Border-Town Blues: Peshawar's Fortunes Fall Amid U.S.'s Afghan Exit -- Pakistani City Faces Tough Times as War Business Fades and Taliban Unrest Rises --- PESHAWAR, Pakistan—The end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, a 13-year conflict that made many fortunes in Peshawar, is bringing a bust to this Pakistani frontier metropolis that lives off cross-border trade. -- Though the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 brought lucrative supply contracts to Peshawar's merchants, it also spurred the creation of a separate Pakistani Taliban insurgency, which launched frequent bombings and shootings in the once-peaceful city. -- Now, the U.S. dollars are going—while the Taliban violence that devastated Peshawar looks set to stay. -- "We are facing the biggest challenge in our history," says Zahid Shinwari, president of the provincial Chamber of Commerce and Industry, many of whose members, faced with the double whammy of shrinking business and rising insecurity, are fleeing for safer parts of Pakistan or for Dubai. "This is a very grim situation." -- Still viewed by many Afghans as part of their historic homeland, Peshawar is capital of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province that shares the Pashto language and culture with Afghanistan. Sitting astride the main route to Kabul from the port city of Karachi, the chaotic city of 4 million has always been economically bound to the Afghan market. -- After the 2001 U.S. invasion, thousands of locals found jobs as truck drivers ferrying everything from food to uniforms to fuel from the port of Karachi and across the Khyber Pass for the U.S.-led coalition. Local industries flourished making supplies for U.S. bases, and for Afghan businesses that soaked up American aid. The maze of Pashto-language printing shops at Peshawar's storied Qissa Hiwani bazaar raked in big bucks printing Afghan textbooks and election campaign materials. --- All of this is coming to an end now that the U.S.-led coalition's mandate is expiring in December—and Afghanistan's economic bubble is deflating as foreign aid shrinks and uncertainty persists over the outcome of the country's June 14 presidential election. Though the U.S. plans to maintain some troops in Afghanistan if the country's next president signs a security agreement with Washington, it will be just a small fraction of the 100,000 American troops deployed there during President Barack Obama's surge in 2010-2012. -- "We depend a lot on Afghanistan, and it is a major setback to the business community in the province that this opportunity is ending," says Mr. Shinwari, whose own company was established in 2002 to make pipes for U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. --- "There is hardly any work now," says Nawab Sher, general secretary of the All-Pakistan Oil Tankers Association, a body whose members once drove from Karachi to Afghanistan a fleet of 10,000 vehicles to satisfy the coalition's huge fuel needs. Most of these tanker trucks have been bought on credit, in expectation that the U.S. would stay in Afghanistan for decades. "For the next several years, we will have to live with the losses because nobody wants these vehicles now," Mr. Sher says. -- Amanullah Afridi says he had to sell his three trucks for a pittance. "It's a noose around our necks," he said, sipping tea with other truckers across the street from a Peshawar parking lot where Taliban insurgents burned down three vehicles with coalition cargo days earlier. "We borrowed heavily, and now have to pay it back." -- At the Qissa Hiwani bazaar, similar tales of woe are plenty. Ayas Ali, who runs one of scores of artisanal printing plants in the bazaar's narrow maze, says that his sales—virtually all of them Afghanistan-related—have shrunk by 50%. "Three years ago, business was booming," he says. "Now, the situation in Afghanistan is really bad, and so there is a lot less money to go around." -- For Fazl-e-Amin Adil, another print shop owner in the bazaar, even this year's Afghan presidential election proved to be a bust. After borrowing heavily to print campaign badges, Afghan flags and other election paraphernalia, Mr. Adil discovered that the demand has collapsed since the previous Afghan elections of 2009 and 2010, held in the heyday of U.S. involvement. "We ordered a lot of inventory and barely sold any—it has all been wasted," Mr. Adil said, showing his cramped warehouse. - Read More, WSJ, http://online.wsj.com/articles/border-town-blues-peshawars-fortunes-fall-amid-u-s-s-afghan-exit-1408069692