You must have seen that the PTI leadership had been complaining that the federal government was not ready to negotiate with them, and that this was why these issues were arising.
I think this was a very good development. The representative of the Pakistan Peoples Party was also present in the meeting, as was the representative of the federal government. So there was hope that the issues would be resolved.
It was a very long session, and I think they had already developed a consensus on a lot of issues. The PTI leadership also said that. Then, in the middle, as usually happens during such talks, some issues came up. They discussed them, there were some amendments, and the language was changed. They said, “We will say this instead of that.”
Even after that, on the same night, I talked to about three or four people from PTI, and they were very hopeful. They also issued a statement that their negotiations had been successful. They posted on X as well. So there was hope that the negotiations would be successful and that the issues were going well.
In the middle of the night, they issued another statement saying that 99 percent of the issues had been resolved during the negotiations, but then came an issue that became the root cause of the deadlock, and the negotiations failed.
All the other issues, such as their demands that their leader, Mr Imran Khan, should be transferred to a hospital as per the Supreme Court order, that his wife, Ms Bushra Bibi, should be shifted to Bani Gala or a hospital, and that Mr Khan’s family members, leaders and lawyers should be allowed to meet him in jail, were being discussed.
They also wanted his trials to be expedited. These were a few of the issues. As far as I know, there had been a lot of development on all of them. There was one point over which these negotiations failed.
That was the federal government, including the Pakistan Peoples Party, wanting the provincial government to support the center.
At this time, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is facing serious security challenges, and there are attacks on a daily basis. The government team was asking that the provincial and federal governments should sit together and make a plan or strategy in this regard.
Whatever the modus operandi might be, especially regarding military operations, they were saying that military operations should be carried out in a few districts where they were required so that the writ of the government, which is nowhere to be seen in some areas, could be restored.
The no-go areas that have been created should be abolished, and these areas should be properly developed like the rest of the country. The writ of the state should be restored.
But these people did not agree on that.
Their team in Islamabad repeatedly contacted Chief Minister Sohail Afridi, but they were not ready in this regard.
Later, Shaukat Yousafzai himself, who is the Secretary of Information, also made a statement that the negotiations were actually about the issues that I have mentioned. He said that this matter could be resolved later, and that the provincial and federal governments could sit together and work out how the security challenges in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and our tribal districts, including the militant groups, could be handled.
So because of that, the negotiations were not successful.
On the same night, PTI issued a statement that their long march would continue, and then in the early morning, the Chief Minister took a helicopter and set out.
This is a very interesting question, and most people have been asking this question since yesterday: Is their long march and their frustration because Imran Khan is in jail?
They want to get Imran Khan out of jail, get him transferred to a hospital, and want the government to give permission to his family members, lawyers and doctors to meet him. They also want his cases to be tried swiftly.
These are the issues for which the leadership of Tehreek-e-Insaf announced this long march. They gave the dates of September 27 and October 4.
But the interesting thing is that those issues were about to be solved, or they had already been solved.
In the middle of all this came the issue of terrorism, the counterterrorism strategy, the military operation, or whatever you may call it. The KP government always wants the federal government to play its role.
You may have heard Sohail Afridi and his cabinet members saying many times that it is not our job to implement the National Action Plan. This is the job of the federal government.
That is why, when the government team demanded that the KP government come together and solve this issue, saying that both governments should work together to end militancy and terrorism, PTI came out of the negotiation process.
As you can see, they have been on the road since yesterday. The long march is meant to put pressure on the federal government, and vice versa.
Yesterday, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi met with Faisal Karim Kundi, the Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The federal government is trying to pressure the KP government by suggesting that an emergency may be enforced in KP, that the Chief Minister may be disqualified, or that Governor’s Rule may be imposed here.
So both governments are blackmailing each other.
But our loss, our KP’s loss, is that, just like their previous jalsas, almost every jalsa has been held in the province. This long march is also confined to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone, and it is bringing the province to a standstill.
Even now, the Indus Highway, which is a very busy highway connecting KP to Punjab and Sindh, is closed. All our trade is carried on that route, but the highway is also closed as they are marching towards Peshawar.
