The Torkham border crossing was reopened as of 6am (0130 GMT) Saturday, Afghan customs official Muslim Khaksar said at the waypoint in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, according to AFP news agency. “The border is now open from both sides for civilians as well as for traders,” he said.

The Afghan embassy in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, also announced the reopening of the Torkham border on Twitter.

Meanwhile, a Pakistani customs official said “trucks carrying rice, cement, construction material, medicines and other edibles were sent to Afghanistan”, adding that lorries loaded with coal, vegetables and fruits had entered Pakistan, AFP reported.

Around 1,400 trucks on the Pakistan side were still waiting to cross into Afghanistan, he added.

Disputes linked to the 2,600km (1,615-mile) border have been a bone of contention between the neighbours for decades. The Torkham crossing is the main point of transit for travellers and goods between Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan.

The announcement sparked joy and relief among those who had been waiting for the reopening of the international trade route since Sunday, when the Taliban shuttered it, alleging that Islamabad was denying Afghan migrants entry into Pakistan for medical care.

Last Monday, Afghan Taliban forces and Pakistani border guards exchanged fire, wounding a Pakistani soldier. Since then, officials from the two sides were in talks to resolve the issue amid demands from people on both sides to immediately reopen the crossing.

After the visit, the crossing was briefly reopened by the Afghan Taliban to allow some of the thousands of trucks that had lined up for days at the border – many with vegetables, fruits and other perishable food items – to cross and ease the backlog.

Pakistani and Taliban officials on Friday held talks and finally agreed to reopen the crossing.

On Saturday, Ziaul Haq Sarhadi, a director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: “We are happy to confirm that Torkham is fully open for trade and movement of people.”

Meanwhile, the Pakistani government has accused the Taliban of sheltering armed attackers belonging to the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also sometimes referred to as the Pakistan Taliban. The Afghan Taliban has rejected the accusation.

In recent months, the TTP has been blamed for a spike in violent attacks across Pakistan, killing dozens of people.

The TTP is a separate armed group allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It has been waging a rebellion against the state of Pakistan for more than a decade.

A new report by the International Crisis Group warns against international donors cutting aid to Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban’s curbs on women’s education and ability to work at NGOs, instead arguing for Western countries to find a “liminal space between pariah and legitimate status” to respond to the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

The report, released on Thursday, focused primarily on two Taliban edicts announced in December – the first suspending female education at private and public universities, and the second banning Afghan women from working at local and international NGOs. The moves led to protests and global condemnation, while sounding a possible death knell for the Taliban’s initial openness to engage with the international community following its takeover of the country in August 2021.

“Donors are turning away from Afghanistan, disgusted by the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s basic freedoms,” Graeme Smith, Crisis Group’s Senior Consultant on Afghanistan, said in a statement accompanying the report.

“However, cutting aid to send a message about women’s rights will only make the situation worse for all Afghans,” he added. “The most principled response to the Taliban’s misogyny would be finding ways to mitigate the harms inflicted on women and other vulnerable groups.”

The report – which drew on dozens of interviews with “Afghan and international women activists, current and former Afghan officials, teachers, students, aid workers, human rights defenders, development officials, diplomats, business leaders and other interlocutors” – noted Western governments in the second half of 2022 warned aid agencies of a growing sense of donor fatigue towards Afghanistan. It did not name the governments to which it referred.

Again, the report did not name the countries in question.

The United Nations, which has already had to roll back some aid operations in the wake of the ban on NGO workers, has appealed for $4.6bn to aid Afghanistan. The sum is the largest request for a single country ever. The UN has warned that 28 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, accounting for two-thirds of the country’s population.

But Crisis Group warned that “Western governments seemed poised to fall significantly short” of that appeal.

They noted that the G7 grouping of the world’s most wealthy countries had said there would be “consequences for how our countries engage with the Taliban” in the wake of the December edicts. The grouping had provided $3bn in humanitarian funding for Afghanistan in 2022, the report noted.

The report’s authors argued any approach that included short-term cuts to aid in the hopes of undermining the Taliban’s authority would further harm those targeted by the Taliban’s recent moves.

“Testing such assumptions would involve a high-stakes gamble with potentially millions of human lives. Win or lose, the costs of taking the gamble would be paid in large part by Afghan women, as the burdens of the crisis fall disproportionately on them,” the report said.

Change of approach

Instead, Crisis Group argued that continuing to offer humanitarian aid, while supporting longer-term development aid, would address the population’s immediate needs, while undermining the “Taliban’s overheated rhetoric about a titanic clash between Islam and the West”.

The authors further cautioned against expecting outside pressure to change the Taliban’s approach, highlighting the opaque nature of the group’s decision-making. They noted its reclusive leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has appeared to insist on the strict measures out of “personal conviction and to assert his authority over the movement and the country”.

“As the world considers its options, the idea of coaxing the Taliban into behaving like an internationally acceptable government should be set aside for the moment,” the report said.

Meanwhile, political talks with the Taliban aimed at creating a “roadmap” to normalisation have all but stalled. It also remains unclear how much money the group may be earning from narcotics and other forms of smuggling, bringing into question how much sanctions will actually affect the upper echelons of leadership.

“Western policymakers must stand up for Afghan women and girls. At the same time, they should be careful to avoid self-defeating policies,” the report concluded.

The authors added: “The Taliban should find a better way of making decisions, instead of following the whims of a leader who has proven his determination to oppress women and block the rebuilding of his country. Until that happens, the future of Afghanistan looks bleak.”

In the ruling on Tuesday, US District Judge George Daniels said that awarding the families money seized from the Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) would require an assessment that the Taliban is the legitimate government of Afghanistan, a decision he was “constitutionally restrained” from making.

“The Taliban — not the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Afghan people — must pay for the Taliban’s liability in the 9/11 attacks,” he added.

In February 2022, the administration of US President Joe Biden issued a controversial executive order stating it would split $7bn in frozen assets from Afghanistan’s central bank between the Afghan people and families of 9/11 victims who sued the Taliban.

While the Taliban was not directly involved in the attacks, lawyers for the families argued it had helped enable al-Qaeda, which mounted the attack, by allowing the group to operate in Afghanistan.

Bilal Askaryar, an Afghan-American activist, told Al Jazeera at the time of the order that the Afghan people “had nothing to do with 9/11” and called the decision a “theft of public funds from an impoverished nation”.

Tuesday’s ruling upholds a previous decision in August 2022, when US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn also recommended that victims of 9/11 could not seize cash from the Afghan central bank to satisfy court judgements against the Taliban.

Since the Taliban swept aside the US-backed government and took power in August 2021, the Biden administration has not recognised the group as the country’s official ruling party.

In a statement sent to Al Jazeera via text on Tuesday, Arash Azzizada, co-founder of the US-based Afghans For a Better Tomorrow, welcomed the decision.

“Justice will not be served by raiding the coffers of a people suffering from one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet,” he said.