ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — The federal government has moved to impose an emergency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to protect citizens and restore peace, with President Asif Ali Zardari signing Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s advice on the province’s security situation, PTV News reported on Sunday.
The Prime Minister’s Office said the federal cabinet reviewed the deteriorating security situation in the province and recommended that the prime minister advise the President to exercise his constitutional powers under Articles 232 and 234 to impose an emergency. The advice was sent to the Presidency, and PTV News said the President signed the summary after considering the security situation, reports from state institutions and the failure of negotiations.
The government says it exhausted dialogue first. Earlier this week, the prime minister renewed his offer to the opposition: “End your long march. If you end it, then we will certainly sit with you and talk.” The prime minister also told the cabinet that the federal government had provided Rs800 billion over the past decade to help Khyber Pakhtunkhwa tackle terrorism, and said the provincial government had remained a “silent spectator” instead of confronting it.
Officials point to the scale of the threat as the reason the emergency was necessary. On 18 September, a suicide attack on a mosque inside Kohat’s Old Police Lines killed more than 20 people, most of them police personnel, an attack the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said showed the need for stronger action. The cabinet was briefed on security and intelligence reports on the province, and an intelligence assessment presented to the meeting put the rise in terrorist incidents in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 195 per cent between 1 March 2024 and 23 September 2026. The President was also briefed by Governor Kundi and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on the “worsening law and order situation” in the province. In the government’s view, with talks having failed and the provincial government disengaged from the fight against terrorism, federal powers were the remaining way to act quickly.
The federal government’s case is that the province needs a firmer response. The Prime Minister’s Office described the provincial government’s “deliberate detachment” from the fight against terrorism as the reason for the recommendation. On 1 October, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry asked why stronger measures had not been taken to build the provincial police’s capacity. The 277th Corps Commanders’ Conference, chaired by Field Marshal Asim Munir, appreciated intelligence-based operations by law enforcement and stressed that military action must be supported by grassroots governance, public engagement, action against links between terrorism and crime, and a stronger police force.
Governor Faisal Karim Kundi welcomed the presidential decree. He said the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are peace-loving, do not support terrorists and do not want unrest, and that they want brotherly relations, peace and prosperity with the other provinces and the federation. He said the province’s people would stand shoulder to shoulder with state institutions against terrorism.
Parliament will take up the matter on Tuesday. The Presidency said after a meeting between the President and the Prime Minister on Saturday that separate sessions of the National Assembly and the Senate would be convened on 13 October.
Chief Minister Sohail Afridi, whose Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government is leading a long march towards Islamabad, rejected the move. “We will not accept governor’s rule or an emergency as an unconstitutional measure,” he said on Saturday, and on Sunday he said on X that the march would continue lawfully until its demands are accepted.
