Afghanistan: Truckers a forgotten front in a war growing deadlier by the day - Vancouver Sun

Adding to security fragility, Lalajan said, was that Afghan drivers working from distribution hubs in Afghanistan like Bagram airbase north of Kabul could not obtain insurance, as drivers coming from Pakistan were able to.

Local drivers, except for those working for the largest transport companies, were also forced to rely on brokers who sold on contracts to smaller firms and pocketed the difference, often as much as half the job's entire worth.

For the majority of contracts paid by the military, worth around $8,000 on average, middlemen pocketed $4,000 for doing nothing other than having good connections.

Drivers then received around $300 a month in salary, but pocketed $1,000 extra in danger money for each 10- to 15-day delivery to military bases in the riskiest areas.

"The middlemen often hold our money for sometimes months, investing it in other things. Sometimes when we go to claim, the company has disappeared and we get nothing. The Americans don't care about that," Lalajan said.

Laghman province, which is home to the truckers, is one of Afghanistan's poorest, with 67 per cent of people living in poverty and 78 per c ent underemployment, while seven in 10 people do not get adequate food each day, according to World Bank data.

Asked which road he feared most, 40-year-old driver Mohammad Qayum said the valley route to the most far-flung U.S. base in the northeast, Forward Operating Base Bostick near the Pakistan border in north Kunar, was the most dangerous.

Bostick, in a natural mountain amphitheatre, is a frequent target for Taliban rockets aimed down at the first battalion of the U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment.

"Last year, two of my trucks were attacked going to Kunar. My nephew was inside and was burned to death," said Lalajan.

Smaller cooperatives like his with 70 trucks say margins are so tight they cannot make the security payments to protect convoys and which critics say often end up in the hands of the Taliban, helping fund the insurgent war effort.

"For bigger companies that get first-hand contracts, for them it's possible. They can have 60 trucks in a convoy and can pay some money to avoid attack," he said. "But for us, there are lots of Taliban groups. Which one would we pay? The attacks have been mounting."

Habibullah said the only thing keeping drivers in jobs vital to the NATO war effort were danger bonus payments, but even they were losing their lure as the Taliban intensified their fight and foreign troops wound back their presence.

"We don't have any faith that the government will reach any deal with the Taliban. If they reach a deal, these attacks on us will still continue, because in the eyes of the Taliban we are kaffirs [infidels]," he said.

"We think for drivers like us, as has happened with some translators, foreign borders should be opened to us. We should be allowed to leave Afghanistan."