Can Pakistan’s Sohail Afridi win freedom for ex-PM Imran Khan?

What the report says

Sohail Afridi, the 37-year-old chief minister of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has emerged as a central figure in Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s effort to win the release of jailed party founder and former prime minister Imran Khan, according to Al Jazeera. The report says Afridi is the province’s youngest chief minister and the first from the former tribal districts, and that he is now taking on a wider national role as PTI’s main elected leader.

Al Jazeera describes a tense political backdrop in late September 2026, as PTI prepared for a major march on Islamabad calling for Khan’s release. Afridi said the protest was delayed after authorities arrested Khan’s sisters and moved to block access routes from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He also accused unidentified plainclothes men of targeting PTI workers and officials, while provincial ministers reported attacks that included an assassination attempt, an abduction attempt and a separate kidnapping. Provincial and federal officials offered competing accounts in some cases.

The article portrays Afridi as combining administrative authority and street-level activism. It notes that he was born in Bara, studied economics at the University of Peshawar and rose through PTI’s student and youth wings. He won a provincial assembly seat in 2024 and remained publicly aligned with Khan after the former prime minister’s arrest in 2023. The story matters because Afridi’s rise reflects both PTI’s internal reliance on loyalists and the broader struggle between the party and Shehbaz Sharif’s federal government.