Imran Khan’s PTI braces to fight federal takeover of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Islamabad says the PTI failed to lead the fight against armed groups, but analysts question the takeover.

Police officers arrest a protester following a protest call by supporters of jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), a day after Pakistan imposed a state of emergency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and suspended the provincial government led by Khan's party, in Peshawar, Pakistan, October 12, 2026 [Reuters]

Islamabad, Pakistan – The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of jailed ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan is planning to legally challenge the federal government’s Sunday takeover of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province that the party governed.

Sheikh Waqas Akram, the PTI’s central information secretary, told Al Jazeera that the party would challenge the imposition of emergency laws – suspending civil liberties – and governor’s rule in the province in court on Tuesday. A petition had been drafted by a legal committee headed by PTI Secretary-General Salman Akram Raja, but Akram did not say whether it would be filed in the Supreme Court or the Federal Constitutional Court.

list 1 of 4 Can Pakistan’s Sohail Afridi win freedom for ex-PM Imran Khan?

list 2 of 4 What do emergency and governor rule in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa mean?

list 3 of 4 Pakistan suspends Imran Khan’s party-led provincial government

list 4 of 4 Pakistan imposes emergency rule in ​province governed by Imran Khan’s party

The federal government’s moves have emerged as Pakistan’s latest political flashpoint, with competing narratives from the government and the PTI, at a time when the party was in the middle of a delayed march towards Islamabad, aimed at pressuring authorities to release former PM Khan, who has been jailed for more than three years.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Monday justified the government’s moves by arguing that federal rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was needed for Pakistan to effectively combat “terrorism” in the province that shares a porous border with Afghanistan.

“No war can be won, however many resources you bring, whatever you do, until the government there leads it,” Naqvi said in Peshawar on Monday.

On Sunday, President Asif Ali Zardari imposed emergency rule and governor’s rule, suspending the PTI government in the northwestern province. The party has governed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since 2013.

Sohail Afridi , the suspended chief minister, and some members of his cabinet have been taken into preventive custody, Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry confirmed on Monday. Afridi had been leading the march towards Islamabad seeking to free Khan, and despite the setbacks to the party, PTI leaders said the protest was still on.

“The long march has not ended. But a historic crackdown against the party has begun,” Akram said.

The case for intervention

According to the proclamation signed on Sunday, the provincial government had “failed to demonstrate the ownership, will and intent to adequately deal with the menace of terrorism”.

“The federal government’s position is clearly described. ‘A deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism’ as communicated after cabinet meeting. That’s the constitutional premise needed for imposition of emergency,” Aasiya Riaz, joint director of the independent political think tank the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), told Al Jazeera.

However, Hassan Abdullah Niazi, an adjunct faculty member at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and a lawyer based in Lahore, disputed that premise.

“If all of this was true, then KP would be in a state of anarchy, but we know that is not the case. It had a functioning legislature and executive that commanded the confidence of the people, hence this entire exercise is an unconstitutional move against provincial autonomy,” he told Al Jazeera.

A more detailed case was set out last month in a 14-page white paper presented in Islamabad by Ikhtiar Wali Khan, a political adviser to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN).

The paper pointed to rising police deaths, staff and equipment shortages in the provincial counterterrorism department, and spending priorities.

However, Akram rejected the charge that the PTI had failed to lead the fight.

He said the provincial government had paid 1.83 billion rupees ($6.6m) from its own funds to the families of more than 900 soldiers, police and paramilitary personnel killed fighting armed groups, a contribution he said no other province had made.

What Islamabad wanted

Naqvi said at a news conference in Islamabad on Sunday that the federal government had been involved in negotiations with the PTI on a proposed “sit-in” by the party in support of Khan.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi is considered close to Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir [Handout/Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior]

“We have no problem with the sit-in. Do the sit-in as eagerly as you like; we have no issue with the sit-in. Our issue is entirely terrorism-related, and we want to get you on board on that,” he said.

Taimur Jhagra, a PTI leader and former provincial finance and health minister, said the talks with the government that the party had agreed to were meant to focus on Khan .

