The Torkham border point is the main point of transit for travellers and goods between Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan. The entire flow of trade had been affected and loading of goods in the southern port of Karachi had been disrupted. Disputes linked to the 2, 600 km (1, 615 mile) border have been a bone of contention between the neighbours for decades.
In a separate incident, Pakistan’s military said four soldiers have been killed in clashes in Chitral district, near the Afghan border, on Wednesday and that 12 militants had died.
The Pakistani military echoed its demands of Afghan Taliban authorities to stop the use of its territory for militant attacks after the clashes in Chitral, a mountainous area near the Afghan border popular with Pakistani and foreign tourists. The Afghan Taliban have denied their territory is being used by militants, saying security concerns within its neighbour are an internal issue for Pakistani authorities. Attacks claimed by the TTP have grown in Pakistan in recent years. The group has pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban but is not directly a part of it.
The Foreign Office (FO) also responded to the statement of the Afghan Taliban on the border closure, which according to Pakistan doesn’t depict the actual picture.
"The statement of the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs comes as a surprise as the Interim Afghan authorities know fully well the reasons for the temporary closure of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at Torkham" FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in a statement.
She said Pakistan cannot accept the construction of any structures by the interim Afghan government inside its territory since these violate its sovereignty. The spokesperson said on September 6 that instead of a peaceful resolution, Afghan troops resorted to indiscriminate firing, targeting Pakistan military posts, damaging the infrastructure at the Torkham Border Terminal and putting the lives of both Pakistani and Afghan civilians at risk, when they were stopped from erecting such unlawful structures.
"Such unprovoked and indiscriminate firing on Pakistani border posts cannot be justified under any circumstances" she added. The unprovoked firing by Afghan border security forces invariably emboldened the terrorist elements, she maintained.
"These elements are enjoying sanctuaries inside Afghanistan as confirmed by the UN Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team in its latest report".
"We have always said that we wish the border with Afghanistan to be a border of peace and amity between the two countries. We have welcomed our Afghan brothers and sisters with open arms for decades. Pakistan has continued to exercise restraint and prioritise dialogue in the face of persistent unwarranted provocations by Afghan troops deployed along the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border".
She said temporary closures take place only in extreme cases, such as, the September 6 incident on the border or when Afghan soil was used to launch terror attacks inside Pakistan.
