Dar defends KP emergency as a step against terrorism rather than a political move, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on Monday. He was speaking at a seminar in Islamabad, a day after the federal government imposed emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Mr Dar said the province had been hit by terrorism for the past decade and a half. He asked whether the Centre could simply look the other way because action might be read as political. He said it could not, and he gave his guarantee that politics was not the motive.
Dar defends KP emergency at Islamabad seminar
The deputy prime minister said the federal government had a duty to act once it was settled that no other solution remained. The government had no choice but to take the steps it took on Sunday, he added, and it would carry them through in full.
He also pointed to the price his own party had paid before. The PML-N took a heavy political cost in 2022, he said, when it adopted hard structural measures and pulled the country back from the edge of default. He predicted the province would in time see peace restored and lives made safe.
The legal basis for Sunday’s move is already on record. The president approved emergency and governor’s rule in KP under Articles 232 and 234, on the advice of the federal cabinet. The cabinet cited the PTI-led provincial government’s deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has already defended the KP emergency on similar grounds, saying the Centre spent a month trying to bring the province on board.
Tarar links the emergency to the threat from Afghan soil
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar spoke at the same seminar. He said Pakistan wanted peaceful coexistence with Afghanistan, but he warned that this desire for peace must not be read as weakness.
Mr Tarar said Pakistan had lost more than 90,000 lives in the war against terrorism, along with economic losses above $100bn. He said Pakistan had acted as a shield between terrorists and the rest of the world, and its sacrifices had served global peace as well.
He put the militant presence across the border in hard numbers. Citing United Nations and independent assessments, he said more than 6,000 Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan fighters were estimated to be in Afghanistan, with the total number of terrorists above 20,000. He referred to the UN Monitoring Team’s 38th report, which recorded the relocation of nearly 2,000 family members of TTP fighters from border areas to deeper inside Afghanistan.
Pakistan had hosted more than four million Afghan refugees for over four decades, Mr Tarar said, and its advice to Kabul had fallen on deaf ears. The UN monitoring report he cited covers December 16, 2025 to June 9, 2026. It found that continued Afghan Taliban support for the TTP had added to the frequency and lethality of attacks inside Pakistan.
A province adjusting to a new order
On the ground, the emergency is now a daily fact. Containers block roads across Peshawar, and the Pakistan Army has been authorised to deploy in aid of civil power. Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry has confirmed that Sohail Afridi is held in preventive custody, along with some of his cabinet members.
The PTI rejects the government’s case. The party has challenged the KP emergency in the Peshawar High Court, and it calls the move an unconstitutional assault on provincial autonomy.
That split now defines the contest ahead. The government is presenting the emergency as a security measure with a constitutional basis, and its two senior ministers made that case in public on the same day. The courts, the detained leadership’s fate and conditions inside the province will test how far that case holds. (Source: Dawn)
Frequently asked questions
What did Ishaq Dar say about the KP emergency?
Mr Dar said the emergency and governor’s rule were not a political move. He described them as action against the terrorism that has hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the past decade and a half, and he said the government would carry the measures through in full.
What figures did Attaullah Tarar cite at the seminar?
Mr Tarar said Pakistan had lost more than 90,000 lives and over $100bn in the war against terrorism. Citing UN and independent assessments, he put the number of TTP fighters in Afghanistan at more than 6,000, with total terrorists above 20,000.
How has the PTI responded to the emergency?
The PTI has condemned the move as unconstitutional and has challenged it in the Peshawar High Court. Its chief minister, Sohail Afridi, has been confirmed as held in preventive custody.
