The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz will ask the National Assembly to back a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa emergency. Its lawmakers settled on that course at a meeting of the parliamentary party in Islamabad. Wednesday is the day set for the Assembly to pass a resolution endorsing the imposition of the emergency in the province.
Rana Sanaullah, adviser to the prime minister on political affairs, briefed reporters on the decision. He said the government had run out of choices and now had to show it could deliver in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He called the move a step taken because circumstances left no other path, and he said the situation in the province would improve, with terrorism ended in full.
The case for a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa emergency
He told the media the campaign against terrorism could not be allowed to fail, whatever it required. Defeating it, he said, was the only route still open. He accused the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government of withholding the full cooperation the effort needed. The provincial administration, which is led by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had in his telling been occupied with other business rather than the threat itself.
Balochistan, he said, stood in a different place: its government was working fully with the anti-terror effort. He also alleged that the story PTI tells the public runs close to the line taken by terrorists. That comparison is his charge. His comments to the media include no reply from PTI or from the provincial administration.
Militants, neighbouring capitals and crime
On what armed groups want, Rana Sanaullah said they were demanding that Balochistan be split away from Pakistan. He asked how any talks could proceed with people who speak of taking the country apart. “The issue is that terrorists have no political demands,” he said. They were, he added, attacking Pakistan’s integrity.
He said Saudi Arabia, China, Turkiye and Qatar had tried to help settle the matter. The government in Afghanistan, he said, had not accepted the ideas those countries put forward. He named two sets of actors in the violence: the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, usually called the TTP, and elements he referred to as Fitna al-Khawarij.
He also listed crimes he said were widening the reach of terrorism: extortion, drug trafficking, and vehicles entering without payment of customs duty. Those vehicles are ones brought across the border without the customs duty normally charged there. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa emergency, if Wednesday’s resolution passes, would then have the National Assembly’s formal backing. Sanaullah cast that backing as necessary if the state is to prove it can act in the province.
Aasan alfaaz mein
PML-N ne Islamabad mein faisla kiya hai ke National Assembly Khyber Pakhtunkhwa mein emergency ki manzoori de. Wednesday ko is resolution par vote hona hai. Rana Sanaullah kehte hain ke soobai hakoomat dehshatgardi ke khilaf poori madad nahi kar rahi. Un ka kehna hai ke ye qadam majboori mein hai, taake soobe mein halaat behtar hon aur dehshatgardi khatam ho.
