s high time for the government officials, civil society members, religious scholars and local elders to come forward and play their role to aware and stop such activities. Furthermore, he also stresses locals to not allow their children been used as smugglers for sack of few bucks, Shinwari concluded.

To curb the smuggling, the border officials has taken strict measures to stop smuggling and other illegal practices. In this regard the government of Pakistan has recently formed two separate Preventive collectorates in Quetta and Peshawar to check smuggling as these two stations are highly sensitive because of smuggling and bordering with Afghanistan and Iran.

On Monday, the border enforcement personnel have also successfully arrested a truck travelling from Pakistan to Afghanistan who was carrying 500,000 Saudi riyals during checking. The recovered amount is equal to 20.5 million Pakistani rupees. However, earlier in other case more than 2 Kilogram (KG) of gold was being seized during smuggled to Afghanistan in an empty container on Torkham crossing point