Pakistan has allowed 150 Afghan trucks to enter India via the Wagah Border, marking a temporary exception to the ongoing suspension of trade with New Delhi. The clearance was granted following a formal request from the Afghan embassy in Islamabad, which sought permission for stranded containers that had entered Pakistan prior to April 25. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the development on Thursday.
The Afghan embassy submitted a list of 150 trucks, which has been forwarded to the relevant Pakistani authorities for processing. This move comes days after Pakistan suspended all trade, including transit trade, with India on April 24. The suspension was a result of a National Security Committee meeting held in response to India’s accusations linking Pakistan to a recent deadly attack in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
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Despite this temporary clearance, trade relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors remain strained. Full-scale trade between Pakistan and India has been frozen since February 2019, when New Delhi imposed heavy tariffs on Pakistani goods following the Pulwama terror attack. The situation worsened in August 2019 after India revoked Article 370, stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special status, prompting Islamabad to formally sever all trade ties.
The current development does not signal a thaw in bilateral relations but is rather a humanitarian and logistical gesture aimed at easing Afghanistan’s trade bottlenecks. The clearance of these 150 trucks is being viewed as a one-time exception and not a resumption of normal transit operations between Pakistan and India.
