Pakistan allows UN to send relief supplies to Afghanistan through 2 key border crossings

PESHSWAR, Pakistan (AP) – Pakistan will allow the United Nations to deliver relief supplies into Afghanistan through two key border crossings that have been closed for nearly two months, a government official said Thursday.

Mohammad Anas, a spokesperson for the Khyber district administration in the northwest, told The Associated Press that the border crossings at Chaman and Torkham will be open immediately for U.N.-requested relief shipments. The border will remain closed for trade and travel.

Initial deliveries will include food, followed by medical supplies and other essentials, Anas said. He said all arrangements were in place at the border crossing, though no U.N. truck had reached the border as of late Thursday.

All border crossings were shut in early October after Afghan forces attacked Pakistani military posts in retaliation for Pakistani strikes deep inside Afghanistan. Though a ceasefire brokered by Qatar remains in effect, broader negotiations between the two sides in Qatar and Istanbul have failed, with both sides blaming each other.

Since last month, the Chaman and Torkham crossings had been open only to Afghan refugees returning home.

The latest development came days after Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said he had received a request from the United Nations for allowing the use of border crossings in the northwest and southwest for delivering much-needed food and medicines for the Afghan people.

In Kabul, Afghan government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the closures were “illegally imposed by the Pakistani side as a means of political and economic pressure, causing serious harm to the peoples of both sides.” He wrote on the X platform that trade routes will reopen only after Pakistan provides “strong assurances” they will not be blocked again.

Chaman and Torkham are vital commercial routes for Pakistan as well, which uses the route for trade with Central Asian countries. Islamabad says the border with Afghanistan was only shut over Kabul’s support to Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant attacks, many claimed by the TTP, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. It is a separate group but allied to the Afghan Taliban, and has been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in 2021.

The closures have caused heavy losses for traders on both sides.

Since October Afghan authorities have promoted alternative trade routes, while Pakistani unions emphasize that the crossings are the shortest and most efficient paths for commerce.

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Associated Press writer Abdul Qahar Afghan in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, contributed to this story.