KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — On the dashboard of his truck, Nowsher Awan keeps a colorful little box and a toy puppy biting on a candy cane. He says he bought the knickknacks in a market because “they just made me happy.”
He is a humble man, this 30-year-old Pakistani in his torn plastic sandals, making a 435-mile journey that will take him through the Taliban insurgency to deliver 15,600 gallons of fuel for the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan.
It takes 100 such truckloads to keep the armies moving for a single day.
Awan might not reflect much on his importance in this vast logistical operation. He is in it for the money — $112 a month to support a wife and five children in the distant northwest tribal region of Pakistan. He gets to visit them twice a year. For the rest of the time, he is mostly on the road.
Depending on the Taliban, the Pakistani and NATO armies, checkpoints, congestion and the weather, he says the journey from Karachi to Kandahar can take anywhere from four to 15 days.
Trucks get blown up or hijacked. Drivers are killed. Overall, fewer than 1 percent of trucks delivering everything from fuel to peanut butter are attacked, said Lt. Bashon W. Mann, a public affairs officer for NATO forces. But for Awan and other drivers, the fear of ambush and roadside bombs is constant.
Feared “night letters”
Awan has been the recipient of the Taliban’s feared “night letters” — pamphlets that warn drivers against hauling supplies to “the foreign invader.”
He says the message is always the same: “Don’t do this job, or else we will do something to you.”
Awan isn’t entirely alone on this run, his 14th. His younger brother is driving a truck behind him in the convoy, and they keep in touch by cellphone. Awan’s eyes keep darting to his side mirrors. “I am always watching my brother,” he explains.
He also has The Associated Press for company — me and photographer Anja Niedringhaus, who joined him in the Pakistani city of Quetta for the final 160 miles to the NATO base in Kandahar.
Awan’s journey had begun on a comfortable highway out of the port city of Karachi. Now, we were in the southern province of Baluchistan, on a narrow and congested road that detours around a long-simmering clan feud. Ahead loomed the Kojhak mountain pass, a long, frightening climb alongside a precipice. Then, it would be downhill and into Afghanistan for a final white-knuckle ride through Taliban country.
Awan has never been attacked. But as he chatted in his brightly decorated cabin, between cellphone conversations with his brother and blasts of music on an old cassette player, it became clear that he doubted his luck would last.
“It is a very dangerous job,” he said. Later he would say in a tone of resignation: “I think one day the Taliban will kill me.”
Last month, gunmen with rocket launchers and automatic rifles stormed a terminal outside Quetta and destroyed 14 fuel tankers. Outside the federal capital of Islamabad last year, dozens of gunmen attacked a fuel convoy parked overnight, killing six people.
Most attacks at night
Assad Sher, a 24-year-old driver, says he is fired at and his tanker is routinely pelted with stones. Fida Hussain, another driver, has been robbed and beaten.
“Most of the attacks are at night,” he said. “They come and they put a blindfold on our eyes and send us away, and then they sometimes blow up our tanker.”
For the contractors, NATO is a gold mine. At a going rate of 7 rupees a liter, each Afghan trip stands to earn the truck owner about $5,000, says Asghar Khan, who runs a clearing house for trucks on the Quetta-Kandahar run.
Awan’s $112 is a tiny fraction of the proceeds, but it is better than a poor Pakistani’s monthly wage and he says it has enabled him to enroll his children in school. He dreams of his daughter becoming a doctor.
Numbers
1.5 million Gallons of fuel NATO uses each day in Afghanistan
27,073 Trucks that crossed at Chaman, the border post nearest to Kandahar, in 2010. Roughly a quarter of them carried fuel.
1 percent Trucks delivering everything from fuel to peanut butter that get blown up or hijacked
