Pakistan Dispatch

       Discontent and Defiance on the Road to Pakistan’s Election

       The Grand Trunk Road is buzzing with talk of the coming vote, and of the country’s future.

       A rally supporting former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his party along the Grand Trunk Road in Gujranwala, Pakistan, last month.

       Pakistan Dispatch

       Discontent and Defiance on the Road to Pakistan’s Election

       The Grand Trunk Road is buzzing with talk of the coming vote, and of the country’s future.

       A rally supporting former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his party along the Grand Trunk Road in Gujranwala, Pakistan, last month.Credit...

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       By Christina Goldbaum and Zia ur-Rehman

       Photographs by Saiyna Bashir

       The reporters traveled along a famed highway in Pakistan’s most heated political battleground to understand how Pakistanis are feeling before a national election on Thursday.

       Published Feb. 5, 2024Updated Feb. 6, 2024, 12:13 a.m. ET

       The highway is the most politically charged slice of a politically turbulent country. It winds 180 miles from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, through the fertile plains of Punjab Province to Lahore, the nation’s cultural and political heart.

       For centuries, it was known only as a sliver of the Grand Trunk Road, Asia’s longest and oldest thoroughfare, linking traders in Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent. But in Pakistan, this stretch of the smog-drenched highway has become the stage for major rallies and protests led by nearly every famed civilian leader the country has had.

       As Pakistan heads into national elections on Thursday, the road is buzzing. Politics dominates the chatter between its vendors and rickshaw drivers, their conversations seeped in a culture of conspiracy, cults of political personality and the problems of entrenched military control.

       The map highlights the Grand Trunk Road from Islamabad to Lahore in Pakistan . The towns of Gujar Khan, Jhelum, Wazirabad and Gujranwala along the road are also located.

       Controlled by

       Pakistan

       Afghanistan

       Pakistan

       Controlled by

       India

       Islamabad

       Gujar Khan

       Jhelum

       Wazirabad

       Gujranwala

       Grand Trunk Road

       Lahore

       Punjab

       India

       80 MILES

       By The New York Times

       Nearly every day, hundreds fill the street — its overpasses plastered in green, red and white political posters — to rally for their side. Many more, their preferred party effectively disbanded amid a military crackdown, quietly curse the authorities before an election widely viewed as one of the least credible in the country’s history.

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       Mile 38: The Economic Crash The newsstand just off the main highway in Gujar Khan is little more than a metal chair with newspapers fanned out carefully in a circle. Men gathered around the stand, chatting as they drank their morning tea and electric rickshaws rumbled by. Every day, the papers arrive with a new political advertisement splashed across their front page, said the vendor, Abdul Rahim, 60. But he has not been swayed by any of their catchy slogans or artful headshots.

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       Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times. More about Christina Goldbaum

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