The Longest Sit-In

This story was produced and published by Asia Democracy Chronicles. Photo by Somaiya Hafeez. Caption: A look at the recently concluded sit-in protest in Pakistan’s border city Chaman.(

What was the longest sit-in yet in Pakistan has ended, but confusion still reigns in the dusty border city of Chaman, just across Afghanistan’s Spin Boldak. As a result, thousands of daily-wage earners who had been without livelihood for the last nine months are still looking for some relief.

More than a week after a deal was struck between representatives of the central government and those of the protesters, the border gates were still suddenly shutting without explanation. Officials on both sides of the border also seem to be arbitrarily deciding who to let through, despite the Pakistani government’s supposed agreement with the protesters to let daily-wage laborers from both Chaman and Spin Boldak to show only their respective national ID cards.

Curiously, Islamabad has yet to issue an official statement on the deal. 

An article published by the Dawn on July 23 – two days after the deal was made and the sit-in ended – said that Afghan authorities had been miffed by their exclusion from the talks that led to the agreement, hinting that this was contributing to the chaos.

But a report a week later in Afghanistan’s Tolo News said that Pakistani authorities at the border had resumed demanding passports and visas for all those wanting to cross. 

Tolo also quoted Ghosullah Achakzai, head of the Chaman Daily Workers Union and a leader of the protest movement, as saying, “Today, we clearly tell the people that it is our responsibility to open the border, and if we do not open the border, people will stand with us wherever we hold sit-ins and gatherings.”

Nearly 700 kms southwest of Islamabad, the city of Chaman is part of Chaman District in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. After Torkham in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Chaman is Pakistan’s second largest commercial border point with Afghanistan.

Just a year ago, the city was bustling with activity, and businesses thrived, fueled by the constant crossing of people to and from Spin Boldak. Among them were thousands of lagharis, or the daily-wage laborers who either provided services such as transport to the traders and businessmen or were engaged in buy-and-sell transactions, mostly involving dry goods and produce. Still there were others who were making short trips across the border to visit the graves of loved ones, attend a relative’s wedding, comfort sick family members, or tend to part of their property that had wound up on the other side.

Despite the 2,640-kilometer Durand Line – the country’s de facto border drawn up in 1893 during the British colonial rule –  Pakistanis and Afghans could cross the border easily with their respective national IDs until 2017, when Pakistan began fencing the border.

Even so, the “Easement Rights” arrangement was still followed until last October when Pakistan’s then caretaker government announced a “one-document” regime requiring all those crossing the border to have passports and visas.

Imposed beginning Nov. 1, 2023, the new rule has brought Chaman to a virtual standstill – and rendered a significant portion of the city’s population of nearly 90,000 (excluding some 100,000 Afghan refugees) jobless. 

Stories of starvation

Hikmat Yaar is among those who have been without any means of livelihood for months now. Before the new rule came about, Yaar had managed to earn some PKR 500 (US$1.78) a day doing buy-and-sell on both sides of the border. These days, however, the 22-year-old father of three says that his children are going hungry. 

“I have been borrowing money,” says Yaar. “But how long will it go on like this?”

Lagharis like him made up most of the protesters at the sit-in on the highway leading to the border gate, although traders had also turned up there or lent their support.  Begun on Oct. 21 last year, the protest was aimed primarily to have the border-crossing rule revert to the old system. 

Sadiq Achakzai, a spokesperson of the sit-in, said, “Traders and businessmen have been using the passport since the announcement. But we speak for daily wagers who earn a few hundred rupees per day. How can they afford to pay hefty amounts for issuance of passports and visas?” 

On average, the most lagharis used to take home was about PKR 1,500 (US$5.39) a day. At present, getting a Pakistani passport can cost one PKR 21,000 (US$75).  But there is still the matter of the Afghan visa, for which the fee is PKR 15,000 (US$54) for three months, PKR 25,000 (US$90) for six months, and PKR 50,000 (US$180) for a year. 

The nearest Afghan diplomatic mission that can issue visas is in Quetta – nearly two hours away by car – which means additional expense. 

Trade leader Faiz Muhammad said that almost 8,000 lagharis used to cross the border from Chaman and 4,800 from Spin Boldak each day. After the new rule’s imposition, he said, “families came to the sit-in asking us for PKR 500 (US$1.80) to get milk for their babies who were starving.”

During the protest’s first six months, as many as 10,000 would be at the site at any one time. That number dwindled to about 1,500 to 2,000 daily, following clashes with authorities that killed at least one and injured scores of others. Leaders of the protest were also arrested. But support for the sit-in remained strong among the locals and even outside of Chaman.

