KHYBER Pakhtunkhwa is on edge again, and not just for the deteriorating security and volatility in the south, which has been bad for quite some time now.
It is the provincial government’s avowed single-point agenda to secure its party’s chairman’s freedom from Adiala jail, or at the very least, get him some relief like shifting him to a private hospital in Islamabad.
But days before ‘D-Day’, i.e. Sept 27, one cannot help but be struck by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu: this is November 2024 all over again, albeit with some changes to the cast.
Ali Amin Gandapur, the chief minister at the time, who led the long march to D-Chowk, lost the job during his second year in office, allowing a young and relatively inexperienced Sohail Afridi to take up the mantle.
One year into his term, the 37-year-old CM Afridi is now playing his biggest political gambit since his foray into politics as a student activist of the PTI’s student wing.
There is another change to the cast. Bushra Bibi, the former first lady who led the bloody Nov 24 D-Chowk March, is now serving a jail term in Adiala jail.
And so, the task of securing Imran Khan’s release has passed on to another woman — his sister, Aleema Khan. She too, though, has now been taken into custody.
With the planned political onslaught on the federal capital just two days away, the clock is ticking, and worryingly, no one knows where and how this will end.
No one has a clue. Not even those who have planned for this day for months. And neither do the ones who have scrambled to throw in all possible measures to defend and protect Islamabad from yet another onslaught from KP. The stakes are high and everyone with an insight knows it.
The comparisons between the two guards are natural; Ali Amin was an old hack. He knew what he was getting into and would war-game it. But even he couldn’t forestall a mob that crossed over into the so-called Red Zone, precipitating violence in a way that was not foreseen.
But Afridi is a relatively new campaigner, carrying the relentless pressure of the party’s D-Chowk fiasco. It seems he doesn’t know the full breadth of what he is getting into. These are uncharted waters for him and he doesn’t have the comfort of many wise counsels.
Even the party’s own decision-making system is so diffused that no one is willing to publicly take responsibility for any fallout of the impending march; everyone is looking towards each other.
Mehmood Khan Achakzai and Raja Nasir Abbas, the PTI’s current political mentors, are there to lend their support. But any decision, they have made clear, has to come from the PTI itself.
Up until now, no one person knows what the whole plan is. With a crackdown on its leaders and lawmakers underway and authorities in Islamabad putting up several layers of security around the federal capital amid ominous warnings of nasty things to come, the PTI leadership can be under no illusions; this time around would be a different and dangerous gambit.
There are logistical and financial issues as well. A party which had no dearth of resources finds itself struggling to raise money to mobilise its workers and pay for logistics.
Adding to their woes is the unwillingness of private transporters to ferry party supporters, after having suffered huge losses to their vehicles in the Nov 2024 fiasco.
So, what could be the game plan once party workers and supporters are eventually mobilised despite all the difficulties and misgivings?
Stop at Swabi, just short of KP’s boundary with the Punjab on the M1 Motorway, and block the many entry points into Punjab?
Stage a sit-in; but for how long? Will it be sustainable? Not just logistically but also politically, given the problems that the blockades would cause to the people, and the food and fuel shortages that these would give rise to?
Or, will the PTI surge ahead, removing all the hurdles and battling police and Rangers to find an opening to enter Islamabad and bring the federal government to its knees, forcing it to accept their demands?
If that is the case, then who will lead the charge? Who will take responsibility in the event of something going terribly wrong? It doesn’t take long for a seemingly well-organised rally to turn into a mob; after all, even Ali Amin had not foreseen what would happen when his party workers entered the Red Zone. The risks are too high and everyone knows it — most of all the minders in Islamabad. PTI leaders now say, they are showing signs of panic by barricading their territory, placing containers and digging up roads to make them impassable.
For the federal authorities, the risk of mob violence is too real to ignore. The events of Nov 2024 are still fresh in their memory and they can’t afford another violent confrontation so close to the Red Zone.
Allowing the PTI to stage a sit-in anywhere near Islamabad is a big no-no for them; it was tried and tested, and it failed.
The choices are limited. The PTI cannot afford a repeat of what happened in November 2024. Such an eventuality, they know, will hurt them gravely and might even cost them their government in KP.
It is a suspense thriller, that’s for sure. No one knows, neither in Peshawar, nor in Islamabad, how events will unfold in the days to come.
Most worryingly, though, no one is talking to anyone, and no one knows who will initiate negotiations to end this deadlock. For some strange reason, in the words of a senior PTI lawmaker, they are looking to divine intervention to toss up some middle ground, or face-saving.
Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2026
