Afghans Crossing Pakistan Border in 2020 Shared With Misleading Context

The video from 2020 shows Afghans returning to their homeland from Pakistan after COVID-19 rules were relaxed.

A video showing a crowd running is being widely circulated claiming that it shows Afghan citizens fleeing their homeland, after the Taliban takeover to enter Pakistan, as the border gates opened briefly.

However, we found that the fact is the opposite of the claim and in the video Afghan residents can be seen frantically running to enter Afghanistan from Pakistan as the Torkham border temporarily opened for three days, following relaxation in COVID-19 rules in April 2020.

CLAIM

The video was shared by the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) spokesperson R P Singh with the caption, "#Afghanis enter Pakistan by breaking border barrier.(sic)"

The video posted on Twitter on Wednesday, 1 September, has over 58,000 views at the time of writing this article.

Several social media users have shared the video along with similar claims and the archived versions can be accessed here, here, here and here.

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WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We extracted several keyframes from the video using Google Chrome’s InVid extension and conducted a reverse image search on each frame.

A search result on Yandex led us to a video by The Telegraph published on 8 April 2020. The title of the video read, "Thousands rush across Pakistan-Afghanistan border after officials lift COVID-19 restrictions."

The video was from Torkham, Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Next, using relevant keywords, we looked for news reports about the incident and a report by Pakistan daily Dawn on 8 April 2020 read that stranded Afghan nationals desperately ran towards the Torkham border to go back to Afghanistan after Pakistan reopened its border following relaxation in travel rules amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Amid the COVID-19 situation, Pakistan had opened the Torkham and Chaman land border crossings from 6 to 9 April 2020 to facilitate movement.

We also found a video by Russian media RUPTLY from 7 April 2020 on YouTube that showed Afghan nationals getting temperatures checked at the border as they returned home.

We also matched the videos and found many similarities. One can see the Pakistan flag drawn at the gate as well as the over-bridge matching in both the videos.

Clearly, an old video from 2020 is being shared now with a misleading context in the backdrop of the Afghanistan crisis.

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