Around 8000 families in the city of Chaman in Balochistan earn bread for their families by walking through the Chaman border gate at the Afghan border while carrying things like tyres, cooking oil, biscuits, car and motorcycle spare-parts and other legal but none-custom-paid stuff to markets in Quetta, Karachi, Lahore and other cities of Pakistan on prices comparatively lower than similar items available in Pakistani markets.
Similarly, the same Chaman border is an in-let used for commercial trade between Pakistani and Afghan small business runners and big business tycoons who have connected Kandahar with Quetta by their movement of goods to both markets in the two cities of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, the Chaman border-gate at the “Durand line” creates massive business opportunities for both the Pashtun population living across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The political tensions between the two countries is what an episode that halts the smooth trade flow on the Afghan border.
In recent history when Kabul had not fallen into the hands of Taliban, Ashraf Ghani’s administration had developed sets of Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) with Islamabad about the peaceful border trade between the two countries. But even then trade policies could not meet the international standards for border trade. Now after the regime change in Afghanistan, things are not normal at the border and the daily trade has been stopped due to tussles created between the two countries.
In accordance to estimates figured by Wikipedia, there live about 50 million Pashtun population from Chaman city to Torkhum (Khyber PakhtunKhuwa) across the Durand line between Pakistan and Afghanistan and 60 percent of the said population rely on border trade to earn a living.
Meanwhile, amid the political tensions between the two countries, Pashtun nationalist leader Mahmood Khan Achakzai who heads Pashtunkhuwa Milli Awami party endeavours to evoke the Pashtun population in Pakistan to make collective efforts for seeking their constitutional rights within the 1973 constitution of Pakistan. Achakzai has been building a nationalist narrative in the Pashtun corners across the Durand line and urges the state of Pakistan to grant dual nationality to the Pashtuns who conduct border trade on daily bases on Afghan border and who have blood relations to the Pashtuns living across the border in Afghanistan.
On December 2 2022 in a political gathering arranged by Pashtunkhuwa Milli Awami party in Ayub national stadium in Quetta to remember late legendary Pashtun leader Samad Khan Achakzai, while addressing the Pashtuns, Mahmood Khan Achakzai said “Pashtuns have had unfortunate episodes back in past and a one nation was divided by the border line into two separate countries. In 1893, when the ‘Durand Treaty’ was signed between Mortimer Durand and the then Afghan leader Sardar Abdur Rehman, Pashtun were then allowed to make mobility across the border and to make safe and peaceful border trade.”
Achakzai wants Pashtuns to live peacefully in both Pakistan and Afghanistan and on that purposes he has been interacting Kabul administration and the Pakistani authorities via his political gathering to urge both to get into political dialogue for brotherly relations and think of the population living across the border. His request to the Pakistani authorities for granting conditional dual nationalities to the families who live across the border-line. He proclaimed it to the gathering that the one granted dual nationality shall not be permitted to participate in politics. Achakzai aims at stressing the authorities to shape-up a structure alike Europe and facilitate population to make free and safe movements across the border.
Achakzai stressed the Pakistani authorities to revisit its foreign policy regarding Afghanistan and develop brotherly relations with its Afghan brothers. “In the modern era, the world is so sensitive even with animal’s rights and allow the seasonal migratory birds and other animals to enter borders of the countries where they find suitable environment to make temporarily stay there. Why is Pakistan having a discriminatory approach towards the Pashtun population living in Pakistan? I would suggest Pakistani authorities to grant dual nationalities to Pashtuns population living across the border, so that, they could make peaceful trade at the Afghan border which perhaps will benefit markets in both countries.”
Seemingly, Achakzai is making efforts to bring Pashtuns to the mainstream Pakistani politics and wants the constitutional rights of his people met on immediate account. In the gathering held on December 2 2022, Achakzai indicated 7 trade in-lets to be established at the Durand line. “Pakistan in nexus with the Kabul administration can build great trade in-lets at the Afghan border on Torkhum (Khyber-Pakhtunkhuwa), Khost (Bannu), wanna (Birmal), Angoor Adda (Waziristan), Badini (Zhob), Dobandi (Toba Achakzai) and Chaman border-gate which indeed will be ways for trading containers to pass from both sides into the two countries,” added Achakzai.
