Symbolic imagePakistan suspends Khan's provincial government and declares emergency
Pakistan's president declared a state of emergency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday and suspended the government led by Imran Khan's PTI. The federal government cites failure to tackle militancy, while the PTI calls it a coup.
President Asif Ali Zardari declared the emergency on Sunday, 11 October, on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif after a cabinet decision, his office said. Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said a governor with an advisory council will take over, initially for six months, while the interior ministry said it would deploy troops. Sharif told the cabinet that security forces and citizens had been under attack for two years and that the state could not be a "silent spectator".
Dispute over militancy
The federal government and the military accuse the PTI of failing to curb militants. The party rejects this and says Islamabad withheld funding and equipment. Spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari called the move "more of a coup disguised as emergency", and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, whose JUI-F party was engaged to mediate with the PTI, called it "an ambush on democracy".
Crackdown around the march
Before the planned march, authorities detained three of Khan's sisters and hundreds of activists. An aide told Reuters that the movements of Sohail Afridi, the PTI chief minister, are restricted. In Islamabad, tens of thousands of security forces and shipping containers are meant to keep protesters from parliament, interior ministry officials said.