On Oct. 11, the Pakistani government declared a state of emergency and imposed governor’s rule in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, suspending the elected provincial government. In place of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) administration, power has shifted to the federally appointed governor, Faisal Karim Kundi, whose normally ceremonial office will now oversee the day-to-day administration in the province for up to six months, supported by an advisory council. The PTI, the party of the imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan, had governed the province for 13 years until the intervention.
Following Pakistan’s 2024 elections, which were marred by allegations of rigging, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa became the final provincial holdout for a party facing mounting pressure from the federal government and the military. Although formally announced by the civilian government, the intervention stems from the hybrid civil-military system in which army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir exercises primary control over Pakistan’s political and security affairs. To this end, Islamabad has justified the intervention on security grounds; however this move is but the latest in a string of efforts to clamp down on the PTI’s ability to organize and protest against the state.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has justified the decision by arguing that the provincial government has failed to adequately address the security crisis facing Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. For more than five years, the Pakistani state and its security forces have faced growing pressure from the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), with militant violence intensifying since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan. Ironically, Pakistan’s military had long supported the Afghan Taliban, hoping that the group’s return would strengthen Islamabad’s security and influence in Afghanistan. Instead, the opposite has been the case.
Sharif’s government is not overstating the severity of the militant threat in the province. Not only have attacks against Chinese workers strained the country’s ties with China, but disputes over the role played by the Afghan Taliban and its alleged failure to curb the cross-border activities of the TTP have led to repeated border clashes and Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan. Still, the extent to which the PTI-led provincial government is to blame is far less clear. Indeed, the security crisis also provides Islamabad with an opportunity to clamp down on the PTI, with Pakistan’s information minister accusing its provincial administration of essentially being an offshoot of the TTP itself.
This is a significant development in Pakistan’s constitutional history, but it is far from unprecedented in the province’s troubled relationship with the central government. In August 1947, the government of what was then the North-West Frontier Province was dismissed just one week after Pakistan gained independence. Although not formally an instance of governor’s rule, the dismissal is often cited as an early example of tensions between the central government and elected provincial authorities. Governor’s rule has also been imposed on the province twice before, once in 1975 and again in 1994. The roots of the present security crisis, meanwhile, can be traced to the fallout from the War on Terror and Pakistan’s military operations in its tribal areas, which led to the formation of the TTP in 2007. Since then, successive military campaigns and political reforms, including the 2018 merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have failed to secure lasting stability in the region.
In this regard, the PTI maintains that its administration in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has not received sufficient federal resources to combat the TTP insurgency. Rejecting accusations that it has aided militants, the party claims to have paid $6.6 million to the families of security personnel killed fighting armed groups. The decision, therefore, to replace an elected provincial administration with direct federal rule seems, in the words of PTI spokesman Zulfikar Bukhari, to be a “coup disguised as an emergency.” Islamabad’s motivations can be questioned further when contrasting how it has dealt with Balochistan, where the state is facing a similarly serious separatist insurgency, led principally by the Balochistan Liberation Army. Yet, despite this, the federal government has made no comparable move to suspend Balochistan’s administration, which is led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), an ally of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party.
Its stated security objectives aside, Islamabad is also using this intervention to weaken the PTI and dismantle its last political stronghold in the country. Amid Islamabad’s long-running confrontation with Imran Khan’s party, which has seen the former leader repeatedly subjected to prolonged solitary confinement, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has served as a base from which the party has organized opposition to the central government. Earlier this month, the party’s supporters began a protest march toward Islamabad, starting in the province, to demand better treatment for Khan, including access to medication and family visitation. The march was led by the province’s now-suspended chief minister, Sohail Afridi, who was subsequently detained following the introduction of governor’s rule. With further protests anticipated, the timing of Islamabad’s intervention is unsurprising and deprives the PTI of a significant base of support for future resistance against the central government.
This move reflects a broader authoritarian turn in Pakistan, in which the state has sought to crush dissent throughout the country. In Pakistan-Administered Kashmir (PAK), Amnesty International has condemned a crackdown on protestors, including mass arrests, internet shutdowns, and the designation of a grassroots protest movement as a terrorist organization. The human rights group has also warned that the emergency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa must not become a pretext for further restrictions on civil liberties, again citing reports of arbitrary detentions and internet disruptions. The increased use of increasingly authoritarian tactics also coincides with recent constitutional reforms that have substantially expanded the power and prominence of Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir. It therefore appears that Islamabad’s intervention in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is part of a wider consolidation of power, in which opposition parties and protest movements are increasingly facing the full force of the Pakistani state, under the guise of national security.
Beyond its confrontation with the PTI, it is important not to forget that Islamabad still faces an urgent security crisis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that needs to be addressed. Militant violence continues to claim the lives of Pakistani security personnel and has also severely strained relations with neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan cannot hope to restore stability along its western borderlands or improve relations with the Afghan Taliban, with whom it once enjoyed close ties, without curbing the TTP’s cross-border activities. At the same time, Islamabad may have been reluctant to provide the PTI administration with the resources necessary to combat the insurgency, fearing that the party could claim political credit for any success. As a result, the recent increase in agitation from the PTI presented Islamabad with an opportunity to tackle two fundamental problems at once. Yet this is also where the failures of Pakistan’s domestic and foreign policies converge. Islamabad’s inability to secure its western frontier, through its support for the Taliban, has now coincided with separate failures to contain the widespread popular support felt for Imran Khan.
Whether Islamabad will be able to bring the TTP insurgency under control now that it has direct rule over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is doubtful. Successive governments have struggled to contain militancy in the province for nearly two decades, and over the past five years the problem has worsened rather than improved. Yet, by imposing governor’s rule, the federal government has also considerably raised the stakes for itself. Having justified the suspension of an elected administration on the grounds of its failure to combat militancy, Islamabad must now demonstrate that it can deliver the improvements to the state’s security that the PTI could not. The suspension of an elected government also risks deepening the resentment felt towards Islamabad, undermining local cooperation with counterterrorism efforts. This could provide the TTP with further opportunities to exploit political discontent, rather than reducing tensions. Should violence continue unabated, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain that the PTI were solely to blame for the situation. Islamabad must now tread carefully to ensure that its intervention does not ultimately strengthen the political rivals it sought to weaken.
