Pakistan yesterday announced the reopening of the main land route for Nato supplies to Afghanistan, after a row with the US over a helicopter incursion that killed three Pakistani soldiers.
The decision came on the same day that gunmen in southwest Pakistan torched 29 Nato oil tankers, the latest such attack in a turbulent few weeks for the alliance’s logistics operation in support of the Afghan war.
The Torkham crossing point lies on the main Nato supply route to Afghanistan, where US and Nato forces are fighting a nine-year Taliban insurgency, and is thus vital to the war effort.
“After assessing the security situation in all its aspects, the government has decided to reopen the Nato/ISAF supply from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at Torkham with immediate effect,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement, referring to Nato’s International Security Assistance Force.
“Our relevant authorities are now in the process of coordinating with authorities on the other side of the border to ensure smooth resumption of the supply traffic.”
Shafeerullah Khan, the top administration official in Khyber tribal region where Torkham is located, told AFP: “We are currently waiting for the government’s order about reopening of the border.”
Imam Hussain, a driver who had been stuck at the border for days with a container-load of Nato supplies, told AFP by telephone from Torkham: “I am really fed up... My life is threatened here.
“This is going to be the last trip of my life to Afghanistan. I will never come back to this area.”
Pakistan shut the route at Torkham in protest at a cross-border Nato helicopter attack that killed three Pakistani soldiers. The alliance said its personnel had fired back in self-defence.
Last Wednesday the US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson apologised on behalf of the American people for the “terrible accident”.
Patterson said in a statement: “A joint investigation of the incident had established that the US helicopters had mistaken the Pakistani Frontier Scouts for insurgents they had been pursuing.”
More than 100 Nato oil tankers and supply trucks have been destroyed in militant attacks in just over a week as the rebels step up their efforts to disrupt supplies.
The Pakistani Taliban have vowed more raids to avenge a new wave of US drone strikes targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in the northwest.
Yesterday’s rebel attack on the 29 Nato oil tankers in southwest Pakistan was the sixth in just over a week, officials said.
Two local police officers were wounded in the attack in the remote Mitri area, 180 kilometres southeast of Quetta, the capital of oil and gas-rich Baluchistan province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan.
The gunmen opened fire on the tankers, which were parked outside a roadside hotel.
Abdul Mateen, a senior administration official in Mitri, told AFP that firefighters were called in from the nearby town of Sibbi to extinguish the huge blaze.
The province is rife with Islamist militancy, sectarian violence between majority Sunnis and minority Shiite Muslims and regional insurgency.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the latest attack, which came three days after militants torched more than 40 Nato oil tankers and containers in the northwestern city of Nowshera and in Quetta.
The northwestern border region is being targeted by a record number of US drone strikes and was reportedly where Al-Qaeda hatched a plot to attack cities in Britain, France and Germany uncovered by Western intelligence agencies.
Pakistani authorities have reported 26 drone attacks since September 3. These have killed more than 140 people in the region, a hub for homegrown and foreign militants fighting in Afghanistan.
A second border crossing at Chaman in southwestern Baluchistan province remains open.