On October 11, Pakistan’s federal government suspended the elected administration of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the name of fighting terrorism. Chief Minister Sohail Afridi was taken into custody, the governor assumed executive authority and an eleven-member advisory council was installed to help run the province. Whatever the intervention eventually achieves against armed groups, its first demonstrable success was the removal of a political opponent.

Islamabad’s argument is that the security crisis had become unmanageable because the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government was obstructing counterterrorism operations. The PML-N-led federal government obtained President Asif Ali Zardari’s approval for emergency measures and governor’s rule under Articles 232 and 234 of the Constitution, while troops were deployed to assist the civil administration. The authorities present this as a necessary response to an exceptional threat.

The threat is real. According to a policy review drawing on Pak Institute for Peace Studies data, terrorist attacks in KP increased from 111 in 2021 to 413 in 2025, a rise of 272 per cent. The progression was sustained: 169 attacks in 2022, 174 in 2023 and 295 in 2024. Residents have endured a deteriorating security environment for years. They do not need a federal minister to explain that terrorism exists.

What requires explanation is the passage from that security failure to the suspension of their elected government. An increase in attacks establishes the need for a more effective security policy. It does not, by itself, establish that provincial constitutional government has become impossible, or that detaining its leaders will make counterterrorism more effective.

The federal government has tried to bridge that gap by turning an argument about competence into an accusation of complicity. On September 28, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar described the PTI leadership in KP as the TTP’s “B team”. After the October 11 federal meeting, he alleged that the provincial government was “hand in glove with terrorists” and cited intelligence and law-enforcement reports. The accusation was sweeping: terrorists supposedly had a say in how individual districts were run.

If officials facilitated armed groups, the evidence should support identifiable charges against identifiable people. An intelligence assessment invoked at a press conference is not a substitute for that process. Nor can an allegation against a party’s leadership automatically cancel the representative authority of the province that elected it. Islamabad is asking the public to accept a remarkable shortcut: the government says the opposition is allied with terrorists, and the remedy is to place the opposition’s province under its own control.

The arrests extended well beyond Afridi. PTI provincial president Junaid Akbar and Assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swati were detained. Former chief minister Ali Amin Gandapur said he had been placed under house arrest in Dera Ismail Khan. Asad Qaiser claimed that as many as 2,000 party workers and supporters had been detained during the crackdown. That figure remains the party’s account, but the detention of senior elected figures establishes the political reach of the intervention without requiring every reported arrest to be confirmed.

The reaction on the streets was violent in several places. On October 13, at least twelve people were reported injured and more than fifty arrested. In Bara, protesters reportedly disarmed security personnel and briefly held fifteen inside a municipal office. A NADRA centre and parts of a Rescue 1122 building were set on fire. Roadblocks and clashes were also reported in Tirah, Hayatabad, Swat and Swabi, while police and paramilitary personnel used tear gas, baton charges and live ammunition.

Attacks on emergency services, public buildings and security personnel are serious offences. Those responsible should be investigated and prosecuted. Their actions do not retrospectively establish that the provincial government was allied with the TTP. The sequence matters: unrest following the suspension of an elected administration cannot simply be recycled as proof that the administration had to be suspended.

Charging protesters with terrorism also requires evidence about individual conduct. Arson, assault, peaceful protest and membership of an opposition party are different acts. When the same security vocabulary is applied across them, it becomes harder to determine whether the authorities are dismantling militant networks or disabling political mobilisation. For a government seeking exceptional powers, that ambiguity is useful. For a counterterrorism strategy dependent on public cooperation, it is corrosive.

The figures used to justify the intervention deserve equal care. Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told Parliament that 3,787 terrorist incidents had been recorded over the preceding year. That tally is far larger than the PIPS annual count, but the figures cannot be compared without knowing the categories, reporting methods and periods involved. The government needs to explain what its number measures. The gravity of a threat is not improved by presenting statistics whose relationship remains unclear.

The South Asia Terrorism Portal’s partial figures offer another perspective. By October 13, it recorded 1,853 terrorism-related deaths in KP during 2026: 1,264 people classified as militants, 329 security personnel and 260 civilians. Over the corresponding period of 2025, it recorded 1,704 deaths, including 1,139 militants, 365 security personnel and 200 civilians.

The civilian toll had therefore risen by thirty per cent even as recorded security-force deaths declined. A larger overall death toll, much of it comprising reported militant fatalities, cannot alone establish whether civilians are becoming safer. By that more immediate measure, the province’s residents have reason to question the effectiveness of the security response. Their vulnerability also makes it particularly important that accountability reach all the institutions responsible for security, rather than stopping at the provincial cabinet.

The constitutional dispute is now before the courts. PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan petitioned the Peshawar High Court on October 14, seeking restoration of the elected government. On October 20, the court sought responses from the authorities and adjourned further proceedings until November 10. A separate challenge was filed in the Federal Constitutional Court, contesting the legal basis of the emergency and governor’s rule.

These proceedings concern the conditions under which exceptional authority may replace ordinary provincial government. Article 234 addresses a failure to carry on government in accordance with the Constitution. The existence of that provision does not establish that its conditions have been met in this case. The federal government must demonstrate the constitutional necessity of its action, rather than treat its own accusation as the final judgment.

The political test is equally demanding. Islamabad needs to explain why cooperation against armed groups required the removal and detention of elected leaders, what less intrusive measures were attempted and what verifiable conditions will allow representative government to resume. Without clear answers, an emergency declared to restore security risks becoming an arrangement in which the federal authorities decide both when the province has failed and when its voters may count again.

Governor Faisal Karim Kundi and his advisory council now carry responsibility for the results they promised. They cannot indefinitely attribute attacks to an administration they have rendered powerless. Nor will arrest totals demonstrate success against the TTP when those totals include opposition workers detained during political protests. The relevant measures are civilian protection, accountable law enforcement and the disruption of armed networks.

The danger is that the intervention will undermine the cooperation those objectives require. People who regard the provincial administration as their representative are being told that their political choice constitutes a security liability. Police must then confront protests against a transfer of power while also confronting armed organisations. A province already carrying a disproportionate burden of violence acquires another source of confrontation.

Pakistan’s federal government has secured direct authority over KP. It has yet to demonstrate that this will secure KP’s people. Until it does, the clearest result of the emergency is that a security crisis has enabled the governing coalition to take control of a province it could not control through its elected provincial government. Terrorism supplied the justification. The opposition supplied the detainees.