Earlier this year, Swiss-based The New Humanitarian published a report on the cross-border trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan, highlighting how Pakistanis set up shop across the Durand Line using commodities smuggled from their homeland, which Islamabad claims costs millions of dollars in revenue annually. Over the past year, amidst resurgent terrorism, Pakistani authorities have linked the proceeds from this illicit trade to terrorism—and, last month, initiated an ongoing crackdown aimed at curtailing the practice and reviving the national economy.
There is no denying the fact that thousands of people—Pakistanis and Afghans alike—are involved in smuggling goods between the neighboring nations. While some are mere traders, profiting off the porous border and a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Pakistan and Afghanistan, many constitute a complex smuggling mafia through which cross-border terrorism is financed. Multiple attempts to tackle this in the past have failed because experts claim it would have grave humanitarian consequences, including but not limited to unemployment for tens of thousands, for people on both sides of border. Unfortunately, a Pakistan teetering on the brink of default can no longer afford to look the other way as the economic losses pile up; not to mention the threat smuggling poses to the sovereignty of the state.
Not helping matters is the FTA between Islamabad and Kabul. Intended to help landlocked Afghanistan import essential goods, it is widely misused by traders who import products to the war-torn state and then re-import them to Pakistan, avoiding duties and taxes that Islamabad imposes on commodities intended for its populace. “Smuggler” markets dotted along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan are rife with such products, eventually filtering their way to the rest of the country.
The smuggling network is also funding cross-border terrorism, which poses a significant threat to Pakistan, especially parts of Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa bordering Afghanistan. Today, the real state-destroying threat to Pakistan is not from India in the east but from the west, from a virtually non-existent state of Afghanistan that does not control its own territory.