Pak-Afghan Torkham border crossing reopens after 27 days

     Peshawar, Mar 19 (PTI) The Torkham border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan reopened on Wednesday after 27 days of closure following successful negotiations between jirga members from both sides.
     The cross-border movement was suspended on February 21 after Islamabad shut it down over a dispute concerning the construction of a border post by the Afghan government.
     Several efforts to defuse the tension failed as trucks laden with goods queued up on both sides, waiting for normalisation to cross. The impasse promoted local elders and traders from the two countries to hold talks, which led to the thaw.
     Head of the Pakistani jirga (tribal council) Syed Jawad Hussain Kazmi told the media that the border has opened for cargo vehicles.
     He added that it will reopen for pedestrians and patients on Friday after repairs to the Pakistani customs infrastructure, which was damaged by firing from the Afghan side.
     The decision to reopen the border was taken at a meeting at Torkham on the Afghan side on Wednesday, he said.
     Additionally, an immediate ceasefire has been agreed upon till April 15. Both sides agreed to stop construction of the controversial check posts, Kazmi added.
     “Pakistani members of the jirga had pressed for a halt to the controversial constructions on the Afghan side,” he said.
     Afghan state-run news agency Bakhtar also confirmed the crossing’s reopening.
     Deputy Governor of Afghanistan's Nangarhar province Molvi Azizullah and Commissioner Molvi Hikmatullah represented the Afghan side in the flag meeting.
     Since February 21, officials and tribal elders on both sides have been holding talks about reopening the border. On Monday, the Pakistan-Afghanistan Jirga agreed on a ceasefire and the border's reopening.
     Members of the jirga, formed for negotiations with Afghanistan regarding the reopening of the Torkham Border, met with Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur on Wednesday.
     They told Gandapur that the 27-day border closure caused severe hardships for businesses, industries, and the public, leaving 12,000 cargo trucks stranded on both sides. The jirga, comprising traders from merged districts and Chambers of Commerce representatives, was praised by the chief minister for its efforts to reopen the border.
     Gandapur said that the closure not only affected business people but also caused losses worth billions of rupees to the government treasury. Considering the upcoming Eid-ul-Fitr, reopening the Torkham border was crucial, he said.
     The movement of people via the border crossing, situated about 55 kilometres west-northwest of Peshawar, was abruptly suspended after Pakistani and Afghan security forces developed differences over construction activities on both sides of the border.
     Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Shafqat Ali Khan told a weekly press briefing on March 13 that the Afghan side had carried out illegal and unilateral construction activity within the Pakistani territory at two points along the Pakistan border.    
     On their part, Afghan Taliban officials insisted that they wanted to build checkposts on their side and claimed that Pakistan was involved in the illegal construction of towers, which the Pakistani officials said were being built in the border terminal to facilitate traders and patients.
     In the past, both countries have closed Torkham and the southwestern Chaman border crossing, most often over deadly shootings and cross-fire. The crossings are vital for trade and travel between Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan.
     Earlier, an exchange of firing between Pakistani and Afghan security forces at the Torkham border overnight on March 3 left one civilian from Pakistan injured.
     The two countries share an approximately 2,640 kilometres border, also known in Afghanistan as the Durand Line after the name of Sir Mortimer Durand, a secretary of the British Indian government, who made an agreement with Abdur Rahman Khan, the emir of Afghanistan, in 1883 to fix the border. 

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)