Agence France Presse

Peshawar, February 29,

Each morning the shoulders of the potholed road into Pakistans northwest city Peshawar are crammed with hundreds of tricycle-bound Afghan refugees, struggling along the 10 km road from the Bara smugglers bazaar in the border tribal district of Khyber.

Most are war-wounded, victims of the scourge of landmines in neighbouring Afghanistan, where they helped drive out occupying Soviet forces in the 1980s. But the ex-warriors on hand-driven tricycles are not queuing for compensation handouts, such aid dried up in 1995, they say. They are bearing tea. "We make two dollars for every 50 kg of teabags we bring from Bara to Peshawar," explains Yar Mohammad, 47, an Afghan refugee residing in the Kachha Garhi camp.

Former pickup driver Mohammad lost both of his legs in an explosion in 1984, at the height of the war against the Soviets. He began training as a tailor through an aid program to help support his 11 children, but the training project shut down.

"I was left with two options: beg or start my own business. But I didnt have the money to start a business, and my pride would not let me beg. So I bought a tricycle in 1998 and began carrying tea and other smuggled goods into Peshawar," he said.

The tricycles serve another purpose: they garner pity from Pakistani police and customs officials.

"We dont get intercepted the way physically fit Afghan and Pakistani carriers get stopped. We are very grateful to those officials for allowing us to earn a livelihood for our families," he said. Customs authorities have an unwritten deal with the disabled tea carriers.

"We have directed them not to carry weapons, ammunitions and narcotics. As long as they follow those conditions, they will not be harassed for anything else," a local customs official said, on condition of anonymity. "Its their only source of income."

Once the carriers reach Peshawar they turn around and take the bus back to Bara, which lies some 70 km from the Afghan border. The bus conductor or passengers help the disabled people in packing their tricycles and boarding them on the bus.

"If we can fit in two trips per day we can earn around Rs 220 Pakistani Currency bringing teabags," Mohammad Umer, 35, said. Umer lost both his legs in a landmine explosion near the Afghan capital Kabul in 1992 during the inter-factional battles that followed the 1989 ouster of the Soviets.

He followed some 3.5 million of his compatriots into Pakistan to escape the fighting and drought which gripped Afghanistan for over two decades. Some two million refugees eked out a living from camps around Peshawar, run on foreign aid handouts.

"When foreign aid to refugees dried up I had no option but to work as a porter for smugglers," he said, "Its a difficult job and needs immense power and energy to run the tricycle through hands for eight to ten miles at a stretch without taking any rest."

The tricycle porters are paid by merchants in Peshawar to bring the duty-free tea from Bara. Most of the tea is then sold on to other cities across Pakistan.

The price of one kilogram of smuggled tea in Bara is Rs 60-70 pakistani Currency less than the retail price of imported tea in normal Pakistani markets. Retailers say the profit on just one kg is more than half of what the smugglers pay to the disabled for transporting a sack of 50 kg of tea.