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Two days after the imposition of emergency rule in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on October 11, Irfanullah, 27, and his three brothers joined hundreds of protesters in the town of Bara. The rally was one of a series of protests against the imposition of emergency rule and the removal of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s elected government, which was led by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, the party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
More than a dozen people were injured and at least one person, a 13-year-old boy, was killed after police fired on the protesters October 13, according to witnesses interviewed by Drop Site, images, videos, and hospital records. Four police officers were injured and 50 people were arrested, according to Dawn. The political confrontation has brought protests, arrests of party leaders and workers, and communications disruptions across the province.
“It was a peaceful protest,” said Irfanullah, whose younger brother, Munir, 19, was shot in the left foot, according to hospital records obtained by Drop Site News. “The Khyber police fired at the protesters, and as a result, my brother and many others were injured.” Irfanullah, who like his brothers is a PTI party worker, remained at Munir’s bedside while he was in the hospital. “We didn’t cause any unrest nor did we have any intention of starting chaos,” Irfanullah said. “We are not planning to abandon PTI. … We are just demanding and raising our voice for our rights and for peace here, nothing else,” he added.
Habeel Khan, the 13-year-old boy who was killed, worked at an eatery in the bazaar, and was caught in the gunfire. His uncle told Drop Site that Habeel was taken to a hospital where he was unable to receive treatment before he was admitted to another hospital in Peshawar, where doctors operated on him. Habeel died in the hospital four days after the protest. According to the hospital death summary, Habeel was shot in the abdomen, sustaining severe injuries to his intestines and an exit wound in his lower back. His recorded causes of death included the gunshot wound, cardiac arrest, and septic shock.
“As a child, he worked to earn money only because of his poverty, otherwise at his age he should’ve been in school,” his uncle said.
Another young boy, whom Drop Site was unable to contact, was selling bread in the bazaar when he was shot by police. In a video obtained by Drop Site, an adolescent boy can be seen lying on a hospital stretcher with a gushing, gunshot wound to his thigh. He says he was shot by local police, adding, “They are terrorists, they are oppressors.”
Many locals interviewed by Drop Site said injured protesters were unable to seek treatment at local health care facilities in Bara for fear of arrest, or were turned away because health care providers feared police raids. According to Irfanullah, Munir initially stayed home. On the two occasions he sought treatment at a local hospital, staff turned him away because they feared police would come to arrest him. He later received treatment for his gunshot wound at a hospital in Peshawar.
Maheen Pracha, the spokesperson for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent watchdog, said it has received reports of police raids in Peshawar, Swat and Khyber, the dispersal of smaller gatherings, as well as curfews and military deployments.
“Whether it’s the PTI in power now or somebody else, the same laws being made now will come back to haunt the next government in power,” Pracha said.
Drop Site sent a list of questions to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police but did not receive a response before publication. The Embassy of Pakistan did not respond to a request for comment.
According to two “first information reports,” or FIRs, filed during the multiday protests, police allege that protesters attacked and injured police officers, held some officers hostage, and destroyed government property. One of the police documents, filed on October 12, calls for the arrest of local PTI leaders and approximately 85 unnamed individuals, describing alleged participants as “agitated and extremist workers of PTI” who were armed with “slingshots, wooden sticks, stones and firearms” and “attacked the police and fired upon them with the firearms and the intention to kill.”
A second FIR, filed on October 13, names PTI leaders and other local residents and alleges that a “mob” of approximately 300 PTI workers chanted provocative anti-state slogans and speeches, incited arson, set up roadblocks targeting government property, held police personnel hostage, and subjected them to violence. The FIR states that police responded with a baton charge and aerial firing to disperse the crowd.
PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan and his legal team are challenging the move in the Peshawar High Court, arguing that the imposition of emergency rule and the removal of the provincial government violate constitutional requirements.
Federal Takeover
The violence in Bara unfolded amid a broader confrontation between the federal government and PTI, which had governed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the last 13 years. The arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in May 2023 sparked protests that escalated into attacks on government buildings and military installations, with thousands of people taken into custody. Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023 and subjected to periods of solitary confinement, following a series of cases brought against him after his ouster from power in April 2022. In recent months, reports of Khan’s deteriorating health prompted leaders in his party, his family, supporters, and human rights organizations to call for improved prison conditions and access to medical care.
The party had been negotiating Khan’s access to health care and his release from prison with the federal government, but the talks stalled. On October 4, thousands of PTI supporters began marching from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa toward Islamabad to press those demands.
In response, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif convened an emergency cabinet meeting, and on October 11 President Asif Ali Zardari imposed a state of emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, suspending its elected government on Sharif’s advice and citing a surge in terrorism and political unrest to justify the decisions. The Chief Minister Sohail Afridi, provincial PTI president Junaid Akbar, Assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swati, and several other party leaders were detained. Pakistan’s Army was deployed to the province the same day and will remain there throughout the duration of emergency rule.
