With dozens of PTI leaders and workers taken into custody in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, many expected the province to erupt. It did not. The convoys that were to reach Islamabad “at any cost” never set out in strength, and the siege of the Governor House that was promised never materialised. At Peshawar’s Hashtnagri Chowk, the “revolution” drew a handful of supporters and more cameras than marchers.
Governor Faisal Karim Kundi has been happy to point this out, joking to reporters that the container parked for the protest was gathering dust. The silence of the party’s loudest television voices has been as telling as the empty roads.
The pattern is familiar. Workers end up in jail while leaders recede. Social media accounts that amplified the party’s message have gone quiet since it lost power in the province, though how many were organised and who paid for them is a question an inquiry, not a column, should answer.
The bigger failure is one of governance. The PTI promised a “New Khyber Pakhtunkhwa” in 2013. Thirteen years later, militancy has not been contained, and every hard question about performance was answered with a new sit-in, a new march or a new deadline for revolution.
Former chief minister Sohail Afridi and several of his colleagues are in what the government calls preventive custody. The state appears to have planned carefully, moving before the provincial assembly could pass a resolution against governor’s rule. Parliament has since been asked to endorse the emergency, as the Constitution requires.
The step with the longest reach may be administrative. When the former tribal areas were merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through the 25th Amendment in May 2018, they were promised the same policing, courts and development as settled districts. Progress has been slow and uneven. The new arrangement creates a separate secretariat for 12 districts worst hit by terrorism, with its own additional chief secretary and police chief and a technocratic council overseeing security and development.
Legally, the province’s boundaries are unchanged. In practice, those districts will now run under a distinct system that looks set to last two to three years, with police and counter-terrorism posts that should have been built in 2018. The state is not only fighting militants this time; it is trying to bring the territory where they thrive under functioning administration.
The PTI has gone to the Peshawar High Court, and lawyers’ bodies have spoken of approaching the Supreme Court. Overturning a measure taken under the Constitution’s emergency provisions and endorsed by Parliament will not be easy. There is also talk in Peshawar of accountability for the past decade’s spending. If that happens, it should follow evidence and due process, not headlines.
The container may yet be towed away. The structures being built in those 12 districts are meant to stay.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Lahore Times.
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