For years, American officials have tried to persuade Pakistan’s army chiefs and prime ministers to cooperate with US-led war plans in neighbouring Afghanistan. But now it is a politician in a far-flung province who is standing in the way. Imran Khan, an Oxford-educated millionaire, leads an effort to shut down supply routes to Afghanistan.
Angered by US drone strikes, Imran Khan has effectively halted NATO convoys through northwest Pakistan, a vital crossing point for trucks carrying supplies to and from landlocked Afghanistan, the Washington Post (WP) in a report said on Sunday.
His party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), controls the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, which NATO convoys must pass through to reach the northern border crossing. After US drone strikes in Pakistan this fall, the 61-year-old politician called on his supporters to block the transit routes in protest. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government has appeared powerless to stop him.
In a blunt signal of the coalition’s unease, about 20 diplomats from NATO countries, including the US, invited Khan to dinner in early December at the German ambassador’s residence in Islamabad. According to Imran Khan and others present, the encounter became tense.
“They kept saying, ‘Look, we have nothing to do with it; it’s all the CIA’?” carrying out the drone attacks, he recalled. “I said, ‘Look, you are all coalition partners.’”
At one point, the PTI chairman said, he asked the European diplomats how they would feel if Pakistan started secretly killing people living in their countries who were wanted on warrants in Pakistan.
Even some conservative religious politicians question Imran Khan’s strategy.
“He is providing an excuse to the US to remain on Afghanistan’s soil,” said Abdul Jalil Jan, a leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Sami.
But on a recent visit by a reporter to protest camps near Peshawar, party workers shouted “Long live Imran Khan” as they waited to quiz the next round of truck drivers on their cargo.
With Nawaz and the Pakistan Army vowing that the supply routes must remain open, Imran’s campaign is a remarkable show of defiance in a country that has been under military rule for more than half of its 67-year history.
A self-described liberal pacifist, the PTI head shows no sign of backing down. He says that although US drone strikes may be aimed at violent militants, many wind up killing innocent civilians and fuel terrorism by angering the local population.
“The reason we are taking this stand is to tell the US, ‘Okay, it’s fine to protect American lives, but how can you sacrifice a whole country for it?’” Khan said in a recent interview at his Bani Gala estate on the outskirts of Islamabad.
The attacks also violate Pakistan’s sovereignty, he says, and he notes that the Pakistan Army is bearing the brunt of the retaliatory strikes from the terrorists.
He became a media sensation because of his perceived appeal to progressive younger voters and urbanites, tens of thousands of whom would show up at his campaign rallies. His past reputation as a playboy, as well as his marriage to and divorce from socialite Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of British billionaire James Goldsmith, added to his mystique.
Khan had been warning for months that he and his party would seek to cut off NATO supply routes if the US drone strikes didn’t end. The US military says the land routes, used by civilian contractors, are a quick and cost-effective way to remove its vast store of equipment and hardware from landlocked Afghanistan ahead of the departure of most troops next year.
When the drone attacks continued this fall, including a November strike in KP, he and thousands of others held a day-long protest on a highway used by NATO convoys on the outskirts of Peshawar.
When reports reached Kabul and Washington that some NATO truck drivers were being roughed up by protesters, the coalition suspended its convoys through the northern border crossing.
Coalition military commanders in Kabul and US Embassy officials in Islamabad have sought to play down the disruption, noting that NATO supplies are still moving through Pakistan’s southern province of Balochistan.
But the PTI says it also has plans to blockade the port in Karachi, which would be a dramatic escalation. And there are growing signs that US and NATO officials consider Imran’s stance to be far more than just an annoyance.
When US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited Pakistan in early December, he warned that the country could lose billions of dollars in US military aid if the blockade continued, according to US and Pakistani media accounts.
Two weeks later, Marine Gen Joseph F Dunford Jr, commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, travelled to Islamabad to meet new army chief Gen Raheel Sharif.
Imran Khan complicates NATO plans for Afghanistan: WP
