At Sost, the last town before you hit Pakistan’s border with China, no containers had passed through the gates for months. Negotiations repeatedly broke down between the government and traders who don’t want to pay taxes to Islamabad. After stopping and starting, their sit-in finally ended on Saturday after the two sides struck a deal, ending paralysis that was costing millions of dollars. Commercial traffic on the Karakoram Highway would return to normal.
I am from Sost, which is why I have been following these updates from Karachi where I now live. The trouble started in July but it seemed as if no television channel was interested in bringing the news to the rest of Pakistan. That is why I am writing this today. As Shabbir Mir, our correspondent, gave the update of the successful negotiations, I was still bothered by the nagging feeling that no one would really care to read that story. This feeling has defined me for a long time.
Residents sitting at KKH near customs terminal Afiyatabad Sost, Gilgit. Sept 21, 2025. Credit: Saleem Rumi
It is hard to introduce myself as someone from Sost because it barely exists in most people’s imagination. When gornament wallay education officials visited my school in the village, it was said they came from shehr or Pakistan. Even villagers downstream, a ten-minute drive away, laugh about my village. “Acha, Sost netta, ooo!” they scoff. Eww, you are from Sost.
Sost felt like a bastard village.
This unsettling sense of my home’s identity started to colour my own. Whenever I look at my CNIC, I feel slightly deranged, as if it is an unreal document, even though I got it from NADRA in 2017.
By that extension, there was always the gravitational pull of Pakistan proper, signalling to us all that leaving the Village, or getting as far away from it, was the only way to be taken seriously. Validation. Becoming. Proper citizenship. A seat at the table. Anything downstream was progress. And so after primary school, my family sent me out of my village to attend secondary school in Gulmit when I was 11. The next stop was Gilgit City or Gílṭh, as we call it.
By the A’ Levels I found myself further downstream in Islamabad. When a shehr wallah there asked where I was from, I said Sost a few times but got blank looks. It was the same with saying Hunza. Gilgit would get some recognition but then it would be commonly followed up with: “Gilgit wallay bohat phadday baaz hotay hain.” The people from Gilgit just like picking fights. There was more luck when I said I came from Northern Areas, but that came at a price. It was taken as pahari ilaqa or the mountains where people were ‘backward’ and ‘uneducated’. Some would call me Khan and others asked, “Gilgiti Pathan hotay hain?” Are people from Gilgit Pathans?
The map shows Sost Dry Port and villages nearby in Tehsil Gojal, District Hunza, as an entry point from China ending at Gwadar Port, Pakistan. Sept 27, 2025
I have always wanted to belong. I don’t want to be an unwanted child.
I moved further downstream to Karachi in 2016 for the aala taleem my parents wanted me to have. In my early semesters at Habib University it felt as if imperialism contained the answers given our history.
Sost was never under British rule, let alone a part of Kashmir. It was a part of Gilgit Agency that the Mirs ruled. Bhutto set my grandparents free of the Miri nizam or system in the early 1970s. This act of liberation instilled a profound debt of patriotism in my generation. As a child I wanted to grow up to protect Siachen, go to Kargil and fight till death. (Who does not know Lalik Jan of the Northern Light Infantry!) Two generations of my family served: one of my forefathers died during service. My grandfather worked as one of the first sets of hawaldars from Sost near the Pakistan-China border.
The feeling of unbelonging finally found its resolution when I came across Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and Nosheen Ali’s Delusional States: Feeling Rule and Development in Pakistan’s Northern Frontier. Her argument that the Northern Areas did matter, but its people did not, helped explain my feeling lost. I understood why people around me, in Karachi, did not seem to clock that people from all around Gílṭh had been protesting for 68 days in Sost.
A dry port, an open door
Sost Dry Port is the door for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor trade between the two countries. Cargo via Kashgar in China heads through Sost to make its way to Pakistani cities. These containers are mostly filled with toys, PCs, TVs, kettles, solar panels, medicines, crockery.
Having a dry port makes processing easier, especially since the Customs formalities are all digital. Additionally, cross-border trade benefits the locals because there are no factories here and few large private employers. Trading with China meant grocery stories were stocked and people had livelihood.
Archival image of Sost Dry Port in early days, Hussainabad Sost, Gilgit 2007. Credit: Pamir Times
At the dry port, once a China consignment’s documents are electronically processed, a Customs inspector checks the shipment. Duties are paid and the goods are transferred onto Pakistani trucks so they can be transported to Rawalpindi, from where they fan out nationwide.
I spoke to a trader on the Pakistan-China route, Farhat Ullah Baig, who once worked with the FBR. He said that the Sost dry port has done well, earning nearly Rs9.5 billion in 2024’s financial year.
