News
September 25, 2026
Govt Tightens Security ahead of Sept 27 Protest
By Asif Shahzad
Islamabad: Pakistan curbed access on Wednesday to its capital, Islamabad, ahead of a march planned by supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, blocking major highways with shipping containers and deploying tens of thousands of security forces.
The show of force is the starkest sign in years of how divisions between Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and the military-backed government have polarized the nation of 240 million.
Ahead of Sunday's planned march, authorities detained three of Khan's sisters and hundreds of party activists in recent days, citing a need to maintain public order.
The PTI's last large-scale protest two years ago ended in deadly clashes with security forces.
Nearly 35,000 additional police and paramilitary personnel have been stationed in and around the capital, an Interior Ministry official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
More have been deployed in other parts of the country where protesters may gather.
Two major highways linking Islamabad to the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, governed by Khan's party, have also been closed until further notice, the National Highway Authority said.
Shipping containers were seen being placed in recent days to barricade Islamabad's government district, home to parliament, the prime minister's residence, and foreign embassies.
Khan, 73, a former cricket star ousted by parliament in a 2022 no-confidence vote, has claimed to be a political prisoner.
Before his 2023 arrest, he had fallen out with the military, which is seen as the ultimate arbiter of politics in the nuclear-armed nation. The military denies his claim to be a political prisoner.
On Monday, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi warned that police were told to respond forcefully if the march turned violent, adding, "It is not like that they come and they fire shots and you do nothing."
Khan's Party Says March Will Proceed
PTI party chairman Gohar Khan said the march would proceed despite the blockade.
It comes more than a month after the government defied a court order and refused Khan treatment in a private hospital, despite mounting concerns over his health .
The protest also coincides with public discontent over inflation and rising fuel prices that has spread beyond Khan's core supporters.
"There should be freedom of expression and freedom of speech," said Muhammad Asad ul Asaf, a student. "The government has created a full atmosphere of fear." Muhammad Zeeshan, an unemployed mechanical engineer, said the curbs in Islamabad were piling pressure on an already-burdened public. "Businesses face problems and people face difficulties in commuting," he said, while "inflation is increasing day by day."
Khan's 2023 arrest sparked nationwide riots that threatened the standing of the Pakistani military in unprecedented ways when protesters stormed military installations.
Cases against him ranged from concerns over state gifts to instigating violent attacks on military and state installations, and an accusation of an unlawful marriage. -Reuters
Al Jazeera adds: The motorway linking Pakistan’s capital with Peshawar, about 180km (110 miles) to the northwest, has been closed to all traffic until further notice, according to a police notification.
So have the highway towards Dera Ismail Khan, the Hazara motorway and the Grand Trunk Road at Attock.
Each carries traffic between Islamabad and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province governed by the party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose supporters plan to march on the capital on Sunday, September 27, demanding his release.
The motorway from Lahore, about 375km (235 miles) to the southeast, remains open.
Inside Islamabad, workers have welded shipping containers together and filled them with gravel and sand so they cannot be pushed aside. Several schools and colleges have been told to shut so police brought in from Punjab and Sindh can be housed there.
Police expect the march to draw between 20,000 and 25,000 people, according to local media reports…
More than 2,000 containers have been placed across Islamabad and at Attock Bridge, the main crossing between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, according to media reports, with 19,000 police officers on their way from Punjab and Sindh, and thousands more deployed at Attock.
Dawn, the country’s leading English-language newspaper, said in an editorial that the government appeared to be preparing “not for a political event but an invasion”.
Talal Chaudhry, the junior interior minister, rejected the suggestion that the government was shutting down the capital itself.
“Normal life in Islamabad is continuing. Hospitals, offices and essential services are functioning. The containers and security arrangements are precautionary measures, not a shutdown,” he told Al Jazeera.
Rana Ihsaan Afzal, a coordinator to the prime minister and a government spokesperson, was more candid.
“In trying to counter the rhetoric PTI has adopted, we do have to take certain measures, and yes, those measures carry their own consequences too, but we have to look at the bigger picture,” he told Al Jazeera.
It is all being mounted during one of the deadliest weeks for Pakistan’s security forces this year.
An attack on a police compound in Kohat, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killed more than 20 people on September 18, and six soldiers were killed in a gunfight in nearby Hangu two days later.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi set those losses against the march in Lahore on Monday.
“The situation in KP [Khyber Pakhtunkhwa] over the past 10 days is before everyone. There was a suicide attack on a mosque, and two or three other attacks. Our captain was killed, our soldiers were killed, our policemen were killed, and these people are preparing to storm a city,” he said.
The government’s case
Government ministers have seized on a remark by Junaid Akbar, PTI’s chief in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who said protesters would turn Islamabad into Somnath, a Hindu temple in India sacked by Mehmood of Ghazni, an 11th-century invader, to try to paint the upcoming protest as a major law and order threat.
“Peaceful people do not leave their homes carrying nail-studded sticks,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in Kohat on Monday.
But the PTI’s Sohail Afridi, the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who will lead the September 27 march, answered Tarar in Peshawar on Monday.
“We will go there on nothing but two hands and two feet. There will be nothing else in our hands,” he said.
In a September 18 judgement, the Islamabad High Court ruled that no party could block roads into the capital, and barred provincial governments from using state resources for the march.
Days later came the arrests of Imran Khan’s sisters. Aleema Khan was detained in Lahore on Sunday, and her sisters, Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, were taken in a predawn raid on their homes the next day, according to a family statement on September 22.
The Lahore High Court has reserved its decision on whether a petition challenging Aleema’s detention is admissible, after the family’s lawyer argued that the order was issued after the arrest.
Chaudhry said the sisters faced several cases, had led confrontational protests in the past, and were being held as a preventive measure.
PTI says the arrests reach far wider, listing five members of the National Assembly, a senator, provincial legislators and more than 1,500 workers.
“We were peaceful, we are peaceful, and we will remain peaceful. We are being punished for being peaceful,” Gohar Ali Khan, the PTI chairman, said in Peshawar on Monday, noting that four women from Khan’s family, including his wife Bushra Bibi, are now in jail…
Back to Pakistanlink Home