Pakistan may finally be edging toward a political breakthrough. After months of unacknowledged contacts, the government and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, have entered formal talks as the party’s Oct. 4 long march approaches. The opening is fragile. Yet both sides may now be confronting a reality they have long resisted: neither street confrontation nor state coercion can produce a durable political settlement. Pakistan’s crises demand a different course.
Dialogue has not emerged suddenly. Channels between the government and PTI have operated intermittently for at least a year. Rana Sanaullah, the prime minister’s adviser on political affairs, has been the government’s principal interlocutor. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has played a parallel and significant role. Given his proximity to the military establishment, his contacts with PTI’s chairman and the party’s leadership in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province it governs, represent more than routine ministerial engagement. In practical terms, the conflict’s two main protagonists remain PTI and the establishment.
Naqvi also appears to have developed a working relationship with PTI leaders. One revealing detail came when Khan’s sister sought contempt proceedings, alleging that the government had failed to implement a Supreme Court order directing Khan’s transfer to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad. The petition named the prime minister, senior ministers and officials, but not the interior minister. It would be unwise to read too much into a legal document. Nevertheless, the omission suggests that an important channel remained open.
The discussions preceding formal talks were not limited to the march. I understand that government and establishment representatives have conveyed, through senior PTI figures, that substantive political issues could be negotiated. These include a credible mechanism for fair elections, the future composition of the Election Commission, and an agreed timeframe for the next polls. Wider constitutional questions, including reforms that would give local governments meaningful political, administrative and fiscal authority, could also enter the conversation. None of this constitutes an agreement. But it indicates that the space for negotiation is considerably wider than the public exchange of threats suggests.
PTI has not always responded coherently. With Khan imprisoned and many senior figures detained, the party has developed multiple centers of authority and competing strategic impulses. Some leaders have favored negotiation; others have argued for mass mobilization. The latter position is understandable. Large numbers of party workers have faced arrests and police cases, while women, young supporters, Khan’s wife and his three sisters have also been imprisoned or detained. Independent lawyers have questioned whether the courts have provided effective and timely relief in PTI-related cases. Frustration and helplessness have pushed parts of the party toward the street.
Coercion can disperse a crowd, block a road or delay a movement. It cannot resolve the underlying crisis of representation, legitimacy and public trust.
But political strategy must be anchored in what isvercome state power through sustained street mobilization. Equally, the establishment and the government have demonstrated that imprisonments, cases and administrative pressure cannot create genuine internal stability. Coercion can disperse a crowd, block a road or delay a movement. It cannot resolve the underlying crisis of representation, legitimacy and public trust
The immediate test is the Oct. 4 march. PTI has publicly maintained that only Khan can authorize its withdrawal. Its first and most practical demand, therefore, is access to its leader. A meeting between Khan and a representative PTI delegation may now be possible. If it takes place and credible assurances accompany it, the party could postpone or call off the march, allowing this tentative engagement to develop into a structured political process. Without such access, PTI’s negotiating team cannot credibly commit the party to a new course.
The objective should not be a zero-sum outcome for either side. It should be a political ceasefire and common ground among PTI, the government and the establishment. Initial cooperation could focus on urgent national priorities: countering terrorism, restoring investor confidence, reviving the economy and improving everyday governance. Parallel discussions could address electoral credibility, constitutional reform and a clear pathway toward fair elections. Each side would gain something, but each would also have to abandon maximalist expectations.
For PTI, this means recognizing that the establishment cannot be defeated through a single march. For the government and the establishment, it means accepting that one of Pakistan’s most mobilized political forces cannot be permanently managed through arrests and exclusion. Any arrangement built only around temporary tactical relief will fail. A sustainable understanding requires legal space for political activity, respect for court orders, an end to indiscriminate cases, and reciprocal commitments against violence, destabilization and extra-constitutional pressure.
Such a breakthrough is no longer merely desirable; it is essential. Pakistan faces serious terrorist violence, economic fragility, institutional erosion and widespread public despair. A contest between the barracks and the street, however unequal, produces no winner capable of serving the country. The people bear the cost while politics becomes an endless struggle for survival.
The talks may still falter. Pakistan has seen too many dialogues become tactical pauses. But the limits of both confrontation and coercion are clearer today than ever before. If political sense prevails, the country may finally move from perpetual confrontation toward an imperfect but necessary accommodation.
-Nasim Zehra is an author, analyst, and national security expert. X: @NasimZehra
