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Public discontent grows in Pakistan’s northwest province ruled by Imran Khan’s party — Gallup

People wait to collect free bags of flour at a government distribution point in Peshawar on March 29, 2023. (AFP/File)
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Updated 14 July 2025
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Public discontent grows in Pakistan’s northwest province ruled by Imran Khan’s party — Gallup

  • Majority in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa say joblessness rising, services lacking, even PTI voters demand corruption probes
  • 83 percent praise health card but only 38 percent back current chief minister’s performance, half say Punjab CM is doing better
Updated 14 July 2025
Arab News Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: A new Gallup Pakistan survey reveals a sharp decline in public satisfaction in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province where the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan has ruled for over a decade, with residents citing poor infrastructure, widespread unemployment and lack of accountability 

The findings, based on face-to-face interviews with 3,000 residents across KP’s seven divisions, offer a rare look at grassroots sentiment in a province that has long been a PTI stronghold. The survey was conducted in February and March 2025, with analysis completed by June.

PTI first came to power in KP in 2013 and has governed the province since. Following the last general elections in 2024, the party formed the provincial government once again, even as its founder, Imran Khan, remains in jail on multiple legal charges he says are politically motivated. 

“Despite 13 years of PTI governance, even its own voters are expressing disappointment,” the Gallup survey report said. “Up to 49 percent of PTI supporters said no recent development had taken place in their area.”

A majority of respondents, 59 percent, reported rising unemployment, while 67 percent said the government had failed to create jobs or business opportunities. Basic services remain uneven: 66 percent said gas was unavailable, and 49 percent reported poor or no electricity access.

Facilities for youth are especially lacking: 77 percent said they lacked access to parks, 81 percent to libraries, and 70 percent to community centers.

Corruption was a recurring theme across sectors. 52 percent of respondents believe development funds were misappropriated, and just 32 percent said they were used properly. Support for accountability was high even among PTI supporters.

“71 percent of respondents, including 62 percent of PTI voters, support formal investigations into alleged corruption in mega projects during PTI’s rule,” Gallup Pakistan said.

A further 48 percent said corruption in government departments has increased, and 40 percent believe it is more prevalent in KP than in Punjab.

HEEALTH CARD YES, GANDAPUR NO

The PTI’s flagship health insurance scheme, the Sehat Card, remains the most popular initiative, with 83 percent of respondents, 88 percent of them PTI voters, saying it has improved health care access.

Yet only 38 percent of respondents said current KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur is performing better than his predecessors, and 47 percent said they would prefer to see Imran Khan in the role despite his ongoing imprisonment and legal battles.

Half the respondents said Punjab’s chief minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif is performing better than Gandapur.

“The contrast between continued support for PTI’s welfare programs and disillusionment with current leadership signals a shift in political expectations,” the report observed.

The disconnect between government and people on federal ties also comes up in the survey. The PTI-led government has been at odds with the federal administration since at least the 2024 election and even earlier, engaging in protests and public disputes.

Yet the Gallup report shows “85 percent of KP residents favor stronger collaboration between the provincial and federal governments,” suggesting popular support for more cooperative governance.

Another 60 percent of respondents said the KP government had “wasted time in protests and demonstrations rather than focusing on governance.”

The formal justice system is also under increasing public scrutiny. The survey found that 70 percent of respondents feel courts take too long to deliver justice, 50 percent consider the judiciary corrupt, and 53 percent believe court decisions are politically influenced.

In contrast, traditional tribal dispute resolution mechanisms, or Jirgas, are gaining favor. 

“84 percent of those aware of the Jirga system support it, and 70 percent believe Jirga decisions are fair,” Gallup reported.

In conclusion, the Gallup Pakistan survey shows that while PTI still enjoys loyalty from a core voter base, rising economic pressures, lack of development and demand for transparency have eroded its standing among the broader population.

