Pakistan suspends Imran Khan party’s provincial government

Pakistan’s president declared a state of emergency in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026, suspending the provincial government run by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

The move puts a province that borders Afghanistan under federal control for an initial six months, as PTI prepares a march on Islamabad to demand Khan’s release. Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said the provincial governor, who represents the federal government, will take charge with an advisory council, Al Jazeera reported.

President Asif Ali Zardari acted on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif after a federal cabinet meeting, according to the presidency’s statement, as reported by The National. A statement from Sharif’s office cited the provincial government’s “deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism.”

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said the provincial government neglected counterterrorism while focusing on securing Khan’s release, and that slow decisions and poor coordination let militants gain ground, Gulf News reported. Tarar said militant violence in the province had risen 196 per cent in recent years. Gulf News reported that Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced an 11-member advisory council. The presidency did not initially say how the province would be run, The National reported.

PTI rejected the decision. Party spokesman Zulfikar Bukhari called it “more of a coup disguised as emergency” and warned it “will only lead to further bloodshed, instability and collateral damage,” according to Reuters reporting carried by Al Jazeera and The National. Bukhari also said the province has the country’s “only legitimately elected government,” and that recent talks showed the federal government never intended to negotiate.

PTI lawmaker Junaid Akbar said Chief Minister Sohail Afridi was arrested along with the party’s president in the province. Officials have not confirmed that in the reports Canada News Media read, so it remains unverified. Gulf News reported that police detained several PTI supporters overnight and that more police and security forces were deployed. It said no protests had been reported since the suspension.

The federal government had urged PTI since last month to postpone the march, citing a surge in attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, and accused the party of sympathizing with the group, Gulf News reported. PTI denies that framing and calls the emergency political. The march was first set for Sept. 27, then pushed to Oct. 4 to allow talks, which failed. Shipping containers have blocked key routes in Islamabad and Rawalpindi since last month, Gulf News reported.

Khan was prime minister from 2018 until he was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022. He has been jailed since 2023 on charges including corruption that he and his party call politically motivated. The government denies that. Sharif has warned that protests could damage the economy.

Several key details are not yet public. The reports read do not name the constitutional articles invoked, say what happens to the provincial assembly, or explain how the takeover will be enforced. It is also unclear whether it will stop the march.

For Canadians, the nearest link is the diaspora. In the 2021 census, 303,260 people in Canada reported Pakistani ethnic or cultural origin, about 0.83 per cent of the population, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia. The federal government’s travel advisory tells Canadians to exercise a high degree of caution in Pakistan overall and to avoid all travel to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with exceptions for the districts of Haripur, Abbottabad and Chitral. It advises against road travel to Chitral. The page did not show an update date when read. No statement from Ottawa on the emergency was found.

Watch for whether PTI goes ahead with the Islamabad march and whether the government publishes the legal basis and a timetable for the six-month period. This is a developing story.

Via Al Jazeera, The National and Gulf News.

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