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By AFP
Standing beside his cargo of Thai fruit and furnishings, truck driver Ko Cho steels himself for a journey to Myanmar’s Yangon that can demand bribes, dodging landslides and navigating a raging civil conflict.
The industrial hub is simply 400 kilometres (250 miles) away, however a spherical journey from Myawaddy on the Thai border can take greater than 10 days of slogging via checkpoints and paying backhanders to the navy and its allies.
The primary route linking Myanmar with its second greatest buying and selling companion is a part of the United Nations-backed Asia Freeway undertaking to create a highway community from Tokyo to Istanbul.
However this part of AH1 runs via Kayin State, residence to a decades-old battle between ethnic armed teams and the navy that has escalated for the reason that generals’ coup in February 2021.
Air strikes and artillery barrages commonly fall close to the highway, additional choking a significant artery of an financial system on life assist for the reason that putsch.
“After we hear the gunfire could be very shut, we instantly cease and conceal below the truck,” stated 43-year-old driver Ko Zaw, a pseudonym.
Ko Cho, additionally a pseudonym, was ready at a gasoline station when Related France-Presse spoke to him in September, travelling in a gaggle of 5 vehicles for security.
“We have now to cease and wait on the highway when there’s a battle,” he stated. “It’s occurred twice this month.”
Drivers all the time have ID playing cards, licences, money and telephones on the prepared in case one thing occurs, Aung Htoo, a truck proprietor who works the highway, informed AFP.
“As a result of we are able to’t flip the truck again, we’ve to go away and run away.”
‘Pay everybody in all places’
Even getting onto the freeway is a process.
Within the border city of Myawaddy, truck homeowners pay a payment of K120,000 (US$65) simply to “rapidly” enter the loading zone the place their cargoes are inspected, Aung Htoo stated.
“It could actually take one month to enter the zone if we don’t pay,” he stated. “All vehicles pay.”
Myawaddy, a drug and human trafficking hub largely managed by a junta-allied militia, has been caught up within the junta’s raging battle with its opponents.
In September, anti-junta fighters used drones to drop bombs on a authorities compound, killing 5 officers and wounding 11 policemen.
As soon as a truck is safely out on the highway, “checkpoints” run by the navy or its militia allies demand charges of roughly K150,000 per truck per journey to Yangon, Aung Htoo stated.
From Myawaddy, the highway winds up in the direction of monsoon-soaked hills that periodically shed rocks and earth onto the tarmac, burying elements of the route for days.
Passenger buses crawl up inclines or hiss and lurch round washed-out corners, English-language lettering on their sides saying “Man of the 12 months” or “Shopaholic”.
At one nook, an 18-wheeler truck lies tipped over, its crew ready whereas a restoration car works.
Each two hours or so there’s a checkpoint, Ko Zaw stated.
“We have now to pay everybody in all places – on the highway, on the bridges, at toll gates, on the commerce zones.”
In the event that they attempt to negotiate the value, he stated, the drivers are informed “return when you don’t have cash”.
‘Apprehensive for our lives’
Descending from the hills the highway enters the city of Kawkareik – final yr the goal of a significant assault by Karen Nationwide Union ethnic fighters that was solely crushed again when the junta referred to as in a number of air strikes.
Pickup vehicles carrying heavily-armed troops swerve between the lumbering lorries whereas camouflaged fighters patrol on foot, barely seen towards the jungle.
Hours later, throughout the plains at Nyaung Kar Shay, dozens of vehicles line up for inspection at one of many final main checkpoints earlier than Yangon.
A wait of not less than half a day is regular there, Ko Cho stated — except an extra bribe of round K100,000 is paid.
In Yangon, the products are unloaded at warehouses earlier than the drivers flip their vehicles again in the direction of Myawaddy.
All for a wage of round $100 plus meals bills per journey.
“The truck homeowners fear about drivers, the spare man, the truck and in addition concerning the items we’re carrying,” Ko Zaw stated.
“We drivers are additionally apprehensive for our lives.”
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