As all readers of the vast literature of the North West Frontier know, it has been the case for more than a century that the writ of the central government applies only to the main road once you have left Peshawar and entered tribal territory. Therefore everything you buy at the smugglers' bazaar is tax and duty free — and significantly cheaper than in Pakistan proper, whose government is heavily reliant on exise duties for its income. Moreover, because smuggling is so important to the local economy, the Smugglers Bazaar is apparently safe, even for the odd obviously foreign visitor like myself.

On the drive to the market we passed the vast open plain where the refugee camps once stood. The rough flat land now hosts hundreds of games of cricket. The only structure still standing is a roadside workshop making rough-hewn coffins.

On the other side of the highway is one of the more bizarre sights of the region: a score or more of large plant nurseries, each one fronted by rows of pots. The wild men of Peshawar and the Frontier are, it seems, fanatical gardeners.

As the traffic thickened on the way to the bazaar, (Peshawar, despite Pakistan's economic travails sees several thousand new cars a month added to its already busy roads), so did the haze in the air. Then the traffic, much of it heavy-laden, garishly decorated heavy trucks headed for the Afghan border, ground to a halt as an antiquated-looking fire truck came racing down the other side of the road.

Police vehicles with flashing lights hurtled down the sideroads into the haze before us, and my hosts, acting on instinct honed by years of living in Peshawar decided it might be best to return to the city. Before we could turn around, a policeman directing traffic explained that an oil tanker had been blown up right next to the Karkhano bazaar and that the explosion had set three others ablaze, causing subsequent explosions. Several stores had also been destroyed.

We heard later from a friend with a friend in the internal security agency  that the initial explosion had not been a mine or an IED. The bomb had somehow been planted on the tanker between here and the port in Karachi. It was not clear if the vehicle's cargo was indeed fuel intended for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, though this road is the allies' main supply route, and apparently the Afghan Taliban and its local counterpart simply assume that any fueler coming this way is part of the allied logistics effort...