Taliban Pakistan-Afghanistan border trade route witnessing double tax, banditry amid rise of Taliban
Islamabad: Trucking cost has hiked ever since a Taliban group captured a key Afghan-Pakistan border post recently, media reports said.
The terrorists and even government officials in Pakistan are now separately taxing traders and bandits demanding bribes to allow safe passage of goods.
Thousands of vehicles cross daily from Chaman to Spin Boldak on the other side, carrying goods destined for Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-biggest city, reports AFP.
The bilateral trade, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year if not more, ground to a halt earlier this month after the Taliban seized the dusty border town, but resumed this week with the insurgents seemingly firmly in charge. They have captured a vast swath of the country since early May after launching a series of offensives to capitalise on the final stages of the withdrawal of foreign troops, reports the news agency.
While they have not yet taken any provincial capitals, they have captured a string of key border posts with Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan, which provide important revenue from customs duties on goods arriving in the landlocked country , AFP reported.
“We loaded grapes in Kandahar and on the way we have been extorted at least three times," trucker Hidayatullah Khan told AFP in Chaman.
“Sometimes they charge 3,000 rupees, somewhere else 2,000 rupees, and in some other places 1,000 rupees,” he said.
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