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.On the Afghan side of the border crossing. Thorkam, Afghanistan/Pakistan. 16 June 1998...The child carrying an iron bar was the weakest and last link in a scrap metal odyssey that began in the dismantled plants of a long defunct Central Asian command economy and ended in the steel mills of Pakistan...When the Salang Tunnel was closed because of fighting between the Taliban and the forces of Masud and Dostum, the trucking route grew to 2,500 km instead of 700 km long, and hence took two weeks. From the border of Turkmenistan it led along the ring-road via Herat, Kandahar, Ghazni and Jalalabad to Thorkam. The last stage, that is to say, the actual smuggling from Afghanistan across the Tribal Area to an undisclosed assembly point in Pakistan, was done by porters and donkeys. . (KEYSTONE/VII Photo/Daniel Schwartz)