Editorial
As Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) protest is approaching on September 27, 2026, the political scene of Pakistan is becoming volatile as it had been in the past also. PTI leaders, while referring to the historic event in public statements, threatened the state that they would conquer the capital city of Islamabad as Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni conquered Somnath Temple in January 1026 CE. Responding to such direct threats to the state, Interior Minister Mohsan Naqvi indicated that the state would fix PTI’s threat ‘once and for all’.
Naqvi had background to his statement ‘once and for all’ because it is not the first time PTI plans to disrupt public order in Pakistan. It has a bitter and long history. Several times in the past, PTI, while using the official machinery of the federating unit of KP, marched to Islamabad and even attacked and destroyed military installations.
The events of May 9, 2023, marked a highly unprecedented escalation against the state of Pakistan when former Prime Minister and PTI founder Imran Khan was arrested in connection with the Al-Qadir Trust corruption case. PTI followers, along with leaders, attacked the General Headquarters (GHQ) gate in Rawalpindi, Corps Commander House (Jinnah House) in Lahore, the PAF base in Mianwali, alongside various monuments of martyrs, a radio station in Peshawar, and several government buildings across Pakistan.
The entire nation was shocked by what happened on May 9, and sane politicians, academicians, historians, and writers demanded the immediate ban on PTI, calling it a ‘Cult’ that has a single-point agenda, and that is harming the reputation of the state and its institutions. On July 15, 2024, Federal Information Minister Attaullah Tarar held a press conference in Islamabad where he announced that the PML-N-led federal coalition government had decided to ban the PTI, explicitly stating that “PTI and Pakistan cannot go together.” The government could ban this cult under Article 17 of the Pakistani Constitution, which allows the state to restrict political parties acting against sovereignty or integrity. However, nothing was done practically, and then the November 26, 2024, attack on Islamabad took place. Unfortunately, several of PTI leaders who led violence on May 9 are sitting in the Parliament though they should have been in jails.
PTI called the Islamabad March on November 26, 2024, the “Final Call” protest and organized a multi-directional march toward the capital city of Islamabad, led by Bushra Bibi (Imran Khan’s wife) and the then KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur. Despite extensive arrangements, heavily mobilized PTI convoys having road-cleaning machinery from the KP government successfully breached the barriers and reached D-Chowk near the Parliament House. The situation turned deadly when intense clashes broke out between law enforcement and protesters. After losing the lives of five security personnel (including Rangers and the when the civil administration failed to manage the situation, the government invoked Article 245 of the Constitution to deploy the military with “shoot-at-sight” warnings, and after this development, the main leadership of PTI ran away from the scene and left the PTI workers alone to deal with law enforcement agencies, and PTI officially called off the protest to prevent further arrests of its leadership, including the CM of KP.
These two horrific incidents did not take place in a vacuum. They had a long history behind them, as the famous Urdu poet Qabil Ajmari says:
Vaqt kartā hai parvarish barsoñ—–Time nurtures for years
Hādisa ek dam nahīñ hotā —-Incident does not take place in a day
Before these two horrific incidents, PTI had been trying to push the state to the wall and had been launching a hateful campaign against the military and other institutions of the state by using Western media and anti-Pakistan groups but virtually there was no response from the government to deal with the situation.
On June 1, 2022, the former Federal Minister for Human Rights of PTI, Dr. Shireen Mazari, addressed a letter to the United Nations demanding an independent, impartial investigation into alleged state excesses, police violence, and media censorship during PTI’s “Azadi March” on May 24–25, 2022. On June 2, 2022, Dr. Shireen Mazari sent formal complaints to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, alongside specific UN Special Rapporteurs—including the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. Dr. Shireen Mazari lives in Islamabad, and no action for this act against the state was taken against her.
PTI also wrote letters to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stop loan payments to Pakistan. It also wrote letters to the United Nations (UN) and UN human rights bodies in Geneva, Switzerland, to penalize Pakistan for alleged human rights violations. On 28, 2024, PTI wrote to IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, urging her to stop loan payments to Pakistan due to ‘political instability’ in Pakistan. This letter was vetted by former Finance Minister of PTI Shaukat Tarin, who had been living in Pakistan peacefully after this blatant act of harming the state.
Now Interior Minister Mohsan Naqvi is talking about how the state would fix PTI’s threat ‘once and for all’. Is the government waiting for another May 9 or November 26, and then it will take action against a group that had been constantly harming the state interests? Even this group is not allowing action to be taken against terrorists in the province (KP) it rules? Even this group had been protecting TTP terrorists and providing them ‘protection money’? Many PTI provincial ministers have publicly accepted that they provide protection money to TTP.
There is a phrase “nip in the bud” that means to stop a problem at an early stage before it has a chance to grow, develop, or become much worse. In everyday conversation, the “bud” represents something bad, a minor conflict, or a small issue, and “nipping” it means dealing with it immediately. Does Pakistan not believe in nipping it in the bud and wait for a serious happening?