Just last June, all national highways linking Balochistan with Karachi, Punjab, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were blocked for hours by supporters of the opposition alliance Tehreek-e-Tahafuz Ayeen-i-Pakistan (TTAP) as a show of solidarity for the Chaman protesters. 

TTAP representatives also visited the sit-in protest. Ghosullah, who, along with Sadiq, was among the leaders arrested as a result of the June clashes, said of the visit: “We were assured that our demands would be presented in the National Assembly, and that if no actions would be taken, then demonstrations outside the assembly and elsewhere would happen.”

Protests and politics

Before the July 21 agreement was forged, several rounds of talks between the sit-in leaders and government representatives had failed. Chaman-based journalist Jaffer Khan Achakzai said the lagharis were willing to accept options presented by the government, such as the establishment of a market on the border for workers from both sides. But he said that the protest movement had slowly become a stronghold of many religious and nationalist political parties.

“When [prior] negotiations would be near completion, political parties would cause hindrance,” Jaffer said. “The sit-in now served them as it has become a stage for them to do their politics.”

Locals had repeatedly questioned the policy’s legitimacy, however. According to Ghosullah, “the decision was made by a caretaker government whose only job was to ensure a peaceful transition of power.” But even the present administration said that the new border-crossing requirements are needed to curb smuggling and to keep the country secure. 

Observers note that the announcement of the new rules came at about the same time that Islamabad’s multi-phased push to deport Afghans “illegally” staying in Pakistan began. Both the border-crossing rules and deportation drive are believed to be results of the souring relations between Islamabad and Kabul. 

Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Pakistan has witnessed a resurgence in militant attacks across the country, which it says are the handiwork of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Islamabad’s repeated calls for the Taliban in Kabul to help contain the TTP have gone unheeded.  

Last March, Pakistan conducted air raids on what it said were TTP hideouts inside Afghanistan. The Taliban retaliated by firing mortar shells at Pakistani military border positions. 

A Chaman-based journalist told Asia Democracy Chronicles (ADC) that during the negotiations that led to the 21 July deal, the government had stood firm on the new border-crossing rules. It agreed only for registered daily-wage laborers from both sides of the border to cross by showing their national IDs; the rest are supposed to have passports and visas. No similar arrangements were apparently made for those who simply had kin or property on the other side of the border.

Reports reaching ADC also indicate limited access for the daily-wage laborers. Those coming from Afghanistan are allowed only up to a taxi stand about half a kilometer from the border. Lagharis from Pakistan can go only as far as Wesh Mandi in Spin Boldak, or six kms from the border; this, however, seems to still be missing clearance from Afghan authorities.

Livelihood, not “charity”

The detained sit-in leaders were released as part of the agreement. The laghari community also said that they would not join any anti-state protests. The government, for its part, promised enough teaching staff in all of Chaman’s educational institutions, along with the appointment and attendance of doctors, especially women physicians, in the city’s health department. 

The state also pledged to make every possible effort to solve the people’s day-to-day problems, especially economic ones, which do not conflict with the passport regime.

Earlier, Ghosullah had lamented that the Pakistani state had not done “anything for Chaman in the last seven decades.” In truth, Chaman has no real industry to speak of aside from business activities connected to the border trade. A 2023 study by economists Kifayat Ullah and Muhammad Zubair Chishti revealed Balochistan as having the highest asset-based poverty among Pakistan’s four provinces. 

Yet there were reports that the committee had told protesters not to accept the government’s welfare-assistance offer of PKR 20,000 (US$72) each month for a period of six months. One report quoted Ghosullah as saying, “Lagharis should earn by exploiting their blood and sweat, not charity.”

The government said that it had allocated PKR 960 million (US$3.45 million) for those affected by the new rule. But Chaman District Commissioner Raja Athar Abbas said that instead of PKR 20,000, beneficiaries were “receiving a tranche of PKR 100,000 (US$359) each, because the protestors committee announced its boycott also and stopped people forcefully from getting compensation.

“Apart from that,” said Abbas, “more than 20,000 ration bags were distributed.”

The way that aid was distributed, though, could provide a lesson for the new scheme of limiting the national-ID border-crossing rule only to lagharis. According to Jaffer, most of those who registered to receive aid were not lagharis. 

“Twenty thousand people submitted their ID cards when the government announced the package,” he said. “It included many citizens of Chaman who didn’t work on the border. The survey wasn’t conducted properly to allocate funds to the daily-wage laborers who worked on the border.”