Pakistan-Afghanistan border closures paralyze trade along a key route

"For more than three months, Afghan truck driver Anwar Zadran has been parked in Pakistan with a truck full of cement he was supposed to transport from a factory in Nowshera district to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. The task became impossible starting in mid-October, when Pakistan and Afghanistan shut their borders in response to fighting between the two countries, stranding Zadran mid-route near the Torkham border crossing."

"Zadran, who is from Afghanistan's Nangahar province, and his fellow drivers are used to intermittent closures along this border, which snakes more than 1,600 miles through the rugged mountains and deserts that separate Pakistan and Afghanistan. Normally hundreds of trucks pass through daily. In the past, border disruptions usually were resolved within days or weeks, but this one has stretched beyond 100 days the longest closure in recent decades,"

Hundreds of Afghan truck drivers have been stranded near the Torkham border after Pakistan and Afghanistan closed crossings in mid-October, stopping shipments such as cement bound for Kabul. Drivers spend days at roadside tea stalls and sleep in their trucks at night, wearing the same thin clothes they arrived in months earlier. The border shutdown has lasted beyond 100 days, marking the longest closure in recent decades, and has halted trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan while paralyzing a key transit route across Central Asia. Five active trade borders were closed amid a larger dispute over handling a surge in militancy.

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