Work on Sost Dry Port started in 1999 by setting up the community-owned Silk Route Dry Port Trust whose shareholders were local landowners. The Trust secured a 99-year lease on 201 kanal of land, and Sost was declared a legal customs station in 2001. The operational company, Sost Dry Port Pvt. Ltd., was formed in 2002, leading to a joint venture with the Chinese SinoTrans.
For us, 2005 was a year of promise as the port opened and changed the perception of my village. Overnight, in the eyes of other villagers, “Sostic” were now businessmen. I could finally brag about my village as it had given land so we could trade with China.
Evolution of Sost Dry Port over years. Sept 27, 2025
The trouble started in July as the Federal Bureau of Revenue was continuing to ignore a GB court ruling to insist local traders pay sales tax on goods they imported from China.
A trade union formed two years ago called the Tajir Ittehad Action Committee has been organising the protests after attempts to talk to the state, federal, and GB governments failed. The union then reached out to influential groups across the region leading to the creation of the GB Supreme Council. It brings together the Hunza, Nagar, and Gilgit-Ghizer chambers of commerce, religious groups such as the Ahle Sunnat, Anjuman-e-Imamiya, and Ismaili institutions. Thus, the businessmen are supported by religious groups, political parties, and business chambers across Gilgit-Baltistan.
Shipments at Sost Dry Port from China. Sept 25, 2025. Credit: Ibrar Khan
The heart of the fight is our unusual constitutional status which dictates people’s daily lives and trade in upper Gojal, Hunza, Gilgit.
The traders argue that since GB is not part of Pakistan constitutionally, Islamabad or the federal government has no right to tax them. Gilgit-Baltistan’s ambiguous constitutional status dates back to its independence from the Dogra Raj on November 1, 1947.
“Gilgit-Baltistan is not mentioned in Article 1 of the Constitution, and its relationship with Pakistan is governed by Article 257, which links its status to the resolution of the Kashmir dispute,” explained local political leader, Rehan Shah of the PML-N. “Until that is settled, imposing federal taxes here is unlawful.”
The Karachi Agreement of 1949 transferred administrative control to Pakistan but did not integrate the region into the Pakistani state. The Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order of 2009 granted limited autonomy but kept financial control under the federal Ministry of Kashmir Affairs.
This history fuels the argument that federal taxation lacks legal legitimacy here. “If we are not part of Pakistan constitutionally, how can Pakistan tax us?” Asif Sakhi, the vice chairman of the Awami Workers Party, told me over the phone.
Chinese Traders seen among locals at Sost sit-ins. Sept 21, 2025. Credit: Saleem Rumi
The deadlock reached Islamabad’s ears, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif even acknowledging there was a problem. It didn’t help that the sit-in at the CPEC gate started to affect even military containers at the Khunjerab border. In August they were teargassed by law-enforcement.
The protesters had wanted all containers released. About 1,200 of them were stuck at the dry port because of the tax hikes from the FBR. Nine hundred were subsequently cleared but 300 filled with essential goods such as food, clothing, and construction materials were stuck until the talks worked out, according to a local political leader, Rehan Shah of the PML-N.
Chinese Containers stuck at Sost Customs Interchange carrying heavy macheneries and supplies. Sept 21, 2025. Credit: Saleem Rumi
The men want all of GB to be declared a tax-free zone and SRO 1193 to be implemented to declare Babusar, Shandur, and Thakot as custom entry check posts. The GB Ministry of Trade and Industry should regulate trade, and not the FBR, they add. “Items from Xinjiang province of China, which is only 80km away, are cheaper in Lahore than they are here,” said Shah. “This is because of the taxes. Our traders are being crushed, and our people are suffering.”
A reasonable portion of the Sost revenue should be spent on border communities who need roads, electricity, hospitals, and schools in the Gojal subdivision. And finally, and most crucially, for long-term protection, an autonomous assembly and judiciary, and protection under the State Subject Rule should prevent non-locals from taking control of local lands and businesses.
Tear gas shells collected by protesters used by law enforcement agencies, Sost Dry Port. August 2025. Credit: Saleem Rumi
For now, the talks have seemed successful and these demands will be met. Ishfaq Ahmed, the president of the GB chambers of commerce and industries, called today, a “historic day”.
According to the deal, Sales Tax, Income Tax, and Federal Excise Duty will not be collected on imported goods if they are for use within GB. These importing companies must be owned by GB residents.
The FBR has a month to draw up the paperwork, put the details on its website and the GB government will appoint a focal body to manage all this. The traders said that if the FBR drags its feet, they will not hesitate to protest again.
And so, one of the longest running protests in GB’s recent history, finally was heard. And I could publish this news, so you could read it. My hope is to continue reporting on Gilgit Baltistan in the days to come and to come bearing good news each time.
Read more: The ruling Mir of G-B’s Nagar district
