What Imran Khan had said was no more than political posturing
With the Peshawar High Court judgment providing the PTI a window of opportunity to come out of an embarrassing situation, the party has decided to end its three-month long blockade of NATO supplies. In any case the early enthusiasm shown by the party workers was already dwindling and with a handful to watch the roads trucks laden with NATO goods were finding it easy to slip through the blockade. Meanwhile the trading community in Peshawar thought it had had enough of it leading one of the community members to approach the court. The PHC ruled that the checking of Afghanistan-bound cargo trucks by PTI activists was illegal and asked the government to protect human rights and freedom. Imran Khan being a national leader one had expected him to use his judgment before calling on unauthorised people to stop private vehicles, check their papers, break seals to inspect the goods carried, delay deliveries, and force some trucks to go back. There are a number of legal luminaries in the party. Why didn’t they tell their leader to avoid committing an illegality?
It is self-serving to maintain that the lull in drone strikes is the outcome of Khan’s campaign. The campaign was confined to the route through KP while NATO traffic continued through Balochistan. Meanwhile drone attacks were condemned by Pakistan in the UN while a number of US allies expressed unhappiness over the US disdain for international law. The day PTI chief withdrew his campaign the European Parliament passed a resolution terming the drone strikes as illegal and proposing a ban on them. The resolution in fact went a step ahead of Khan by opposing the practice of extra-judicial targeted killings which are committed not only by the US but also Israel.
Imran Khan had been an ardent supporter of ending terrorist attacks through dialogue. He had gone to the extreme of claiming that the war against terrorism could be won in 90 days through dialogue. He was asked by both the government and the TTP to join their respective teams of negotiators. Khan declined the offer but nominated Rustam Shah Mohamand for the government team. He apparently knew that what he had said was no more than political posturing.
