Pakistan Strips Imran Khan's Party of Provincial Rule, Deploys Army Amid Deadly Clashes

Pakistan's federal government has stripped the opposition-run province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of self-government and sent soldiers onto its streets, in one of the most sweeping internal security measures taken by Islamabad in years. The move, announced on Sunday and still unfolding this week, has triggered violent clashes between police and supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, whose Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had governed the province since 2013.

President Asif Ali Zardari, acting on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's cabinet, invoked emergency powers and so-called governor's rule under articles of the constitution reserved for extraordinary breakdowns in security, dissolving the provincial cabinet and handing executive authority to the governor, a federal appointee. By Tuesday and into Wednesday, protests against the takeover had turned violent in Peshawar and the neighbouring Khyber district, with police firing tear gas and, by some accounts, live rounds into crowds of PTI supporters.

A Province Placed Under Direct Rule

The scale of the intervention is unusual even by the standards of a country accustomed to friction between its federal centre and restive provinces. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, home to roughly 40 million people along the Afghan border, is Pakistan's only province governed outright by PTI, and the only one where Khan's party controls both the chief minister's office and the provincial assembly.

Under the measures, the provincial assembly that PTI has controlled since Khan first came to national power remains formally in place but loses its executive functions; Governor Faisal Karim Kundi now runs the province with an eleven-member advisory council in place of the elected cabinet. A separate secretariat, headed by an officer of additional chief secretary rank, has been created to directly administer twelve districts the government describes as most severely affected by militancy. The army has been deployed to support the new administrative setup. Officials have said the arrangement is intended to last six months in the first instance, though it can be extended.

Federal ministers justified the move by pointing to a sharp rise in militant violence. According to figures cited at the announcement, terrorism and extremism incidents in the province rose 196 percent over roughly the past two and a half years, with a corresponding increase in casualties and damage to security installations and vehicles. Officials also cited an index ranking Pakistan among the countries most affected by terrorism worldwide. PTI's provincial chief minister, Sohail Afridi, was reported by party lawmakers to have been taken into custody as the measures took effect, along with the party's provincial president; the claim has not been independently confirmed by the federal government.

The proclamations are not open-ended. Under the constitutional provisions invoked, the National Assembly and Senate must formally consider the emergency declaration within ten days, and governor's rule lapses automatically after two months unless both houses, sitting jointly, vote to extend it in further increments.

From a Planned March to a Provincial Takeover

The immediate trigger traces back to a long-running standoff between Islamabad and PTI over Khan, who has been in jail since August 2023 and faces what his supporters say are roughly 200 politically motivated cases. PTI had organised a mass march on the capital demanding his release, originally planned for late September and then postponed to early October to allow a round of talks between the party and the government. Those negotiations collapsed; the government has said it would not allow the march to reach Islamabad and had erected shipping-container barricades on the main approach roads into the capital.

Against that backdrop, the government framed its case as one of counter-terrorism rather than politics, arguing that the provincial administration had been distracted by the confrontation with the centre while militant attacks, largely attributed to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and allied groups operating from the Afghan side of the border, mounted in frequency. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said the federal cabinet had "rightly decided" the previous week to end political reconciliation efforts with PTI, while other ministers alleged, without presenting public evidence, that some party figures maintained contacts with militant groups.

PTI has consistently rejected that framing. Party chairman Gohar Ali Khan called the move "an extremely alarming and grave political mistake and an undemocratic measure," while spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari went further, describing it as "more of a coup disguised as emergency" and warning it risked "further bloodshed, instability and collateral damage."

Clashes Spread Across the Province

Within days, Bukhari's warning had partly borne out. The most serious violence occurred in Bara, roughly 15 kilometres from Peshawar, where PTI workers protesting the governor's rule set fire to a National Database and Registration Authority office and pelted a nearby rescue-service building with stones. Khyber district police said protesters had taken fifteen police personnel hostage inside a municipal office and stripped them of weapons and uniforms, a claim provincial information officials later disputed even as the district police chief maintained the officers remained unaccounted for at the time. Police said they fired tear gas and shots into the air twice to disperse the crowd and that roughly fifty people were arrested, with cases registered under anti-terrorism and sabotage laws.

Casualty figures remain contested and unverified by independent observers. A PTI lawmaker said eleven party workers were injured and one killed in the Bara violence; provincial administration officials called reports of live ammunition being used against protesters "baseless and frivolous," attributing circulating video to anonymous social-media accounts and, in one case, suggesting footage had been manipulated. By October 14, renewed clashes between protesters and police left at least five people injured by gunfire, according to reporting from the ground, with no deaths confirmed in that round of unrest.

The disruption has reached beyond the protest sites themselves. A lawmaker from the province, Samar Haroon Bilour, told reporters that roughly 700 to 800 female students had already left Bannu University this year because travel routes had become too dangerous, citing it as evidence of the security deterioration the federal government says justifies its intervention. Ordinary commerce and movement around Peshawar and the tribal districts has also been affected by the heightened security presence and intermittent road closures tied to both the protests and the barricades erected weeks earlier against the planned Islamabad march.

"A Test of the Constitution"

The dispute has moved into parliament itself, where the government's narrow but functional majority faces organised opposition resistance. In the Senate, PTI's parliamentary leader, Ali Zafar, challenged ministers to demonstrate that the constitutional threshold for emergency powers had genuinely been met, arguing that the government needed to show the action was both necessary and proportionate and that proper procedure had been followed throughout. He also urged the chamber not to let itself become a "rubber stamp" for the executive.

"Article 232 must not become a political weapon."

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi defended the decision in blunter terms, framing it as a choice between "daily martyrdoms" of security personnel and civilians or a difficult political decision to impose direct federal control. Other ministers have said evidence of contacts between some PTI figures and militant groups would be presented "when required," a claim the party denies entirely and has demanded be substantiated publicly.

What Comes Next

The immediate test is procedural. Both the emergency and governor's-rule proclamations must go before a joint sitting of parliament, where the ruling coalition's ability to secure approval — and PTI's capacity to mount a credible legal or political challenge — will determine whether direct federal rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa becomes a durable arrangement or a short-lived crisis that unwinds under judicial or legislative pressure. PTI has signalled it may pursue the matter in Pakistan's superior courts, arguing the measures were applied province-wide rather than confined to the specific districts the government itself identifies as most insecure.

On the ground, the more immediate question is whether the unrest of the past several days subsides or escalates further. With the army now supporting the new administrative structure, a mass PTI march still notionally planned, and casualty claims from both sides unresolved and mutually contradicted, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa enters its second week of direct federal rule with the core political standoff between Islamabad and Khan's movement no closer to resolution than before the province's elected government was suspended.