This report is supported by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives
By Nadeem Khan
CHAMAN
While traders are up in arms over the interim government’s decision to enforce a one-visa regime at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, restricting movement between the two countries, there has been little talk of entire families that have been forced apart by this policy.
Zulekha Bibi resides in Ada Kahol, a suburb of Balochistan’s border district in Chaman. She is getting on in terms of age, and was in the middle of preparing for her son’s marriage when the visa system was implemented. Her future daughter-in-law lives in Afghanistan, and Zulekha worries that she might not live long enough to see her son have his own family.
“My daughter (in-law) lives in Afghanistan, and she is ill, while I am here in Pakistan. We cannot even meet each other,” she laments. “I am 70 years old, and never before in my life have I witnessed such severe restrictions.”
Zulekha feels that she has no other option than to just hope and pray that Pakistan will eventually ease its border policy for Afghanistan in her lifetime.
“What will become of a woman whose children are divided by a border? And who will be held responsible for this tragedy if they cannot reunite… even after her passing?”
Around 500,000 people reside in Chaman. There are complete tribes and families that live one one side of the border and for years they have been able to travel to and from using their identity cards and the Afghan tazkira. But from 2023, the interim Government of Pakistan restricted cross-border travel to government-issued passports.
Asghar Shah can no longer travel to Afghanistan, where his ancestral lands and family graveyard are located.
“About 1,000 acres of our land lay on that side of the border and 1,000 acres lay on this side. Before it was easy for us to travel, and we faced no trouble nor any inconvenience,” he explains. “Now they laid down barbed wire and created so much trouble for us.”
Asghar provides that he would head for Afghanistan to cultivate his fields, and that the new border regime has effectively hit his earnings as well.
“I have a cousin there. Only our village’s mosque is in Pakistan, and half the other villages are in Afghanistan. There are many in our area who are hurt and frustrated. Relatives are scattered on either side,” he says. “We held funerals on the other side, our graveyard is there. And now they tell us we cannot go there anymore.”
For the past two months, Chaman’s residents and traders have been protesting in the biting cold against the caretaker setup’s one-visa policy. Demonstrators have called on the state to restore travel and trade between Chaman and Kandahar on ID cards and the tazkira.
“The same peoples reside on either side of the border. Fathers and mothers are on one side, sons and daughters on the other. Brothers are now living apart, graveyards and villages have been divided. The mosques are here and their imams are there,” says Olus Yar, spokesperson for the ongoing Chaman sit-in.
He explains that between 30,000 to 35,000 people would head to Afghanistan for business in the morning and return to Pakistan by the evening. Other travelers included regular folk who were traveling to visit relatives, while many Afghans visited Pakistan for medical treatment.
“Our appeal to the government is that the years-old system of allowing travel based on our CNICs and the Afghan tazkira be reinstated,” he says, reiterating that the Chaman’s residents categorically reject the one-visa scheme.
Several rounds of negotiations between the government and sit-in organizers have so far failed, all while people like Zulekha and Asghar ultimately have to pay the price.