Many in Pakistan were outraged last week when a U.S. drone killed militant leader Hakimullah Mehsud, calling the strike yet another example of Washington bulldozing over the nation’s sovereignty. But few have voiced their anger quite so loudly as Imran Khan. The cricketer turned politician, who is chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, has led the charge at the U.S. over the timing of the Nov. 1 attack, saying it was a bald attempt to sabotage imminent peace talks between Islamabad and Mehsud’s group, the Pakistani Taliban. “We’d been waiting for two months for this peace process to start and then finally when everyone had come to a consensus for peace, they destroyed the peace process,” Khan told the BBC. “I mean, are they a friend or an enemy?” In protest, Khan has vowed to block NATO supplies moving to and from Afghanistan by road through the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where his party is in power. On Monday, the provincial assembly approved a resolution to start the blockade on Nov. 20 unless U.S. drone strikes stop. Khan has said he will organize protests to block the supply route, but exactly what shape that action would take is still unclear. “The entire nation is very angry,” says Shah Farman, a PTI member and the province’s information minister. “We are exploring each and every corner [to see] what constitutional authority we have.” Critics of the blockade say the answer to that question is already known: PTI has none. Among the divisions of power between Pakistan’s federal government and provinces, security and foreign policy matters fall to the center, says Rasul Bakhsh Rais, director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. Rais says there has been widespread criticism of Khan’s threat to choke supplies because it is a direct challenge to the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at a time when the nation is facing difficulties from terrorist attacks in Peshawar to target killings in Karachi. “Any politician that brings people on the streets in such difficult days invites … Continue reading Will Imran Khan Block NATO Supplies in Pakistan?