QUETTA: Hundreds of vehicles crossed into both sides of the border after Pakistan reopened its border with Afghanistan in the Chaman area of Balochistan on Thursday after closing it for 12 days.

The decision to reopen the border was made at the fifth flag meeting between senior border guarding officials of Pakistan and Afghanistan in Chaman on Wednesday evening.

“We reopened the Friendship Gate at the border at 7am on Thursday after Kabul’s condemnation of the burning of the Pakistani national flag by Afghan nationals,” an official of the Frontier Corps (FC) told Dawn.

At the meeting, he said, the Afghan border officials handed over to their Pakistani counterparts a letter from their government condemning the incident of the burning of the Pakistani national flag.

People will be allowed to cross border after thorough checking of travel documents

The border was closed after a group of Afghan nationals had torched the Pakistani national flag when Pakistani tribesmen were returning from the border area where they had staged a demonstration to condemn Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent remarks about Balochistan.

However, a security official said that now border crossing from the two sides would be allowed only after checking of passports and other travel documents, an arrangement earlier introduced at the Torkham border crossing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under the new border management measures.

“The National Database and Registration Authority has set up a centre at the Friendship Gate for verification of national identity cards, passports and visas,” he said.

The centre will also register the names of people crossing the border from the two sides.

All infrequent routes along with border will be strictly monitored and entry into the two countries will be allowed through border check-posts only.

Sources said that security had been beefed up along the border as more FC troops had been deployed in the border area.

Meanwhile, hundreds of container-mounted trailers carrying Nato supplies, trucks involved in Afghan transit trade and other vehicles, which had been stranded at both sides of the border for days, started moving to their destinations.

“Hundreds of trucks and other vehicles crossed both sides of the border till evening,” said Jamal-ud-Din, a leading businessman of Chaman.

Business activities, including import and export through the border crossing, which had remained suspended in Vesh Mandi in Afghanistan and Chaman, also resumed after the reopening of the border.

Businessmen of Balochistan have welcomed reopening of the border and said that Pakistani importer and exporters had suffered huge losses due to the border closure.

Voluntarily repatriation of Afghan refugees under the United National High Commissioner for Refugees programme will resume in a couple of days.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2016