No obstacle too big: China builds US$275 million tunnel through Pakistan mountain for new highway to replace the old Silk Road
Border town sits at gateway of lucrative trade with China, but locals expect to be overlooked
A glossy highway and hundreds of trucks transporting Chinese workers by the thousands: The new Silk Road is under construction in northern Pakistan, but locals living on the border are yet to be convinced they will receive more from it than dust.
The town of Sost is gateway to lucrative customs duties, with its rickety stalls of corrugated iron engraved in Chinese and Urdu, its cross-border secret agents and its dusty petrol station’s abrupt service. It is the first stop along a new US$46 billion “economic corridor” designed by China in Pakistan.
Drivers from China arrive through the Khunjerab Pass, the world’s highest paved border crossing at 4,600 metres above sea level, and unload their goods encircled by the magnificent Karakoram mountains.
From there, Pakistani colleagues pick up the goods and transport them the length of the country - currently to Karachi, some 2,000km away on the Arabian Sea, but in the future to Gwadar, where Beijing has been given management of the port in a grand project allowing China greater access to the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
But until recently, the highway was cut off just south of Sost, blocked for five years by a landslide that dammed the Hunza river and birthed the 10km-long lake of Attabad.