Torkham’s border crossing reopened on Saturday for pedestrians after a month and thousands on both sides were on the tails to cross the door, authorities said.
The crossroads of Torkham’s border reopened on Wednesday after 27 days after the long -awaited Parleyys among Jirga members of Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to a Jirga leader on the Pakistani side.
The cross -border movement of people through the border crossing of Torkham was suspended abruptly on February 21 after the Pakistani and Afghan security forces developed differences on construction activities on both sides of the border.
The situation worsened this month when eight people, including six troops, were injured when Pakistan and Afghan Taliban forces changed fire on the border.
Afghan officials said that thousands of passengers are stranded on both sides of Torkham’s border due to closing, which has caused a lot of congestion there.
The head of the Information Department of the province of Nangarhar de Afghanistan asked people to wait for at least two days so that they would not face any inconvenience due to heavy traffic. He said the congestion would decrease in the next two or three days.
The Pakistani journalist Jawad Shinwari said: “A similar situation was also witnessed on the Pakistani side when the stuck rushed to the border to cross.”
The developments arrive at a time when the special representative of Pakistan for Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Afghano, Maulvi Amir Khan Muttaqi, on Saturday.
Sadiq, leading a delegation, arrived in Kabul on Friday night to talk about bilateral issues focused on Pakistan’s security concerns about growing violence in the country, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan.
Pakistani officials said on Saturday that only those Afghan nationals who had valid visas and passports could enter the country.
However, serious patients would cross the border in line with the old procedure.
A resident of the Khyber district, who works in a currency exchange store in Torkham, said Dawn.com that the door was reopened at 8 am in the morning and there were many people on both sides.
“Pakistan is allowing only those who have passports and visas. Those who have Tazkira [ID cards] They are not allowing, ”said the man. He requested not to be identified by his name.
Pakistan would also previously allow Tazkira Afghan headlines crossing the crossing of the border from its side.
The Khyber district resident also said that those patients who had entered Pakistan in medical documents and without visas were also allowed to return.
The authorities say that about 100 patients and one assistant each with patients, mostly cancer patients, can enter Pakistan daily without travel documents.
On March 17, a Jirga set composed of the elderly and merchants negotiated an agreement that included the reopening of the crossing, a high fire and a stop to the construction of control stalls on the Afghan side near the border.
The spokesman of the Pakistan Foreign Ministry, Shafqat Ali Khan, said a weekly press conference on March 13 that the Afghan team had carried out an illegal and unilateral construction activity within the Pakistani territory in two points along the Pakistan border.
For their part, Afghan Taliban officials insisted that they wanted to build control publications on their side.
Afghan Taliban officials had affirmed that Pakistan had been involved in the illegal construction of Torres.
Pakistani officials had clarified to the Afghan side that the towers were being built in the border terminal to facilitate merchants and patients.
Sadiq meets with Foreign Minister Afghano in Kabul
Afghan Foreign Minister Muttaqi met with Ambassador Sadiq and his delegation in Kabul on Saturday.
Bilateral relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, political and economic cooperation, traffic and exchanges of people to people were discussed, said a statement from Afghan Foreign Ministry.
The special representative of Pakistan described the security in Afghanistan as in the interest of Pakistan and the region and promised to take the necessary measures to provide visas to the Afghan and facilitate their trip to Pakistan.
He said that practical measures would also be taken to solve existing problems in the areas of commerce and transit.
The Afghan Foreign Minister emphasized that obstacles in traffic routes and trade were not in the interest of any of the parties and it was important that the problems were not linked to each other.
The Foreign Minister also pointed out that Afghan refugees living in Pakistan should gradually return to their homeland in a dignified way instead of being deported by force, according to the statement.
Both parties also emphasized the celebration of joint meetings and delegation exchanges to solve problems, said the Ministry of Afghan Foreign Affairs.
The Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs had previously said that in the directive of the Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar, the special representative Khan was making an official visit to Afghanistan from March 21 to 23 to discuss the bilateral relations of Pakistan-Affanistan.
The declaration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not give more details.
This is the second visit of Ambassador SADIQ to Kabul in less than three months at the time the relations are in the lowest reflux due to the growing incidents of violence in the country.
Security officials insist that militant groups fighting the Pakistani state operate from Afghan soil, which Afghan taliban deny denies.
The military and Foreign Office Pakistani says that those who kidnapped the Jaffar Express in Baluchistan this month were in direct contact with the planners in Afghanistan. The Afghan Foreign Ministry had denied the presence of Baloch militants in Afghanistan.
