The Pakistani government has ordered the deployment of army troops in Islamabad beginning on October 5 amid a tense standoff as Pakistani security forces blocked the main access roads and cut off the mobile phone signal in order to prevent thousands of supporters of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan from entering the city and rallying for his release.
The Interior Ministry order said the army deployment was meant to ensure security ahead of the 17th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, which is slated to begin on October 15 in the capital.
Khan, who was jailed on numerous charges of corruption that he and his supporters say are politically motivated, asked activists from his Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf (PTI) party to stage a protest on October 4 in the high-security zone of Islamabad.
Several protests were held in and around Islamabad, and police reportedly arrested several PTI activists.
Roads and bridges leading into the city were blocked with large shipping containers as Khan's supporters have been planning to descend upon the capital from the country's ethnic Pashtun-majority Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province bordering Afghanistan, where his PTI party rules.
Khan, 71, a retired cricket superstar who was prime minister in from 2018 to 2022, was ousted in a no-confidence vote that he says was orchestrated by the powerful military and arrested last year after a judge sentenced him to a three-year jail sentence in a corruption case.
The government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Khan's main political adversary, previously deployed paramilitary rangers and extra police forces and closed schools in Islamabad and the nearby city of Rawalpindi after the PTI refused to withdraw its call for the protest.
Outside of Islamabad, Khan's supporters on October 4 massed in Swabi, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, to begin a march toward Islamabad to be reportedly led by the province's PTI head, Ali Amin Gundapur.
According to provincial officials, the marchers have acquired heavy technical equipment to dispose of the containers blocking the access roads into the capital.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi told the media late on October 3 that authorities will not let Khan's supporters "storm Islamabad."
Naqvi urged the PTI to postpone the protest in order to allow the government to continue with the preparations SCO summit.
Pakistan has been struggling with a severe economic crisis and a deteriorating security situation amid an increase in attacks by the Pakistani Taliban. The nuclear-armed country has recently received a $7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to prop up its faltering economy.