Standoff at Torkham
PESHAWAR: Though there was no mention of the dispute about fencing at Torkham in the tweets by the Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lt Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa, it is unlikely that Pakistan would give up this project and leave it incomplete.
The tweets said the routine border traffic at Torkham would be resumed. The army chief and the Afghan ambassador also reiterated their resolve to continue efforts to fight terrorism and bring a lasting peace in the region.
The traffic across the Torkham border resumed within no time when orders from General Raheel Sharif were conveyed to the army commanders on the ground. This was the main demand of the Afghan authorities as they wanted Pakistan to reopen the border first before the fencing issue could be addressed.
Pakistan, on its part, had demanded that the Afghans should admit their mistake of objecting to the fencing work that the Pakistanis were doing in their own territory. The military commanders were upset by the decision made by personnel of the Afghan border force to cock their guns and order the Pakistani engineers to stop work on the fencing work.
Though the Afghan ambassador said in his tweets that Pakistan had reopened the border unconditionally, there was every possibility that Islamabad would continue to push for fencing parts of the 2,500-kilometre-long Pak-Afghan border.
After years of indecision and for the sake of good relations with Afghanistan, Pakistan this time took a tough stand on the issue of border management by closing down the border at Torkham for three days.
To be specific, the decision was made and implemented by the Pakistan Army. Though it agreed to reopen the border on the fourth day after the meeting between the army chief and the Afghan Ambassador Dr Omer Zakhilwal, it became obvious that this could be done again in case the Afghans continued to resist border management measures by Pakistan.
In fact, this isn’t border fencing as the media has generally interpreted the steps taken by the Pakistan military at Torkham. Only about 500 metres of the border is being fenced and that too 30 metres inside Pakistani territory. The fence would eventually be four kilometres long, but this would encompass Pakistani territory in Torkham area to ensure controlled movement of people and goods through seven lanes. The Pakistani authorities believe this would check the cross-border movement of unwanted people, help control corruption, facilitate smooth flow of traffic and improve security and trade activities.
Ironically, the plans for setting up of the terminal and the fencing project was shared by the Pakistani military authorities with their Afghan counterparts last years and explained in four meetings that took place in Jalalabad and Peshawar. When the implementation of the project began recently at Torkham, the Afghan government was informed about it beforehand. A senior security official told this writer that the Afghan military officials asked a Pakistan Army commander during meetings in Jalalabad and Peshawar last year that the terminal and fencing project for Torkham should also be implemented at the Angoor Adda border in South Waziristan and Ghulam Khan in North Waziristan.
