Pakistan Seizes Trucks to Block Protest Roads, Leaving Cargo Stuck at Karachi Port

Pakistan's main trade gateway, the port of Karachi, is facing a growing pileup of shipping containers because truckers are refusing to haul cargo north. The cause lies 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) away. Authorities have been seizing trucks and containers on the roads leading to Islamabad and using them as barricades against a protest march planned by the opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which demands the release of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has been in prison since 2023.

According to the Karachi Goods Carrier Association, police began stopping freight vehicles around September 5, 2026, about three weeks before the march was first due to start on September 27. Steel containers filled with sand and welded together were lined up along the approaches to the capital, and the roads into Islamabad were sealed in the days before that date. PTI then pushed the march back to October 4, citing strategic reasons. Some roads were partially reopened after the postponement, but the seized vehicles and containers were not handed back. By early October the boxes had been in place for nearly four weeks.

Transport associations say police requisitioned more than 2,000 vehicles during September, many of them still loaded with cargo, and held them for days with little or no compensation. Estimates of the number of containers held across Islamabad, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa range from 1,500 to 2,000, and a senior official of the All Pakistan Goods Transport Owners Association told AFP that more than 2,500 containers had been stopped in and around the capital, some of them for almost 25 days. Transporters and traders warned earlier that detained trucks were carrying food, medicine and other commercial goods, with perishable cargo at risk of spoiling.

What makes this disruption unusual is its cause. The freight network is not being hit by a storm, a strike or a cyberattack. Working logistics equipment, in some cases still carrying commercial cargo, is being taken off the road by the state and turned into static roadblocks. A truck owner from Nowshera told Al Jazeera that when his first truck was impounded minutes after entering Islamabad in early September, neither he nor the officers involved could say under what legal authority it was being taken. Three more of his trucks were seized in the following days. Another driver was stopped at a checkpoint at 03:00, shortly after dropping off his shipment.

Drivers have been living beside their impounded trucks for weeks, because owners do not trust that vehicles worth around 15 million rupees ($54,000) will stay safe in police custody. They describe a single washroom at a nearby fuel station with an hour-long line and no place to bathe. One group was first told the vehicles would be released on October 4, then that the date had moved to October 16, with no guarantee attached.

The government and the transporters give opposite accounts of the money involved. The state minister for interior says containers are hired at market rates under a documented rental mechanism, that payments are traceable, that loaded vehicles are returned immediately and that any legitimate outstanding claim will be settled. Transporters say they have never received a single rupee for this protest or any earlier one, and that nobody has given them anything in writing. A government official also said that the containers used for security are empty, while the transporters' association says loaded trucks are still being held.

The numbers add to the confusion. Islamabad police reportedly asked for about 820 million rupees ($2.9 million) for one week of security arrangements, and the bill is now expected to exceed 1 billion rupees ($3.6 million) because of the one-week delay. One estimate puts the daily rental for more than 1,500 containers at 46.5 million rupees ($167,000). A container costs between 400,000 and 500,000 rupees ($1,444 to $1,805) to buy. On those figures, roughly two weeks of rental would cover the cost of buying the whole set outright, and the containers have already been in place for about twice that long. The transporters' association has urged the government to buy its own fleet of barriers. The government answers that renting avoids the cost of storing and maintaining them.

Pakistan has no domestic container shipping line, only shipping agents, so most of the seized boxes belong to foreign carriers. A Karachi-based customs agent told Al Jazeera that each one accrues $150 to $300 per day in penalties, paid in dollars that leave the country. One stranded driver said his shipping line allows 10 days to return an empty container before a claim is raised. For owners of trucks with a container fixed on them, the lost earnings reach 30,000 to 40,000 rupees ($108 to $144) per vehicle per day.

The fear of seizure is now doing more damage than the roadblocks themselves. Drivers interviewed by Reuters in Karachi say that heading toward Punjab at the moment is too risky, and one of them is keeping a loaded cargo of chemicals parked in the port city instead of driving north. The routes affected include those to Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Peshawar and Attock. Some operators have stopped all trips beyond Gujranwala, while others are using longer alternative routes. Import containers arriving at Karachi cannot be collected because the trucks that should carry them are stuck. Demurrage on a delayed container runs from 30,000 to 40,000 rupees per day, and sometimes 50,000 rupees. Operators are struggling to pay drivers and maintain their fleets, and the Karachi Goods Carrier Association has warned that transporters could stage a protest of their own if their complaints go unanswered.

The timing is difficult for the wider economy. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics reported on October 1 that consumer prices rose 10.26 percent in September from a year earlier, while the transport price index climbed 27.43 percent.

The practice is not new. Containers have been used to seal the capital before almost every major protest in recent years, and in August 2024 the then chief justice of the Islamabad High Court remarked that the authorities had turned the capital into a container city. Residents now call it Containerabad, and local athletes film parkour videos on top of the empty boxes. In a written reply to parliament in March 2025, the interior minister disclosed 1.35 billion rupees ($4.9 million) spent on law-and-order deployments in Islamabad over five years. The reply did not list containers as a separate expense.

The latest developments are political. The government and the PTI-led opposition opened formal talks on October 2, their first in almost three years, and held a second round on October 3 at 14:00 in the chamber of the National Assembly speaker. Pakistani media gave conflicting accounts of that session. Some outlets reported progress toward a joint draft agreement, while others described a tense meeting that was paused after the government again asked for the march to be withdrawn. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi said on October 3 that the march is due to set off at 13:00 on October 4 from Gandi Chowk in Lakki Marwat. PTI committees have also discussed moving the date if the talks advance. In parallel, the deployment of paramilitary Rangers in Islamabad and Punjab has reportedly been extended until October 15.

As of October 3, 2026, no schedule has been announced for releasing the seized trucks and containers. Even if the march is delayed or canceled, the backlog will take time to clear, because vehicles must be released, empty containers returned to the shipping lines and detention charges settled. Importers and exporters moving goods between Karachi and northern Pakistan should expect longer inland transit times and higher trucking costs until then.