KHYBER: The Khuga Khel tribe in Landi Kotal has threatened to stop the construction of a Customs terminal at the Torkham border if their reservations over excess land acquisition were not addressed.

Scores of tribesmen staged a demonstration at the Bacha Khan Chowk on Sunday and chanted slogans against the National Logistic Cell (NLC) for allegedly occupying their collective land in excess to the land acquisition agreement they had reached with the Federal Board of Revenue.

Addressing the protesters, Khuga Khel elders Mufti Ejaz, Qari Nazeem Gul, Mirajuddin, Malak Lutfullah, Kalimullah, Haji Ilyas and others alleged that hundreds of kanals of land were unlawfully occupied by the NLC despite repeated protests. They said their tribe was not against the construction of the terminal but insisted on following a proper legal procedure for land acquisition and due compensation for the owners.

They alleged that the NLC adopted a ‘divide and rule’ policy by talking to a group of so-called Khuga Khel elders to reach an agreement of their liking while ignoring the actual representatives and depriving them of their ownership rights.

The NLC couldn’t befool them any more, the tribal elders said, adding they threatened to stop the construction if a positive response was not received from the authorities by March 16.

They said the livelihood of hundreds of locals was attached to business activities at the Torkham border, but some of the government departments were depriving them of their legitimate earnings in the name of the new border policy.

They alleged that thousands of local labourers and porters were rendered jobless with the implementation of a visa policy which they said was against legitimate easement rights of the local tribes living on both sides of the border.

The terminal was conceived in 2003 but the construction couldn’t start till 2015 due to the security situation in the region. In recent years, the construction has led to a row over the acquisition of land, owned by Khuga Khel, a sub-tribe of Landi Kotal.

On several instances in the past few years, the protesting tribesmen had forcibly stopped the construction work on the terminal.

According to the tribesmen, they are the collective owners of the 300-kanal acquired for the terminal’s construction through a written agreement in June 2015. They claim that the NLC allegedly ‘grabbed’ more land without any prior intimation to the owners.In Jan 2022, a nine-member jirga was also constituted to resolve the dispute, following days of protest.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2023