QUETTA: A key border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan has reopened, officials said Sunday, days after fighting between security forces left at least three dead.
Since the Taliban returned to power last year, border tensions between the neighbours have risen, with Pakistan alleging militant groups were planning attacks from Afghan soil.
The Taliban deny harbouring Pakistani militants, but are also infuriated by a fence Islamabad is erecting along their 2,700-kilometer (1,600-mile) border, drawn up in colonial times and known as the Durand Line.
“The border has reopened for all sort of activities,” a spokesman for Pakistan’s paramilitary border force told AFP. A security source said it came after “successful talks” between Pakistani officials and the governor of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province.
Mahmood Azaam, spokesman for the governor, confirmed it had reopened.
Each side blamed the other for Thursday’s clashes at the Chaman-Spin Boldak crossing, which locals said involved light and heavy weapons.
Thousands usually cross every day, including traders, Afghans seeking medical treatment in Pakistan, and people visiting relatives.
Sheikh Rashid The Pakistani government has been holding talks with the Pakistani Taliban, or the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but the two sides have not reached any conclusion so far, Pakistan’s interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said on Sunday.
The TTP, which is a separate movement from the Afghan Taliban, has fought for years to overthrow the government in Islamabad and rule with its own brand of Islamic law. In December, the group declared an end to a month-long cease-fire, accusing the government of breaching terms, including a prisoner release agreement and the formation of negotiating committees.
Last month, the head of the Pakistani military’s media wing said armed operations against the outlawed group had been relaunched.
“We are in contact with the [Pakistani] Taliban, perhaps tomorrow also the delegation that is going [to meet] the Taliban, our additional secretary of the ministry of interior among two people are going,” Ahmed said at a press conference in Islamabad.
“Talks are ongoing but no conclusion has been reached,” minister said, without disclosing where these talks were going to take place.
Best known in the West for attempting to kill Malala Yousafzai, the schoolgirl who went on to win the Nobel Prize for her work promoting girls’ education, the TTP has killed thousands of Pakistani military personnel and civilians in bombings and suicide attacks over the years.
Among its attacks was a 2014 assault on a military-run school in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which killed 149 people, including 132 children. The United Nations has designated the TTP as a terrorist organization. The TTP has recently increased it attacks across the South Asian country.