November 7, 2025
By Xari Jalil
LAHORE
Recent policy shifts and border closures along the 2,640-kilometre Durand Line, the historical and often contentious border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, have exacted a devastating human rights toll, according to a fact-finding study by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), titled When Policy Divides. The report reveals that security-driven governance, including the construction of a border fence and the strict imposition of a passport-visa regime, has caused widespread economic collapse, severed deep-seated kinship ties, and displaced thousands of people across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
The HRCP’s research, conducted between March and July 2025 in key border locations like Torkham, Chaman, Peshawar, and Quetta, highlights how these restrictive policies directly affect fundamental rights, including the rights to livelihood, freedom of movement, food security, and family unity for the communities living along the frontier.
Economic ruin and the vanishing middle class
The border region, predominantly inhabited by Pashtun tribes, has historically thrived on cross-border trade in goods like textiles, food products, and construction materials. However, frequent closures due to security concerns and geopolitical tensions have disrupted this centuries-old commerce. Data in the report shows the severity, noting that Afghanistan’s exports to Pakistan had already dropped by 29 percent in 2020 and continued to decline amid persistent border disruptions.
For local communities, the economic fallout has been catastrophic, leading to widespread unemployment and resource scarcity. The primary source of livelihood for thousands was daily-wage work, often in the Afghan transit trade. These workers, known as laghari (indigent loner) in Chaman or gandamar (packer) in Torkham and Ghulam Khan, carried merchandise across the border for local traders, earning a daily income. They transported everything from food and building materials to Pakistan, and brought back items like dried fruit and handicrafts to Pakistan.
The new, restrictive regime—especially the passport-visa requirement—has effectively rendered this livelihood model impossible. Labourers are now often required to divide their consignments into multiple smaller packages, necessitating multiple trips, which rapidly fills passport pages and forces them into lengthy periods of unemployment while awaiting new travel documents.
One Chaman-based journalist, interviewed for the study, lamented, “The thriving middle class has vanished. The only social classes that exist in the region now are the upper class and the working class”.
Divided families and social tensions
The imposition of the border fence, which began in earnest in 2017, and the subsequent one-document regime (passport and visa) in October 2023 have violently ruptured the deep kinship and social ties that span the Durand Line. For many, the physical barrier literally cut through their lives: the fence has divided villages, separating homes from their graveyards, schools, and mosques. In some instances, the fence was built through houses, leaving courtyards on one side and bedrooms on the other.
The Wazir and other tribes, who live across the valleys of Shawal (Pakistan) and Barmal (Afghanistan), have been particularly impacted. Families split by the border must now rely on telephone calls for news of weddings, deaths, and family occasions. One resident of the divided village of Kili Luqman in Chaman shared his anguish, stating that in the 18 months since the passport condition was imposed, he has been unable to visit his married daughters and other relatives who live on the Afghan side.
The restrictions have also created a perilous situation for children. As movement became difficult for adults, local children began crossing the border for laghari work, often serving as the primary breadwinners. They cross by posing as family members or, dangerously, by crawling underneath moving trucks or cutting through the fence, exposing them to risks of injury, death, and arrest.
Displaced communities and institutional corruption
Security operations, particularly following the 2014 terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, compounded the distress, leading to the displacement of over 20,000 families from regions like Ghulam Khan in North Waziristan. Although the Ghulam Khan border crossing was reopened for trade in 2018, the surrounding areas remain a “no-go area” for many of the locally displaced families who have been unable to return to their ancestral homes, businesses, and properties, including pine nut forests and mineral reserves, on the Afghan side.
Compounding the problem is a pervasive culture of institutional corruption that facilitates illegal movement and trade, even as legitimate livelihoods are criminalized. The report cites examples of Afghan transit trade containers going missing and being sold in Pakistani markets due to fake customs documents and bribes. A journalist in Chaman joked that the border closure caused more financial losses to Customs and FC officials than to the local population, suggesting these officials were allegedly earning millions of rupees weekly from bribes prior to the restrictions.
Furthermore, the new regime has created fresh avenues for corruption. The limited number of free passage tokens issued to cart owners for cross-border movement are allegedly being sold in the black market for as much as PKR 3,000,000 per token, with the benefit going to rich smugglers who then bribe border guards to move larger, unauthorized consignments.
HRCP’s recommendations for a way forward
The HRCP stresses that restoring community well-being must begin with redesigning state policy at the macro level, which includes strengthening ties with regional neighbours. It calls for Pakistan and Afghanistan to engage in sustained, meaningful negotiations and reactivate the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border Commission to jointly manage the border and secure the historical rights of the local people.
Key recommendations for safeguarding border communities include:
- Identification Cards for Border Communities
- Jointly establishing a framework to issue “Rahdari (travel)” cards for social interaction and small-scale trade, and “Labour” cards for cross-border workers, using a community-based verification mechanism involving tribal elders. This would allow free movement within defined tribal territories without the need for passports or visas, only requiring formal documents for travel beyond these zones.
- Establishment of Border Trade Zones: Jointly designating and institutionalizing cross-border trade zones at agreed locations to facilitate lawful commerce, reduce informal trade, and create employment. Customs posts should be established outside of tribal territories to safeguard traditional movements
- Resettlement of Displaced People: Undertaking a comprehensive assessment of all displaced Pakistani nationals and implementing a transparent compensation and restitution mechanism for those whose property was destroyed or occupied for security installations.