“The survey offers a sobering assessment of public sentiment across KP. Despite strong backing for select welfare programs and the continued popularity of PTI among its base, citizens are increasingly frustrated with lackluster service delivery, limited job opportunities, corruption, and unfulfilled promises,” the concluding note in the survey report said.

“The overwhelming demand for accountability and equitable governance signals a critical juncture for provincial leadership and institutions.”

Topics: Peshawar Gallup Pakistan Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) KP government

Pakistan’s Afghan salvo risks turning ‘open war’ into long crisis

Updated 3 sec ago
Reuters
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Pakistan’s Afghan salvo risks turning ‘open war’ into long crisis

  • Nuclear-armed Pakistan has a formidable military of 660,000 active personnel, backed by a fleet of 465 combat aircraft
  • But the Taliban have the option to lean on insurgent groups like the TTP and the BLA to move beyond border skirmishes
Updated 3 sec ago
Reuters

KARACHI: Weeks after the Taliban’s lightning offensive in 2021 wrested control of Afghanistan from a US-led military coalition, Pakistan’s then intelligence chief flew into the capital Kabul for talks, where the serving lieutenant general told a reporter: “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.”

Five years on, Islamabad — long seen as a patron of the Taliban — is locked in its heaviest fighting with the group, which Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif described on Friday (February 27) as an “open war.”

The turmoil means that a wide swathe of Asia — from the Gulf to the Himalayas — is now in flux, with the United States building up a military deployment against Afghanistan’s neighbor Iran even as relations between Pakistan and arch rival India remain on edge after four days of fighting last May.

At the heart of the conflict with Afghanistan is Pakistan’s accusation that the Afghan Taliban provides support to militant groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), that have wreaked havoc across inside the South Asian country.

The Afghan Taliban, which has previously fought alongside the TTP, denies the charge, insisting that Pakistan’s security situation is its internal problem.

The disagreement is a reflection of starkly incompatible positions taken by both sides, as Pakistan expected compliance after decades of support to the Taliban, which did not see itself beholden to Islamabad, analysts said.

“We all know that the government in Pakistan supported the Taliban, the Afghan Taliban for many years, in the 90s and the 2000s, and provided havens to them during the period where the US and NATO were in Afghanistan.

So there’s a very close relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan,” said Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh and an Afghanistan expert.

“It’s really surprising and shocking to many of us to see how quickly this relationship deteriorated,” she said.

Although tensions have simmered along their rugged 2,600-km (1,615-mile) frontier for months, following clashes last October, Friday’s fighting is notable because of Pakistan’s use of warplanes to hit Taliban military installations instead of confining the attacks to the militants it allegedly harbors.

These include targets deep inside the country in Kabul, as well as the southern city of Kandahar, the seat of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, according to Pakistan military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry.

The clashes are unlikely to end there.

“I think in the immediate aftermath, I think hostilities will subside. There will be, I hope there will be a ceasefire through mediation. But I do not see these tensions subsiding in the foreseeable future,” said Abdul Basit,  an expert on militancy and violent extremism at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan has a formidable military of 660,000 active personnel, backed by a fleet of 465 combat aircraft, several thousand armored fighting vehicles and artillery pieces.

Across the border, the Afghan Taliban has only around 172,000 active military personnel, a smattering of armored vehicles and no real air force.

But the battle-hardened group, which took on a phalanx of Western military powers in 2001 and outlasted them, has the option to lean on insurgents like the TTP and the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), moving beyond border skirmishes.

Based in Pakistan’s largest and poorest province of Balochistan that borders both Iran and Afghanistan, the BLA has been at the center of a decades-long insurgency, which in recent years has staged large coordinated attacks.

Pakistan has long accused India of backing the insurgents, a charge repeatedly denied by New Delhi, which has retained a robust military deployment along the border since last May.

Although a raft of countries with influence — including China, Russia, Turkiye and Qatar — have indicated an openness to help mediate the conflict, all such efforts have been met with limited success so far.

Topics: Pakistan Afghanistan tensions Pakistan Afghanistan conflict

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