Day 77: Protesters send back 15 suspected NATO containers

Coalition partners’ anti-drone sit-in continues.

PESHAWAR:

At least 15 trucks suspected to be carrying goods for Nato troops stationed in Afghanistan were turned back from Hayatabad Toll Plaza on Friday.

On the 77th consecutive day of the anti-drone sit-in in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), activists of  Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Awami Jamhoori Ittehad Pakistan (AJIP), coalition partners in the provincial government,inspected documents of various trucks heading to Afghanistan and refused to allow 15 drivers to cross the toll plaza after they failed to verify their travel documents.

According to PTI youth wing activists, the drivers failed to differentiate between the documents they had and the stamps on the containers which suggested the containers had been dispatched for Nato troops.



PTI Peshawar President Younas Zaheer told The Express Tribune, “The consignment details the drivers had and the stamps on the containers were different from each other, which is why the protesters sent the trucks back.”

Zaheer maintained his party would not give up until drone attacks are stopped.

Students from a local school also participated in the sit-in and chanted anti-US slogans.

The sit-in at Hayatabad Toll Plaza began on November 23, 2013 when PTI Chairman Imran Khan announced Nato supply routes in K-P would be blocked until the US halts drone attacks in the region.

Khan also accused the US of intentionally derailing a possible initiative for peace talks between the Pakistan government and the Taliban when a drone strike killed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Hakimullah Mehsud on November 1, just ahead of the proposed peace talks.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2014.