Thousands of trucks stuck as partial Iran-Pakistan trade resumes

QUETTA, Pakistan – Thousands of trucks remain stranded on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border despite the resumption of limited overland trade between the two countries, south-west Pakistan business representatives told AFP on Oct 26.Mir Naveed Jan Kalmati, president of the chamber of commerce for Gwadar city on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, said the frontier with Iran was “only partially open” to trade, with a vast backlog of vehicles at the border.There were “three to four thousand trucks on the Iranian side and two to three thousand trucks on the Pakistani side”, Kalmati said.Only certain vehicles were being allowed across the border to clear the backlog after a week-long closure, he said.Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, said on X on Oct 25 there were no restrictions on the Iranian side, including for the export of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).He blamed the closures on “changes in the implementation of Pakistan’s E-Form procedure for imports from Iran”, which he said “have created a situation in which traders are effectively and literally unable to dispatch cargo from Iran to Pakistan”.Pakistan’s interior and foreign ministries did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.Kalmati said companies on both sides of the border were urging authorities to allow the complete resumption of trade.He said his members and drivers were “frustrated, they want to go back home, they want to continue their business”.Fida Ahmad Dashti, a businessman in Kech district in Pakistan’s south-west Balochistan province, said he had been told that only vehicles with paperwork prepared before Oct 16 were being allowed to cross the border.Two other businessmen based in Balochistan confirmed their drivers had said only vehicles with documents prepared before Oct 16 were being allowed across the frontier.The Gwadar Chamber of Commerce said in a statement on Oct 25 that the suspension of the import of LPG and the “abrupt closure of the border” had led to “disrupting the national LPG supply chain, and causing prices to skyrocket”.Pakistan has attempted to mediate a peace deal in the Middle East war with Iran, and its army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, visited Tehran on Oct 26, the Pakistani military said, his second visit to the Islamic republic in less than a week.Senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan were to hold talks on regional security with Iranian officials in Tehran on Oct 26, Iranian and Saudi authorities said.Saudi Arabia and Turkey signed the so-called Mecca Joint Defence Agreement in August, committing the three countries to mutual defence in the event of any of them being attacked. AFP