Crisis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan: From Protest March to Emergency Rule

In the past few weeks,  Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan went from a province whose elected government was planning a protest march, to one administered from Islamabad under a constitutional emergency, its Chief Minister (CM) in custody and its assembly suspended. The protest march was to demand the release of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder, who has been imprisoned since August 2023. The rapid pace of events has made the developments difficult to follow. This piece begins by outlining the crisis and how it has escalated in the past few months, then reconstructs the four decisive weeks from September 29 to October 26 in five phases. The aim is not to adjudicate the competing claims of the federal government and the political party PTI in Khyber Pakthunkhwa, but to clearly outline the critical developments of the political crisis, understand its trajectory and what it holds for the province’s future. .

The Crisis at its Core

At the heart of the ongoing current crisis is a confrontation between the federal government in Islamabad and the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over control of the province’s response to militancy, which ultimately played out through a clash over a protest march. Governing Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since 2013, the PTI and its provincial government under CM Sohail Afridi, have been campaigning for the release of the party’s founder, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has been imprisoned since August 2023, chiefly by calling street rallies and marches on Islamabad. The federal government, a Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N)-led coalition with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), has viewed this as an attempt to divert state resources to partisan ends at a time when militant violence in the province has risen to its highest levels in over a decade.