By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: Sohail Afridi, the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, led a convoy of supporters of the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan from Kohat towards Peshawar on Tuesday, the day Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he would talk to the party only if it called off its march on Islamabad.
Afridi’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is demanding the release of its founder, Khan. Party officials in the province said the marchers would spend the night in Mattani, on the outskirts of Peshawar.
The march began on Sunday from Lakki Marwat, and Afridi’s convoy reached Kohat on Monday night. The marchers aim to gather at Khairabad, on the border with Punjab, by 8 October, when the chief minister is due to announce what comes next. PTI, which governs Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and sits in opposition at the centre, has previously named Islamabad as its final destination, though it has not said how it intends to get there. The party’s schedule has the convoy leaving the Budh Bair area of Peshawar at 12.30pm on Wednesday, before all columns converge on Khairabad on 8 October.
The federal government has warned the party against protests or gatherings in the capital. PTI went ahead after talks with ministers at the weekend collapsed over several issues, chiefly counterterrorism policy.
“Your failed policy”
Before leaving Kohat, Afridi addressed supporters at University Chowk and attacked the government’s approach to militancy.
“Your failed policy did not end terrorism,” he said, according to a statement from his office. “Let me propose a policy under which peace can be established in 100 days.”
He said military operations had been under way in the province for 22 years and terrorism was still widespread. He said he was “not afraid of anyone and neither are the youth of KP”, and that he had published a draft of his demands on social media. The same proposals, he said, were sent last week to the opposition team negotiating with the government. If any of them were found to be unconstitutional or illegal, he said, he would call off the march.
Afridi said PTI had exhausted every legal and constitutional avenue, including meetings with Khan, and that peaceful protest was the remaining option when justice was denied. He promised the demonstration would be peaceful, but said nobody would be able to stop the party once it decided to move on Islamabad.
He also said there were reports that Khan’s health was deteriorating in jail. If the former prime minister were harmed, he said, the jail administration, the prime minister and other relevant authorities would be held responsible.
On Monday night, in Kohat’s Lachi tehsil, he told supporters the struggle would be a long one that called for stamina. He said the party should not exhaust itself, adding that from 8 October a “T20 match” would begin. He used a cricketing metaphor again on Tuesday, remarking on PTI’s decision to put back the march from 27 September to 4 October by saying: “they now have problem that this is Test match”.
Government sets condition
Prime Minister Sharif offered fresh talks to PTI on Tuesday, on condition that it ends its march towards Islamabad. Speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony for an underpass in the capital, he said he urged the party to “come to your senses”, end the march and sit-in, and the government would then sit down with it. He said a joint committee of the ruling PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party had held talks with the opposition, but the process stalled after PTI demanded last-minute changes to a finalised draft. He warned that long marches hurt exports, imports and manufacturing.
Talal Chaudhry, the minister of state for interior, told a press conference that resuming talks was conditional on PTI ending its marches and protests, and laid the blame for the breakdown on Afridi. PTI rejects that account. It says the main sticking points were access to Mr Khan, his medical treatment and the government’s counterterrorism policy. According to the party, ministers agreed to restore meetings between Khan and his family and lawyers from Tuesday, but refused to write access to him into the proposed agreement. The weekend talks, held on Saturday night between a PTI and Tehreek-i-Tahafuz-i-Ayin-i-Pakistan delegation and a joint government and PPP team, lasted for hours and ended in deadlock.
Earlier on Tuesday, Faisal Karim Kundi, the governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said the march would not be allowed to proceed beyond Attock, the Punjab district that borders the province.
“They cannot go any further than Attock,” he told a local television channel, challenging PTI to “try to take a step”. He said the party lacked the capacity to go further. “They claim to have two million people with them […] show us the people,” he said.
undi said the province was struggling with terrorism, yet PTI wanted to march on the capital. He asked what screening PTI had in place to prevent infiltration, particularly by anyone from southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa seeking to reach Islamabad “to carry out a plot”.
He also accused the provincial government of staying silent on militant attacks. When the federal government asked for its support against militancy, he said, PTI responded that the army should leave the province and that talks should be held with Afghanistan. He accused Mr Khan of having had militants settled in the province in the past, adding: “He was called Taliban Khan.” He further claimed that Afridi took direction from the PTI leader Murad Saeed, whom he called a “runaway” who would “be brought before the people and made to pay for his actions”.
Asked about the possibility of governor’s rule in the province, Kundi described it as a last resort. “Surgery is the last option; first, you are put on medication,” he said. If the president and prime minister judged it necessary, he added, the province would ensure it was implemented. Mr Afridi said on Sunday that neither governor’s rule nor an emergency would be accepted in the province.
Restrictions widen
The Punjab government on Tuesday extended Section 144 across the province for 10 days, until 15 October, according to a notification from the provincial home department. The previous 13-day order expired on 5 October, and restrictions have been in force in the province since September.
The order bans gatherings of five or more people in any public place, street, road, highway, motorway or open space, and prohibits inciting people to join an unlawful assembly. It also bars the carrying or display of weapons in public, except by law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies on official duty. Weddings, funeral prayers, burials, prayers in mosques and churches, official duties of government bodies, courts and events approved by the relevant deputy commissioner are exempt.
The notification cited “credible reports” of a “serious and imminent threat” to public peace from terrorist organisations and hostile intelligence agencies. It said repeated threat alerts had warned of suicide bombers, vehicle-borne explosive devices and targeted killings at large gatherings. It also said there was “strong apprehension” that certain elements could organise assemblies in order to turn them into easy targets.
Similar measures are in place elsewhere. Section 144 was imposed in Karachi last month, banning gatherings of more than five people until 30 September. Islamabad has a two-month ban in place, and gatherings there are also prohibited under the Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Act 2024, which was pushed through the National Assembly. Balochistan has imposed the order across the province for 30 days. Movement on several roads in Dera Ismail Khan, Upper and Lower South Waziristan, Tank and Hangu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was also restricted for varying periods before the march began.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