These roads have been closed since yesterday. They are coming here. It is unfortunate that they are not going anywhere at the moment. There is no plan to go to Islamabad yet. They will just go around, roaming through the province.
There are different rumors, factors and reasons for why PTI does not speak against the TTP.
One reason is that the Tehreek-e-Insaf government thinks that the federal government and the security forces have imprisoned Mr Khan. According to PTI, they think that this is not their war against terrorism, but a war of the security forces.
If we cooperate in this war, it means that we are helping the security forces, or, in other words, we are helping the federal government.
Right now, the biggest problem is in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
You must have read the NACTA report. From 2001 to 2022, 83,000 people have been martyred in Pakistan because of this militancy.
The estimated losses are Rs35 trillion. Pakistan has lost Rs35 trillion in this war so far.
The problem is that all the people who have been arrested during this war are not being tried.
The Interior Minister made a statement in the Senate that more than 5,000 suspected militants were tried. Out of them, only 720 were convicted. The rest were released.
The reason is that the judges themselves feel insecure. The prosecutors, lawyers and witnesses also feel insecure.
They feel insecure because, in the past, judges were killed. A former chief justice was martyred in Balochistan. Recently, a judge was killed along with his bodyguards.
That is why people were threatened.
So Punjab played a key role in this matter. They made an amendment to the Anti-Terrorism Punjab Act of 2026. They have decided that the identities of the judges who will sit in the Anti-Terrorism Court will be kept secret, and the identities of prosecutors, witnesses and others will also be protected.
They have called them faceless courts.
Obviously, no one will know about them. The Chief Justice will select one judge from among five judges of the Anti-Terrorism Court. That judge will hear the case, but the name of the judge will not be revealed.
It is not as if everything is happening in the dark, so people may complain about the punishment. It will remain under observation, and people from the judiciary will look at it.
Similarly, the prosecutors will also be selected from a panel of five people. This is being done to ensure their security so that these cases are decided quickly and the people who are involved in terrorism, who kill people and who kill law enforcement personnel, can be punished.
Punjab has worked on this.
Why isn’t this happening here in KP?
People in PTI think that this is a war of the federal government and the security agencies. This is the first reason.
The second reason is that they know that the militants are strong here.
We have heard them saying this openly dozens of times, that ANP supported the security forces in the war against terrorism. What happened to them?
They are scared.
They say that they will rule and become billionaires.
Believe me, we have been working in the media for 26 years. There are good people in PTI, as there are in every party.
But I know many people who had a Suzuki Alto car 15 or 20 years ago. Today, they have a car worth Rs60 million or Rs70 million. They have become billionaires.
They are fortunate that they do not need a campaign or any kind of resources. They have only one name, the founder of PTI, and that is more than enough to get them elected.
That is why everyone wants to be martyred, because they are hiding behind the founder’s name.
Now, as far as the areas from which the long march is expected to be joined, such as Tank, Lakki Marwat, Bannu, Karak and Dera Ismail Khan, these are terror-affected areas.
The writ of the government in these districts comes to an end when the sun sets. During the night, the government has no writ in these areas.
So people are still wondering. They are surprised because the long march was moving through these areas and it was very much safe.
People are asking this question because no other party can dare to hold a jalsa there.
It is nice that everyone is safe, but a third force can do anything at any time to create instability.
As you know, we share a long border with Afghanistan. Given the statements of the federal and KP governments against one another, any third country or any party can create havoc.
If a terrorist attack is carried out, and most of the participants are walking or are in their vehicles, then in case of a terrorist attack there will be many casualties.
Obviously, the KP government and Chief Minister Sohail Afridi will be held responsible for that.
It is also a common fact that so far not a single terrorist attack has been condemned by PTI, nor have they joined any funeral, especially the funerals of fallen KP police heroes at Police Lines Peshawar, which is at a walking distance from the Chief Minister’s House.
Though they are now attending funerals, in the past they had never done so.
So it is a two-way traffic. When the militants see that PTI has such sympathies with them, they also reciprocate by not attacking them or harming them.
People allege that PTI has TTP sympathizers or that they pay ransom. I have no proof of that, so I cannot say that.
But what I see is that both have each other’s names in their good books, and both do not see each other as a potential threat.
