Overview
- Hours after negotiations collapsed overnight, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi led thousands of PTI supporters on a staged long march from Lakki Marwat toward Islamabad on Sunday.
- The talks broke down over two core demands: PTI’s insistence on unrestricted meetings and medical assessment for Imran Khan and the party’s demand that counterterrorism policy in KP be shaped with provincial consultation.
- The federal government deployed thousands of police and paramilitary personnel, sealed key approaches with barricades and publicly vowed not to allow marchers to occupy Islamabad.
- Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif repeated an offer to resume talks if PTI calls off the march and the government arranged limited family and lawyer meetings for Khan that PTI called insufficient.
- The standoff follows Imran Khan’s 2023 arrest and rising militant attacks in KP, and it raises risks to public order, the capital’s functioning and the economy while officials discuss legal and constitutional tools to enforce security.