“It’s absurd that a negotiation about a protest movement to give Imran Khan Supreme Court-ordered medical and visitation rights becomes a negotiation about terrorism strategy,” he told Al Jazeera.

Naqvi also said the PTI had agreed during the talks that emergency rule should be imposed in 12 districts of the province.

Akram rejected that claim and said the party had refused. The party feared residents would bear the cost of military operations, he said.

“We said ‘No, this cannot be. You cannot do whatever you like with them. We took the votes from them. Tomorrow they will blame us: ‘You got us killed,’” he said.

Akram said the PTI negotiators referred the federal government’s proposal to Afridi, who rejected it.

Federal Information Minister Attaullah Tarar went further at Sunday’s news conference.

“This government, which has been suspended through a constitutional option, is responsible for the deaths of thousands of citizens of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” he said, accusing Afridi’s PTI government of being hand in glove with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan – an armed group known as the Pakistan Taliban – and the Afghan Taliban.

There is no known or public evidence of any such links.

Security or politics?

According to a government white paper, 122 police personnel were killed in the province in the first half of this year, up from 63 during the same period in 2025.

Independent trackers also point to rising violence. The Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), an Islamabad-based think tank, recorded 556 violence-linked deaths in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa between July and September, up from 475 in the previous quarter and 311 in the one before.

Balochistan was hit harder. Deaths there rose by 213 percent to 829, making it the worst-affected province , according to CRSS.

The government says it acted because the provincial administration would not lead the fight against armed groups, but analysts disagree over the takeover’s purpose.

Security officials gather at the site of a suicide bombing at the main gate of headquarters of the Federal Constabulary (FC), in Peshawar, Pakistan, Monday, November 24, 2025 [Muhammad Zubair/AP Photo]

“I would say this decision is political, administrative and security. All three elements are present in it,” Zaigham Khan, an Islamabad-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera.

Ali Arqam, a longtime observer of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, disagreed.

“This is not really about security at all. It is basically a political move that they are just dressing up as some kind of administrative necessity,” he told Al Jazeera.

Jhagra said the government believed the takeover would break the PTI, but argued that people across the country still saw Khan as their leader.

“It is trying to solve for legitimacy,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the government.

For his part, Federal Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said at a news conference in Islamabad on Sunday that the decision was a purely constitutional step.

A party under pressure

For the PTI, the immediate concerns are its leaders and the courts.

“There has been no contact. No one in the party has had any contact with the chief minister,” Akram said.

But the party remains widely popular, in the province and nationally.

At Monday’s meeting, Naqvi said results against “terrorism” would not come in a day. There would be ups and downs, he said, and harder times lay ahead.

But Arqam, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa observer, said Islamabad should be judged by the same measures as the PTI government.

“You test this government by looking at the exact same hard metrics: Does security actually improve, do the basic services get better, and do the promised fiscal resources finally show up?” he said.

伊斯兰堡方面称巴基斯坦正义运动党未能领导打击武装团体的斗争，但分析人士对这一接管表示质疑。

2026年10月12日，巴基斯坦前总理伊姆兰·汗所属政党巴基斯坦正义运动党（PTI）的支持者发起抗议活动，警方在巴基斯坦宣布开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省进入紧急状态并暂停伊姆兰·汗领导的省政府运作的第二天，逮捕了一名抗议者。[路透社]

巴基斯坦伊斯兰堡——被监禁的前总理伊姆兰·汗领导的巴基斯坦正义运动党（PTI）计划对联邦政府周日接管开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省（该党曾执政的省份）的行为提起法律诉讼。

巴基斯坦正义运动党（PTI）中央新闻秘书谢赫·瓦卡斯·阿克拉姆告诉半岛电视台，该党将于周二在法庭上挑战在巴基斯坦实施的紧急状态法（暂停公民自由）和省长统治。一份由正义运动党总书记萨尔曼·阿克拉姆·拉贾领导的法律委员会已起草了请愿书，但阿克拉姆没有说明请愿书将提交至最高法院还是联邦宪法法院。

