Imran Khan's party marches toward Islamabad amid arrests
The jailed former prime minister's party is crossing Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as the government seals off the capital and detains his relatives.
Imran Khan's party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), brought its march to the district of Khyber, in northwestern Pakistan, on Wednesday, three days after setting out. It is led by Sohail Afridi, chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province the PTI governs and which borders Afghanistan. The column passed through Karak, Kohat and the outskirts of Peshawar, according to Pakistani daily Dawn.
It left on Sunday, Oct. 4, with more than 5 000 people, according to Al Jazeera. That is the opening figure; no later count exists. Khan, 73, has been in jail since August 2023. The march had already been postponed a week to negotiate with the federal government, but two rounds of talks over the weekend failed. The sides clashed over counterterrorism policy and access to Khan.
The destination keeps shifting. The original plan was to reach Khairabad, next to Attock, on Thursday, Oct. 8. Now Afridi's office says the convoy will go to Swabi, and a PTI leader calls the final stop tentative. The federal government warned that it will not allow gatherings in Islamabad and has been closing access roads with shipping containers for weeks.
Afridi told marchers in Khyber:
"I will not allow another military operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa."
Behind the march is a deeper dispute. Islamabad asked the province to back counterterrorism measures within 72 hours in the merged tribal districts, and the PTI demanded that federal and provincial representatives agree on a strategy in the same window, according to Dawn.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Oct. 6 that his government will sit down to talk once the march ends. That same day, police arrested Qasim Zaman, Khan's cousin, at the gates of Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, where he had come to see him.
The city commissioner ordered him held for 30 days under the public order maintenance ordinance, according to Dawn. Khan's sisters were also detained under that law; El Mediático reported those arrests before the Sept. 27 march.
Khan was prime minister until 2022. His party sees political motives behind his convictions, though Al Jazeera notes that, apart from one, the sentences were suspended or overturned on appeal. A similar march in November 2024 broke through a barrier of containers in Islamabad and ended in clashes with police. James Dorsey, an analyst at the National University of Singapore, told Al Jazeera the protest is a problem for the government but not an existential threat.
The Thursday route and current turnout remain unconfirmed. The government's account comes from spokespeople quoted by Dawn, and the PTI's from its leaders.
