Pakistan and Afghanistan agree to maintain truce for another week: Turkiye

According to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan and Afghanistan have reached an agreement to keep the dialogue going for at least for another week during talks in Turkiye.

In a statement released on behalf of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and mediators Turkiye and Qatar, the parties announced a second meeting at a higher-level gathering in Istanbul on November 6 to finalize how the ceasefire will be implemented.

The statement read, “All parties have agreed to put in place a monitoring and verification mechanism that will ensure the maintenance of peace and impose punishment on the violating party.”

Following explosions in Afghanistan, which the Afghan government attributed to Pakistan, the two neighbors began fighting over the border earlier this month.

Pakistan’s military claimed that more than 200 Afghan fighters were killed in the subsequent cross-border attacks, while Afghanistan claims that 58 Pakistani soldiers were killed.

Since the Taliban regained control of Kabul in 2021, the two countries engaged in the most serious fighting.

The defense ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan ratified a ceasefire on October 19 in Doha following the skirmishes through mediation between Qatar and Turkiye.

A second round of talks between the two countries, which are located on a 2,600-kilometer (1,600-mile) border, broke down on Wednesday when both parties failed to agree on Islamabad’s main demand that Kabul halt Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an armed group known as the Pakistan Taliban or TTP, which has long been accused by Pakistan of carrying out deadly attacks inside its territory.

The Afghan government has consistently denied providing the group with safe haven.

Talks that were resumed on Thursday led to an agreement to keep the ceasefire until a second round of discussions on November 6.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Afghan government, confirmed the outcome of the discussions in a statement, saying both parties had agreed to continue the dialogue at upcoming meetings. Pakistan did not respond right away.

The border between the two nations has been closed for more than two weeks, causing significant losses for traders in the area, despite a ceasefire still in effect.

Both countries “will bear losses,” according to Nazir Ahmed, a cloth trader in Kandahar on the Afghan side.

The 35-year-old said on Wednesday, “Our country is tired and their country is tired.”

In the Pakistani border town of Chaman, trade suffers greatly, according to Abdul Jabbar, a trader of vehicle spare parts.