列表 1/4：巴基斯坦的苏海尔·阿夫里迪能否为前总理伊姆兰·汗赢得自由？

列表 2/4：巴基斯坦开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省的紧急状态和省长统治分别意味着什么？

巴基斯坦暂停伊姆兰·汗领导的政党主导的省政府职务（共4项，此为第3项）

巴基斯坦在伊姆兰·汗所在政党执政的省份实施紧急状态（共4条，此为第4条）

联邦政府的举措已成为巴基斯坦最新的政治焦点，政府和巴基斯坦正义运动党（PTI）就此展开了相互对立的论述。与此同时，该党正处于向伊斯兰堡进军的后期阶段，旨在向当局施压，要求释放已被监禁三年多的前总理伊姆兰·汗。

内政部长莫辛·纳克维周一为政府的举措辩护，称开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省需要实行联邦统治，以便巴基斯坦能够有效打击该省的“恐怖主义”。开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省与阿富汗接壤，边界管控薄弱。

“无论你投入多少资源，无论你做什么，如果当地政府不领导战争，任何战争都无法取得胜利，”纳克维周一在白沙瓦表示。

周日，总统阿西夫·阿里·扎尔达里宣布在西北省份实施紧急状态和省长统治，暂停了巴基斯坦正义运动党（PTI）政府的运作。该党自2013年以来一直执政开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省。

巴基斯坦内政部国务部长塔拉勒·乔杜里周一证实，被停职的首席部长索海尔·阿夫里迪及其部分内阁成员已被预防性拘留。阿夫里迪此前一直领导着前往伊斯兰堡的游行，要求释放伊姆兰·汗。尽管该党遭遇挫折，但巴基斯坦正义运动党（PTI）领导人表示，抗议活动仍将继续。

“长征尚未结束，但对党的历史性镇压已经开​​始，”阿克拉姆说。

干预的理由

根据周日签署的公告，省政府“未能展现出应对恐怖主义威胁的责任感、意愿和决心”。

“联邦政府的立场已经明确阐述，即‘故意退出反恐斗争’，这是内阁会议后传达的信息。这是实施紧急状态所需的宪法前提，”巴基斯坦立法发展与透明研究所（PILDAT）联合主任阿西娅·里亚兹告诉半岛电视台。

然而，拉合尔管理科学大学 (LUMS) 的兼职教师、拉合尔律师哈桑·阿卜杜拉·尼亚齐对这一前提提出了异议。

“如果这一切都是真的，那么开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省就会陷入无政府状态，但我们知道事实并非如此。该省拥有一个运转良好的立法机构和行政机构，赢得了人民的信任，因此，整个行动是对省自治权的违宪行为，”他告诉半岛电视台。

上个月，执政党巴基斯坦穆斯林联盟（谢里夫派）（PMLN）总理谢赫巴兹·谢里夫的政治顾问伊赫蒂亚尔·瓦利·汗在伊斯兰堡提交了一份 14 页的白皮书，其中详细阐述了这一情况。

该文件指出，警察死亡人数不断上升，省反恐部门人员和设备短缺，以及支出优先事项。

然而，阿克拉姆驳斥了巴基斯坦正义运动党未能领导这场斗争的指控。

他说，省政府已从自有资金中支付了 18.3 亿卢比（660 万美元）给在与武装团体作战中丧生的 900 多名士兵、警察和准军事人员的家属，他说，其他任何省份都没有做出过这样的贡献。

伊斯兰堡想要什么

纳克维周日在伊斯兰堡举行的新闻发布会上表示，联邦政府一直在与巴基斯坦正义运动党就该党提议的“静坐示威”以支持伊姆兰·汗进行谈判。

巴基斯坦内政部长莫辛·纳克维被认为与巴基斯坦军队总司令阿西姆·穆尼尔元帅关系密切。[图片来源：巴基斯坦内政部]

