Afridi Says He Was Asked to Back a New Military Operation in Exchange for Help on Imran Khan. He Refused.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi told PTI long march participants gathered in Khyber district on October 7 that he had rejected an offer to endorse a new military operation in the province in exchange for assurances on Imran Khan's medical treatment — and used the moment to pledge that his own counterterrorism policy could restore peace in KP within 100 days.

The claim at the center of it

Afridi said he had been approached to sign off on another military operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with assurances about Khan's health and jail access offered in return. He said he refused, framing it as a closed-room decision he would not let the federal government make without the provincial government's consent. He went further than a simple no: he warned that if any harm came to Khan in custody, those responsible for his care — jail officials and the government officials overseeing them — would be held accountable.

Why Tirah is the reference point

Afridi's refusal carries a specific, recent memory behind it. Tens of thousands of residents fled Khyber district's Tirah Valley starting in December 2025 after mosque loudspeakers and a December 20 agreement between tribal elders and security officials set a mid-January deadline for households to vacate ahead of a military operation against militants in the area — even as the federal Information Ministry publicly denied any order for what residents and KP officials called a "depopulation." Compensation promises that followed — a one-time Rs250,000 per displaced family plus Rs50,000 a month, with larger payouts for destroyed homes — have drawn complaints from displaced families that the money and promised returns home haven't fully materialized. That history is the backdrop Afridi is pointing to when he says KP won't sign on to another operation on trust alone.

The 100-day pitch

Afridi's counter-offer is a provincial counterterrorism policy he says could deliver lasting peace within 100 days, which he's framed as a break from an approach that's run for 22 years without working. His central argument is that the problem isn't resourcing — "merely providing resources will not solve the problem," as he put it — but strategy, including his public opposition to continued drone strikes, which he argues have failed to eliminate militancy despite years of use. He has not published the policy's specifics, and the federal government had not formally responded to it as of October 7.

Where this sits inside the bigger standoff

This isn't a freestanding dispute. The second round of government-PTI talks collapsed on October 3 over exactly this fault line — KP's refusal to commit to joint federal-provincial counterterrorism operations without its own input — and Islamabad's threat to impose governor's rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remains on the table as a result. Prime Minister Shehbaz's own offer to resume talks, made on October 6, was conditioned on PTI first ending the long march — a sequencing PTI has already dismissed as "merely symbolic." Afridi's Khyber district remarks add a third, more specific sticking point to that same standoff: not just whether talks resume, but whether KP's provincial government gets a say in military operations on its own soil before they happen.

What it means for the march itself

Afridi delivered the claim from inside the long march's detour through Khyber district, the same stop this desk covered on October 6 as part of the march's "slow-burn" shift in pace. Tying a security-policy fight to the march's own route gives Afridi a second grievance to carry toward Islamabad alongside Khan's release and medical access — and makes any future military operation in KP, not just the march's endpoint, a live question the federal government now has to answer in public rather than behind closed doors.

Build Better Pakistan's Politics Desk is tracking the long march's route and will report on any federal response to Afridi's counterterrorism proposal.