Afghanistan-Pakistan border crossing reopens after talks to resolve clashes

PESHAWAR, Pakistan/KABUL, Sept 15 (Reuters) – The main land crossing on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border reopened on Friday after a nine-day closure following gunfights between guards on both sides, a senior Pakistani official told Reuters.

Thousands of travelers and hundreds of trucks loaded with goods were stranded last week by the closure of the Torkham border crossing, at the western end of the legendary Khyber Pass.

“It is open to pedestrian and vehicular traffic,” Abdul Nasir Khan, deputy commissioner of Pakistan’s Khyber district, told Reuters.

A security official in Torkham said talks between the two sides had resolved the issue that sparked the clashes.

Spokespeople for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry and authorities in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province confirmed the reopening.

The highway is a key lifeline for landlocked Afghanistan, linking the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar to Jalalabad, the main city of Nangarhar, and the route to the capital, Kabul.

“The closure of the border was causing huge losses to traders and common people of the two neighboring countries,” said Ziaul Haq Sarhadi, director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Among dozens of families who braved the heat and humidity in a bid to return home was an Afghan refugee, Mohammad Ismail, who had spent a week in a makeshift shelter in Peshawar with his wife and four children, waiting for it to open. border.

“They are not letting us return,” Ismail told a Reuters photographer, claiming that officials were not recognizing his legal documents, although he had pleaded with them to allow the family to cross and seek medical assistance.

“All my children have fallen ill,” he added.

The refugee family has been in Pakistan for the past three years.

Dozens of other families in line also complained about the slow processing of documents. Along the nearby route were hundreds of vehicles carrying fruits, vegetables and other perishable items.

Pakistan’s top diplomat in Kabul met the Taliban administration’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, to discuss the reopening, the Afghan foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

In its account of the clashes in Torkham, Pakistan said the Taliban administration had attempted to invade its territory by building an “illegal structure” and cited “indiscriminate firing” by Afghan forces.

The Taliban foreign ministry criticized the closure of the crossing and said Pakistani security forces had fired on its border guards while repairing a former security post.

Ties between the neighbors have been occasionally testy, mainly due to border disputes and Islamabad’s accusations that militants launch attacks on its territory from bases in Afghanistan, accusations that Afghan authorities deny.

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