Imran Khan is in prison. Pakistan is governing his supporters with shipping containers.

Thousands of supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan have begun another march toward Islamabad after negotiations between his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and the government failed. The state's answer is already visible in the landscape: shipping containers and barriers have been positioned to restrict access to the capital and its government district.

Containers are mundane objects. In Pakistan's recurring protest politics they have become a physical expression of institutional failure. When political conflict cannot be resolved through elections, courts, negotiations or trusted rules, the state eventually governs space: which road remains open, which convoy can move and how close opposition supporters can get to the institutions acting in their name.

PTI says it is mobilizing for Khan's release. Khan has been imprisoned since 2023 after a succession of convictions, while his party argues that the cases are politically motivated. Several convictions have been suspended or overturned, but he remains incarcerated. His continuing popularity means imprisonment has not removed him from Pakistan's political contest. It has instead changed the contest from one over an officeholder to one over whether his supporters can force the system to reconsider his confinement.

The government has its own legitimate interest in keeping roads, government buildings and the capital functioning. Protesters do not acquire an unlimited right to occupy infrastructure simply because their cause is popular. An Islamabad High Court order cited by the government states that political parties do not have a lawful right to occupy roads, highways and public buildings.

But that is not the end of the accountability analysis. A government can possess legal authority to keep roads open while still relying on coercive tools because the underlying political dispute has not been credibly resolved. The relevant question is therefore proportionality: whether restrictions are narrowly designed to protect public access and safety, or whether the machinery of the state is being used to make meaningful opposition mobilization impossible.

The failed talks matter for precisely this reason. Negotiation was the mechanism that could have moved the conflict away from physical confrontation. Once those talks collapsed, both PTI and the government returned to forms of leverage they understand well: mass mobilization on one side, control of roads and security forces on the other.

That dynamic creates costs for people who have no direct role in either camp. Road closures disrupt work and movement. Confrontations expose demonstrators and police to violence. Repeated political shutdowns weaken confidence in ordinary government. The welfare loss is not confined to whichever politician ultimately wins.

Pakistan's civil-military balance sits behind the confrontation as well. Khan's supporters see his imprisonment through a broader struggle over who is permitted to exercise political power in a system where the military has historically held enormous influence. The government rejects PTI's framing and insists on legal order. Those competing narratives cannot be settled by the number of containers on a road.

That is why the march is an accountability story rather than simply a protest story. Khan remains politically potent despite imprisonment. The government remains institutionally powerful despite that popularity. Neither fact resolves the question of democratic legitimacy.

A durable system would give citizens confidence that political competition can change power without requiring a march on Islamabad and that legal proceedings against a former prime minister can be separated from the interests of his rivals. Every new barricade is evidence that Pakistan has not yet convincingly achieved either condition.

Sources: Al Jazeera (opens in a new tab), Arab News Pakistan (opens in a new tab), BBC (opens in a new tab).