Border dispute at Angoor Adda resolved

Pakistan hands over crossing facility to Afghanistan

PESHAWAR: Pakistan on Saturday handed over a multi-purpose built crossing facility at the Angoor Adda border in South Waziristan to Afghanistan.

Angoor Adda borders Afghanistan’s restive Paktika province.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) issued a statement about this unprecedented development of handing over the border crossing point to Afghanistan.

“To strengthen the brotherly relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan and with a strategic intent to improve border management, the multi-purpose built crossing facility at Angoor Adda was handed over to the Afghan authorities on Saturday,” the statement said. It said that the gesture would act as a catalyst and was envisioned to bring momentum for establishing peace and stability along the Pakistan-Afghanistan order.

“It was reiterated during the process that all border related issues will be amicably resolved through mutual consultations subsequently,” the ISPR said.

Pakistani security officials in Angoor Adda said that the senior military officers of both the countries had been engaged for the past a few months to resolve this longstanding claim of the Afghan government.

Pleading anonymity, a security official said Afghanistan had been claiming ownership of the border crossing point near the Pakistani border in Angoor Adda and this had affected relations between the two neighbouring countries.

He said Pakistan finally decided to hand over the border area to Afghanistan in a bid to improve its relations with it. It is the first time Pakistan handed over a piece of land to Afghanistan that it previously owned.

The remote Angoor Adda area has experienced a number of border incidents involving an exchange of fire between Afghan and Pakistani forces in the past. The border crossing had to be closed on certain occasions due to the tension between the two sides.

Though the ISPR didn’t mention if some residential and commercial areas were also returned to Afghanistan, the development aroused strong criticism from the local people living in the border area. Some of them said they would not accept Pakistan’s decision of handling them and their villages to Afghanistan without their consent.

According to the tribal people, around 3,000 houses and 500 shops and markets are situated in the border area.

A local tribesman, Eidak Wazir said hundreds of tribesmen staged a protest on Saturday close to the border and rejected Pakistan’s decision of delivering them to Afghanistan.

“We are Pakistani nationals by birth and would never like to be called Afghan citizens. Our elders had given sacrifices for this area which Pakistan decided to return to Afghanistan without our consent,” he stressed.

He said that like him, all the tribespeople did not want to lose their Pakistani identity.  He claimed Pakistan had agreed to deliver its 400-meter deep border area to Afghanistan.