With the Pakistani national government in charge of highways, and NATO supplies taking highways through the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwah (KP) Province into neighboring Afghanistan, the legal options for the KP government to enforce a blockade were virtually nil.
Still, the KP government’s ruling party, Pakistani Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI) began the blockade in earnest over the weekend, with party officials and supporters setting up checkpoints across the highways in Peshawar, forcing NATO trucks to stop and reportedly “roughing up drivers” with clubs.
Few trucks head to Afghanistan over the weekend, so the real test will be on Monday, but the PTI says they will reassemble, and while provincial police note the ad-hoc blockades are technically illegal, since they can only act against them on the orders of the PTI-run provincial government, there’s nothing they can do.
Information Minister Pervez Rashid slammed the protests, accusing the PTI of trying to ruin Pakistan’s relationship with the US and other NATO members. PTI leader Imran Khan has accused the national government, which is nominally opposed to the drone strikes, of looking the other way, and insists it is only acting against NATO supplies because Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has proven unable, or unwilling, to do anything about the drones.
Good on you Imran Khan.
But watch out for drones attacking you and your family.
Would not trust CIA not to try something against someone who sticks to their pledged word.
You are a rarity in Politics in Pakistan.
Well done and may God be with you.
Good for Pakistan.
I love how all the mainstream reporting starts off by negatively characterizing the people who are fed up about getting blown up by a criminal government by saying the protesters are "roughing up" people.
Oh, really? Are they shooting "Hellfire missles" at weddings, funerals, children, old ladies, unidentified people, and terrorist double-tapping first responders?
If shoving is "roughing people up", what is what the USA is doing to them?
Maybe these nationalist articles should start out by saying "In response to the immediate threat of heinous ongoing war crimes committed against them by the United States of America, angry, poor, disenfranchised Pakistanis responded in the only way they could as they desperately tried to block USA military supply routes in nonviolent protest, as the USA has thus far been unresponsive to pleas for mercy."