PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi on Saturday hailed Pakistan’s “constructive role in promoting dialogue” between the US and Iran to ease Middle East tensions, calling it a positive step toward sustainable peace and stability in the region.

“Our leader [jailed PTI founder and former prime minister] Imran Khan has consistently advocated for dialogue over war. The current global events are validating his statesmanship and strategic foresight,” Mr Afridi told a parliamentary party meeting at the Chief Minister’s House here, according to an official statement.

The chief minister said that Mr Imran had maintained during the Afghanistan conflict that military intervention could never deliver lasting peace and that sustainable stability could emerge through diplomacy and political settlement only.

“Throughout the two decades of Afghan war, Imran Khan repeatedly urged the international community to give peace a chance and warned that war alone would only deepen instability,” he said.

Mr Afridi said that as the Afghan conflict claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the vast majority of them civilians, cost the United States more than $2.3 trillion and left over 2,400 American service members dead before ending in a negotiated withdrawal that underscored the limits of military force.

He said that the international community was increasingly moving toward the very doctrine Imran Khan advocated long before it became “politically fashionable”.

The chief minister complained that the PTI founder remained incarcerated in one of the most sweeping acts of political victimisation in the country’s democratic history for standing firmly by his principles.

He called for enforcement of basic human rights to his jailed leader, including access to family, legal counsel, personal doctors and his sons.

Mr Afridi accused the federal government of “criminalising peaceful protests for the release of Mr Imran and using intimidation and violence against his party’s workers” gathered to express solidarity with him.

He said that beyond political victimisation, the Centre was subjecting KP to systematic economic injustice through the persistent financial strangulation of the province, largely because the province remained under a PTI-led administration.

“Despite standing on the frontlines of the war against terrorism and suffering unparalleled human and economic losses, our province continues to be denied its constitutionally mandated financial rights,” he said.

The chief minister said that the world was increasingly embracing the principles long championed by Mr Imran and that Pakistan gained recognition whenever it followed his strategic direction.

“Despite sustained persecution and political repression, Imran Khan has remained unbroken and continues to stand as Pakistan’s most popular political leader even from behind prison walls,” he said.

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2026