Home » The reverse flight from Pakistan: “We are back with the Taliban”

The reverse flight from Pakistan: “We are back with the Taliban”

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TORKHAM (CONFINE PAKISTAN – AFGHANISTAN) – The Taliban with the rifle and the Pakistani soldier are ordered not to look each other in the eye. They are three feet away from each other, under the white flag of the Islamic Emirate. There it is Afghanistan, here it is Pakistan. They don’t talk to each other and yet they collaborate. Silent and suspicious, they work together to prevent Point Zero, this imaginary twenty-meter line drawn in the Torkham mud, from plunging into chaos. Thousands of men, women and children, observed by 95 cameras of the Frontier Corps, have been swarming for hours among iron fences, barbed wire and hovels, in a cloud of dust raised by the colorful trucks in transit. They have documents in hand and a waist pressed into bulging bags on carts. They want to pass. But the direction is not what one expects.

The exodus on the contrary

We came to Torkham in the belief that we would see Afghans fleeing the Taliban, instead we found Afghans, many of them, returning to their homeland. The exodus on the contrary. Those who do not have an identity card also pay 30 thousand rupees (152 euros) to forge documents and bribe someone. They have lived for years in Pakistan in tribal areas along the northwestern border and in Peshawar province. Now they see in that white flag with the Shahada a principle of evasion.

“With Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban and prey to terrorists, I go to the foreign embassies in Kabul and apply for a visa for humanitarian reasons. I want to go to Germany or the United Kingdom by plane and not on foot or by boat. Here it is. because I’m going back there … “, he explains Wahid Ullah, which stops for a moment despite the Pakistanis of the Frontier Corps urge the advance using a plastic rod on the arms of the latecomers. Wahid’s reasoning is not trivial, but it is a gamble in the dark. With her husband’s permission, Seema also agrees to speak. Locked in a black burqa, she says she was born in Mardan and is happy to follow him to Afghanistan, where she has never been. “I’m not afraid of the Taliban, Wahid will protect me and our two children.”

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The pass

To get to Torkham you have to go into the tribal area, the den of the Lashkar-e-Islam terrorists affiliated with the TTP (the Pakistani Taliban), pass two fortifications built by the British Empire, cross the Khyber Pass which is a narrow gorge between rock quarries redheads, pass the bunkers of the drug lords, follow what remains of the old railway used by the Americans to supply the mujahideen against the Russians and, finally, with a lot of patience, queue up in a three-kilometer-long line of huge trucks decorated like ceramics of Vietri.

At the crossing the Afghans make their way among fruit and wheel vendors, soldiers, beggars, live goats and goats skinned on the coals. They entrust their few possessions to boys who push wooden carts for a few rupees. They bring rugs, blankets, clothes, air conditioners, chickens, canned food, pots. On the carts sit the old people who cannot walk. Documents are checked in a station that has 8 counters, 6 for men, 2 for women. Hazrat Shana Gul, 18, awaits the stamp of the customs officer. He is a Quran student, wears a long black robe and, unlike Wahid, he is not coming back to leave. “The Taliban are the best thing that could have happened to us, without the Americans and with the Sharia it will be a paradise”.

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Two thousand passes a day

The border officer ‘s office is in a container with purple velvet curtains, a fan, a stove for making tea, a desk and two computers. “Before the Taliban conquered the country – explains the official, asking not to be mentioned – we had on average 600 Afghans who every day left Pakistan and crossed for work reasons. Now they are 2,000: most of them hope to go to Europe and in the United States with the humanitarian corridors, the others return because they share the Taliban ideology “. A soldier enters the container with three iPads, a Samsung tablet and 4 phones packed. “They were in an Afghan’s suitcase, he was trying to smuggle them.” The door opens again, a woman throws herself on the ground and begs him. “He wants to pass, but he has false documents …”.

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Point Zero

Torkham is not, at the moment, the way for migrants fleeing the Emirate, also because they have spread a three-meter high barbed net on the mountains. “Someone passes illegally, but the numbers are low – repeats the official – It’s not like in Chaman, or Ghulam Khan”. Two hundred meters ahead, a muddy clearing called Point Zero opens up. This is the real limit: on the one hand the Taliban (a Badri 313 militiaman, the special forces, with a submachine gun, helmet and handcuffs on their belts), on the other, dozens of Frontier Corps soldiers. Three white flags fly over there, two Pakistani flags on this side. One hundred Afghans are seated on the Taliban side. They’ve been waiting for six hours. “They don’t want to ask for political asylum, just work”. Behind them, the nose of another decorated truck.

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