This story comes from Iran’s state-controlled media, so has to be taken with a grain of salt, but if it is accurate, our friends and allies in the Pakistani government will no doubt move swiftly against these parties, no? “Pakistanis block NATO supplies route in Peshawar,” from Iran’s PressTV, December 10 (thanks to Maxwell):
Members of two political parties in Pakistan, which are opposed to US drone attacks in their country, have blocked a supply route for the US-led NATO forces stationed in neighboring Afghanistan, Press TV reports.
The Tehreek-e-Insaf and Jamaat-e-Islami party members have been holding a sit-in on one of the main NATO routes in Pakistan’s city of Peshawar and have not let any NATO supply trucks cross the northwestern border into Afghanistan for the past three weeks.
Protesters spend days and nights stopping all travelling trucks and checking them to make sure they are not carrying supplies for US-led forces in Afghanistan, before clearing them to pass through the province.
The members say US drones have killed thousands of innocent civilians and left their families in an endless mental trauma.
“We believe that innocent people have died in these drone attacks”¦and [the attacks] psychologically have damaged these people, they cannot sleep in these places,” said Younus Zaheer Mohmand, a Tehreek-e-Insaf party member.
“The government of Pakistan now has to decide whether they are with the people of Pakistan or whether they are the slaves of American [government],” he added.
Female party members have also joined the sit-in and have vowed to continue the protest against the United States.
“We are sitting here for the families of those innocent people who have been killed in deadly drone attacks. All of us, including women and children, are suffering from America’s drone attacks on our soil because they kill our loved ones,” said Rabia Basir, another Tehreek-e-Insaf party member.
The government of Pakistan insists that it is making an all-out effort to stop the attacks.
The United States says the CIA-run drone strikes primarily kill Taliban militants who threaten the US-led international forces in Afghanistan, although casualty figures show that Pakistani civilians are often the victims of the non-UN-sanctioned attacks….