There have been a number of tongue in cheek mentions of Afghan refugees coming to aid the current driver shortage.
I haven’t driven there for many years and back then they mainly drove Beford TJs and from what I saw were as good as anywhere else.
Fast forward 40 years and now they handle 6x4 Mercs with 45’ / 50’ trailers grossing way over what any self respecting cowboy outfit would try to get away with here and on roads that would give nightmares to most steering wheel attendants.
Those on the Pakistan run have a similar experience to our Euro run drivers except the other way round, starting off from home driving on the right and then switching to the left at landi Kotal (not sure how it is now, but we used to switch over in our own time on the no-mans land bridge between the border posts).
If it was a toss up between training up an Audi driving young Brit and an Afghan Merc driver, I reckon the main difference would be training the Aghan how to deal 'NICELY with VOSA, pointy shoes, RDC brain dead and how the food is even worse at MSA’s than Afghanistan. And attempting to teach the Audi driver how to drive before you even started them on the truck driving part.
If you’ve been running the gauntlett of Taliban checkpoints I reckon they could handle anything from community traffic checks to diesel fairies without even breaking sweat.
I’d start them off on farm deliveries first where the roads are more like home, then when they are more acclimatised give them an AK47 and a Union Card and put them on RDC work, with an instruction that they are to be tipped on arrival.
The main thing is they get paid the same and are not treated as cheap labour - most importantly it needs to be drummed into them that they don’t change wheels or do any running repairs to their trucks, that they are just there to steer them.
Any Doubts:-
Loads more on UTube
Plus they could bring a new style of Bling to V8 Scanias - I have tried not to imagine it, but it is hard to forget once done.