TRAVERSE Issue 51 - December 2025 | Page 33

TRAVERSE 33
about missed deliveries.
“ We are in the middle,” Jamal said, exhaling a cloud of smoke.“ Between the government and the people. Between mountains and rivers. We are always in the middle.”
The Karakoram Highway has always been more than asphalt. Since its construction in the 1970s, a joint venture of Pakistan and China, it has been a stage where politics, trade, and survival collide. Its hairpins have seen military convoys during wars with India, pilgrimages to shrines, and now convoys of Chinese goods bound for markets in Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor( CPEC).
The blockade at Harban was not unique. Further north, in Sost, the last major town before Khunjerab, traders regularly protest
TRAVERSE 33