WHEN the President, on the advice of the Prime Minister, proclaimed an emergency and placed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under governor’s rule on 11 October, critics called it an assault on the provincial mandate. That reading ignores both the Constitution and the reality on the ground. Article 148(3) obliges the Federation to protect every province against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that every province’s government is carried on in accordance with the Constitution. When a province can no longer do so, intervention is not a political choice. It is a constitutional obligation.

The numbers speak for themselves. The federal cabinet was told that terrorist incidents in the province had risen by nearly 196 per cent. Nationwide, more than 1,200 attacks were recorded in the first nine months of this year, mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Behind every figure is a policeman who never returned home. Yet as the toll mounted, the provincial leadership chose confrontation with the Centre over coordination, kept its distance from counterterrorism efforts and spent its energy on marches towards the capital rather than at the apex committee table. Security is not a provincial privilege to be withheld as political leverage.

Equally corrosive was the collapse of governance. Development funds went unspent or misdirected, district administrations drifted without direction and complaints of corruption and patronage became........

© Pakistan Observer