As cooler heads prevail: Traffic roars on Karakoram Highway after four days

Conflicting parties end protests, agree on army deployment .

KOHISTAN:

After four days of standstill, the Karakoram Highway (KKH) saw resumption of traffic on Friday as tribesmen from Gilgit-Balitstan (G-B) and Kohistan agreed to end their separate protests.

Residents of Diamer Valley and Kohistan had blocked KKH in protest from Monday over a disputed 10-kilometre area near Basri check post, which separates Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and G-B. Claiming separate ownership of the area, hundreds of people from both sides had blocked the highway for four days “to defend their land”.



According to official sources, both sides agreed to vacate the disputed area and end their protests after agreeing to the deployment of army troops till the decision of the boundary commission, constituted by the government on the directions of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

“Both parties have agreed to hand over the disputed strip to military troops till the boundary commission’s decision,” Kohistan District Police Officer Akbar Ali Khan told The Express Tribune.



He said tribal elders from both sides also agreed to hold jirgas to work out a permanent solution to avoid the problem in the future.

“We’ve restored our bus service today,” said an official of a transport company, adding locals had been suffering immensely owing to closure of the crucial link between G-B and the rest of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2013.