“The government is sort of willing to say [Afridi] is in protective custody, but isn’t willing to produce him before a court, or give any evidence of where he is. This is the chief executive of a province of 45 million people,” said a senior PTI leader, who was in hiding and spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Six days after assuming governor’s rule, Governor Faisal Karim Kundi said the province would extract and sell its mineral resources, and specifically referred to mineral resources in districts including Lakki Marwat, Tank, and Bannu. He also called for joint ventures with domestic and foreign companies to develop its oil and gas reserves. The province is rich in natural resources, including natural gas, copper, chromite, lead, emeralds, marble, limestone, and coal, and produces up to 50% of Pakistan’s total daily domestic crude oil production.
Constitutional Challenge
PTI leaders and constitutional experts are challenging the legality of the federal government’s imposition of emergency rule. Asad Jamal, a Lahore-based lawyer and constitutional law expert, said Zardari’s proclamation failed to meet the constitutional standards required to justify the measures. Citing terrorist incidents alone, he said, was not sufficient.
“I’m not a supporter of PTI,” Jamal said. “So it makes me reiterate that the constitutional provisions are being used in a very dishonest manner against one province, which violates the autonomy of a province. It is discriminatory in essence.”
Under Article 232 of the constitution, emergency rule can be imposed in response to a grave emergency involving internal disturbances beyond a provincial government’s power to control. Under governor’s rule, permitted under Article 234, the president can transfer the provincial government’s executive powers to the governor and allow Parliament to exercise the provincial assembly’s powers.
“The proclamation does not reach that threshold,” Jamal said. “They are alleging that the provincial government does not have the political will to fight terrorism. How do you empirically and objectively measure a government’s political will in order to exercise these powers?”
On October 15, Pakistan’s parliament approved the governor’s rule for an initial two-month period. Any continuation requires further parliamentary approval, and the measure cannot remain in force for more than six months in total.
Regarding the removal of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s government, Jamal said that there is “no provision in the constitution” that says “the provincial government is disbanded” during a state of emergency.
According to the constitution, Jamal said, the provincial government should only lose certain powers, but the chief minister and the elected government remain. “The chief minister was picked up … under which constitutional or legal provision has he been arrested?”
Jamal added that there’s no concept of a governing secretariat in the constitution or in any federal or provincial law.
“Where has this come from?” he asked. “The proclamation has come at a particular political moment when the provincial government was leading a protest march, which would enter the capital,” Jamal said, “That is what the federal government was afraid of.”
On October 14, PTI’s legal team filed a petition in the Peshawar High Court on behalf of party chairman Gohar Ali Khan challenging the constitutionality of the emergency and governor’s rule.
“They can declare it unconstitutional, roll back everything done in the past 15 days or so,” Jamal said.
Sameer Khosa is representing Gohar in the case. He told Drop Site that PTI wants the government to disclose the evidence it relied on to justify the proclamation, including the governor’s report.
“One of the things that we are asking for in court is that the material relied upon by the president to issue the proclamation has to be brought before the court so that it can be reviewed as to what is the evidence on the basis of which the proclamation has been issued,” Khosa told Drop Site.
High Stakes for Democracy
The consequences of the federal takeover extend beyond Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, raising broader concerns about human rights, civilian authority, and democracy across Pakistan.
The state of emergency and governor’s rule is a significant escalation in Pakistan’s longstanding struggle between civilian authority and the military, according to Aqil Shah, a political scientist at Georgetown University and author of “The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan.”
“It’s an important setback because the PTI has been … disempowered and dismantled, pretty much at all levels,” Shah said.
The move has not only stripped the PTI from power but has deprived the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of political representation, leaving them ruled by a governor and technocrats who effectively act as military proxies, Shah said, adding that the military’s political ambitions extend beyond Munir’s personal grievances, including Khan’s removal of Munir as Inter-Services Intelligence chief. The military’s broader objective, he said, is to prevent civilian leaders from challenging its dominance over national security, internal security, and electoral politics.
Shah described Khan as “an existential threat” to the military’s rule.
“The only political challenge is Imran Khan and the sort of adjunct challenge of the PTI government KP, and so those have been contained,” he added.
The senior PTI leader told Drop Site the party would likely participate in the next elections, but Shah said the vote was unlikely to be free and fair.
The current federal coalition of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, or PML-N, and the Pakistan Peoples Party, or PPP, came to power after an election marred by allegations of rigging. Pakistan’s election commission has denied the allegations, but a senior official admitted to participating in efforts to manipulate the results.
The military has little incentive to rule directly, Shah said, because it can exercise power through civilian political allies without assuming direct responsibility for the country’s governance. The country’s most popular leader is imprisoned, while other parties are willing to cooperate with the military, allowing it to retain de facto power without accepting responsibility for governing.
Pakistan’s 27th Constitutional Amendment, passed last year, granted lifelong immunity to the president and the army chief, a provision that currently applies to Field Marshal and Army Chief Asim Munir and other top officers. Shah said this measure reflects the military’s broader interest in shielding itself from civilian accountability.
“Accountability is always reserved for civilians, and it’s punitive and vindictive accountability,” Shah said. “[Munir] wants to be immune from any sort of accountability for life till he dies. It’s not about being in uniform. It’s forever.”
Ali Akhtar Afridi contributed reporting in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