“我们对静坐示威没有意见。你们想怎么静坐就怎么静坐；我们对静坐示威没有意见。我们的问题完全与恐怖主义有关，我们希望你们在这方面与我们站在一起，”他说。

巴基斯坦正义运动党领导人、前省财政和卫生部长泰穆尔·贾格拉表示，该党同意与政府进行会谈，目的是集中讨论汗的问题。

“一场旨在赋予伊姆兰·汗最高法院所规定的医疗和探视权的抗议运动谈判，竟然演变成一场关于恐怖主义战略的谈判，这太荒谬了，”他告诉半岛电视台。

纳克维还表示，巴基斯坦正义运动党在会谈中同意在该省的12个地区实施紧急状态。

阿克拉姆驳斥了这一说法，并表示该党拒绝了这一请求。他说，该党担心军事行动的费用将由居民承担。

他说：“我们说，‘不，这不能发生。你们不能随心所欲地处置他们。我们赢得了他们的选票。明天他们会指责我们：‘你们害死了我们。’”

阿克拉姆表示，巴基斯坦正义运动党谈判代表将联邦政府的提议提交给了阿夫里迪，但遭到了拒绝。

联邦新闻部长阿塔乌拉·塔拉尔在周日的新闻发布会上进一步阐述了自己的观点。

“这个政府已经通过宪法途径被暂停执政，它应对开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省数千名公民的死亡负责，”他说道，并指责阿夫里迪领导的巴基斯坦正义运动党政府与巴基斯坦塔利班运动（一个被称为巴基斯坦塔利班的武装组织）和阿富汗塔利班沆瀣一气。

目前没有任何已知的或公开的证据表明存在此类联系。

安全还是政治？

根据政府白皮书，今年上半年该省共有 122 名警察人员殉职，而 2025 年同期则有 63 名警察人员殉职。

独立追踪机构也指出暴力事件呈上升趋势。总部位于伊斯兰堡的智库——研究与安全研究中心（CRSS）记录显示，7月至9月期间，开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省共有556人死于暴力事件，高于上一季度的475人和再上一季度的311人。

俾路支省受灾更为严重。据CRSS统计，该省死亡人数上升了213%，达到829人，成为受灾最严重的省份。

政府称，之所以采取行动，是因为省政府不愿领导打击武装团体的斗争，但分析人士对此次接管的目的存在分歧。

2025年11月24日星期一，在巴基斯坦白沙瓦，安全官员聚集在联邦宪兵队（FC）总部大门自杀式炸弹袭击现场。[穆罕默德·祖拜尔/美联社照片]

“我认为这项决定是政治性的、行政性的和安全性的。这三个因素都包含在其中，”伊斯兰堡政治分析家扎伊格姆·汗告诉半岛电视台。

长期关注开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省的阿里·阿尔卡姆对此持不同意见。

“这根本就不是安全问题。这本质上是一项政治举措，他们只是把它包装成某种行政上的必要之举，”他告诉半岛电视台。

贾格拉表示，政府认为此次接管将瓦解巴基斯坦正义运动党，但他辩称，全国人民仍然视伊姆兰·汗为他们的领导人。

“这是在试图解决合法性问题，”他告诉半岛电视台，指的是政府。

联邦法律部长阿扎姆·纳齐尔·塔拉尔周日在伊斯兰堡举行的新闻发布会上表示，这一决定完全是合宪的。

面临压力的政党

对巴基斯坦正义运动党（PTI）而言，眼下最关心的是其领导人和法院。

阿克拉姆说：“没有任何接触。党内任何人都没有与首席部长有过任何接触。”

但该党在省内和全国范围内仍然广受欢迎。

纳克维在周一的会议上表示，打击“恐怖主义”不会一蹴而就。他说，斗争会有起伏，未来还会面临更艰难的时期。

但开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦省观察员阿尔卡姆表示，应该用评判巴基斯坦正义运动党政府的标准来评判伊斯兰堡。

他说：“检验本届政府的标准就是看这些硬性指标：安全状况是否真的改善了，基本公共服务是否得到了提升，承诺的财政资源是否最终到位了？”