| " It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood, A beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?... Please won't you be my neighbor?" |
| "O Allan, not the teasing, surely!" |
They chanted slogans against Afghan authorities and hurled stones at the vehicles plying the road in the semi-autonomous Pakistani tribal region. But Sher Ahmad, an Afghan police official in the border town, justified the roadblocks placed in Sarobi to test the trucksâ roadworthiness before they reached the bumpy mountain road. âVehicles that manage to clear the hurdles are allowed to go ahead.â He admitted the vehicles failing to climb the mound were sent back to Torkham because they could not ply the Lata Band Road, zigzagging through a long range of mountains. However, the weird arrangement has infuriated the Pakistani drivers, who have parked nearly 2,000 trucks on both sides of the road, long lines stretching from Ali Masjid to the Torkham border town. Pakistani border officials implied the ban on Afghan truckersâ entry had been imposed in retaliation for unnecessary problems created for Pakistani drivers and transporters. âThe ban went into effect from Thursday and will remain in place as long as the two governments reach an agreement on how to deal with the situation,â said Bakhtiar Momand, Torkhamâs Assistant Political Agent.
| Oh, and by the way, doesn't it seem to you that the Afghans are the ones being the adults here? They correctly check the incoming trucks to make sure they won't have to haul them out of the mountain passes by donkey caravan, and the Paks make faces, chant slogans and throw rocks. |