KHYBER AGENCY - Tension developed on Pak-Afghan Torkham border over the dispute of an Afghan family search that led to closure of the border for an hour on Sunday here, official sources informed.
The sources said that the Pak forces personnel were busy in their routine business of checking of travelling documents of some Afghan nationals who wanted to cross into Pakistan. However, it annoyed one of the Afghan border security guards and he misbehaved with his Pakistani counterparts. In protest the Pakistani forces closed the border for an hour for all kind of movements including halt to NATO supply and transit commodities, the sources said.
Wing Commander Col Mushtaq confirmed the incident and said that no compromise will be made on the honour of the country. He told the media that Pakistani officials were carrying out routine checking of Afghan nationals’ travel documents, when an Afghan entered into a heated discussion and started using threatening tone. At the same moment, Afghan border officials directed their rifles at the Pakistani personnel.
This alerted the Pakistani security forces and they closed the border crossing in protest. The situation remained tense for an hour.
After an hour an Afghan commissioner Nisar Khan visited the Pakistani officials across the border, formally excused for the untoward incident and assured that such incident would not recur. After that the border was reopened, the sources said.
Agencies add: Afghan foreign affairs ministry has strongly criticised ‘extraordinary’ activities of neighboring Pakistan in the border areas including construction of barrier wall and continuation of mortar attacks on border regions of the country by Pakistani militia.
In a news briefing, Janan Musazai a spokesman to the ministry of foreign affairs of Afghanistan asked Islamabad to halt the unusual movements in the border regions across the Durand Line. Meanwhile, interior ministry of Afghanistan has announced Pakistani movements alongside border areas totally a violation of territorial integrity and national sovereignty of Afghanistan and in contradiction of inter-governmental ties. The Afghan government has dispatched a delegation to the eastern Nangarhar province to probe into the incident.
Pointing out the recent atypical movements of Pakistan alongside the border regions deputy spokeswoman of interior ministry Najiba Danish told media that Pakistan intended to construct an illegal gate in zero point area alongside border region in Gusha district of Nangarhar province and the move was followed by serious retaliation of Afghan border security forces preventing the construction of such a gate.