Imran Khan and the power struggle for Pakistan

For weeks, the roads around Islamabad have been lined by shipping containers; road blocks ready for immediate deployment in the event of any protest.

Pakistan’s capital has become used to entire areas being sealed off whenever the authorities get an inkling that unrest could be brewing. It is a constant reminder to the city’s residents that at any moment, everything could tip.

Last Sunday, the containers were out in force, blocking 29 routes around the city.

In a much-publicised and anticipated political rally, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) supporters made their way in their thousands towards Islamabad. The crowd waved flags and banners while a poster of the former prime minister suspended by balloons gently floated overhead. Others wore eerie masks of Imran Khan’s face. Chants of “Imran Khan Zindabad” (long live Imran Khan) echoed around the venue.

The containers did not contain them; video on social media shows lines of supporters shoving the corrugated metal aside and surging through to reach the rally’s venue.

The man whose face was everywhere was not in attendance. Imran Khan has been behind bars for more than a year, having been convicted of corruption and charged with leaking state secrets.

Mr Khan has called all the charges against him politically motivated. But despite seeing his sentences overturned and a UN working group declaring that he had been “arbitrarily detained”, there seems little movement toward his release. Most analysts say that without the explicit say-so from Pakistan’s politically powerful military, Mr Khan will not be let out.

That didn’t stop the political promises from PTI leaders on Sunday.

“Listen Pakistanis, if in one to two weeks Imran will not be released legally, then I swear to God we will release Imran Khan ourselves,” the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Ali Amin Gandapur, bellowed from the stage. “Are you ready?”