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As Pakistan's political temperature rises ahead of a major opposition march on the capital, a 37-year-old provincial leader has emerged as the central figure in the campaign to secure the release of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Sohail Afridi, the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has become the most senior elected official in Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, and he is now shouldering a national role as the movement's foremost mobiliser.
On Wednesday, Afridi presided over the 59th meeting of his provincial cabinet in Peshawar, seated at the head of a long table with his hands clasped before him. Dressed in black, he leaned forward as he addressed his ministers, and when he arrived at the most pointed passages of his remarks, his voice grew quieter and more deliberate rather than louder. The setting was formal, but the message was anything but routine.
Afridi told the cabinet that for several days, "plainclothes thugs" had been targeting PTI workers, officials and elected representatives. Two of his own provincial ministers were attacked within a single week, according to his account. One survived both an assassination attempt and an abduction attempt, while the other was ambushed near a motorway toll plaza and seized. The second minister's whereabouts remain unknown.
The chief minister warned that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was being severed from the rest of the country. He said all routes into the province were being sealed by the federal government, declaring that while the rest of Pakistan would remain open, no one would be able to enter or leave his province. He then posed a stark question, asking whether an attempt was being made to repeat a tragedy like East Pakistan, a reference to the secession of Pakistan's eastern wing in 1971 that became Bangladesh. He immediately rejected any suggestion of separatism, insisting that his people were Pakistanis, are Pakistanis, and shall remain Pakistanis.
The crackdown unfolded as the PTI prepared for a march on Islamabad, its largest mobilisation in nearly two years, aimed at demanding the release of Khan. The former premier has been incarcerated for more than three years, yet he continues to command widespread popularity across the country. The protest was initially scheduled for Sunday, but two days beforehand, after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government arrested Khan's sisters and attempted to block entry to the national capital from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Afridi announced it would be postponed by a week.
Afridi characterised the delay as a matter of political strategy rather than surrender. He said he had promised the long march would happen come what may, and confirmed it would now take place on October 4. He further warned that once the protest begins, the crowds will not be under anyone's control and will not return home until their demands are met. Looking ahead to October 5, which is also Khan's birthday, he said the party would celebrate a day of victory.
The combative posture Afridi displayed in the cabinet room contrasts sharply with his conduct just ten days earlier. On that occasion, he was in Lahore to console the family of a PTI worker and to build support for the upcoming rally. After police arrested party workers on September 14, he climbed into a police van and refused to exit until they were freed. The vehicle initially drove off with him still inside before he was dropped off shortly afterward, according to the account.
Sweat-drenched and dishevelled, Afridi stood on the roadside and alleged a conspiracy to abduct him, accusing his political rivals of trying to break up the country and spread division. Moments later, addressing his own supporters, his tone shifted entirely. He urged them to remain peaceful, warning that they were being provoked in order to spread chaos, and instructed them to sit calmly. Punjab's information minister, Azma Bokhari, released footage she said showed Afridi boarding the police vehicle voluntarily, and dismissed his account of an attempted abduction as total drama.
Analysts say it is precisely this ability to move between two personas, that of an executive in the cabinet room and a combative agitator on the streets, that makes Afridi a distinctive politician. Mehmood Jan Babar, a veteran Peshawar-based political analyst who has observed him closely, told Al Jazeera that he finds it difficult to categorise the chief minister. Babar compared him to a performer who is typecast as a comedian, then suddenly appears as a romantic hero, and at other times as a martial arts expert, describing him as a figure who is constantly shifting his persona.
Afridi's rise is notable for several firsts. He is the youngest person ever to hold the chief minister's post in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's history, and the first to come from the province's former tribal districts. Born on July 12, 1989, in Bara Tehsil, a district on the province's border, he has built a political identity rooted in a region long marginalised in Pakistan's national politics.
With Khan behind bars, Afridi has become the party's leading mobiliser as it seeks to challenge the government of Shehbaz Sharif, which came to power through elections in 2024 that the PTI says were controversial and in which the party was barred from contesting under its own symbol. As the senior-most elected PTI leader, Afridi is the fulcrum around which the party's protests for Khan's release have revolved, addressing cabinet meetings one day and facing abduction claims of his own the next.
The coming days will test whether that dual role can be sustained. The October 4 march represents the PTI's most significant attempt in nearly two years to force the government's hand, and Afridi has staked his credibility on its success. Whether he can translate provincial office and street-level agitation into enough national pressure to win Khan's freedom remains an open question, but for now he stands as the most visible face of a movement that shows little sign of retreating.
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