Claim: A video shows KP Chief Minister Sohail Afridi addressing the public in Pashto during the “Long March” to Islamabad and using a “threatening tone regarding military personnel”, saying the PTI’s supporters would track them down and force them into negotiations.
Fact: The video is manipulated. In his authentic speech, Afridi spoke in Urdu, not Pashto, and did not make any such threatening remarks as shown in the viral clip.
On 7 October 2026, multiple Facebook users shared a video of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Chief Minister Sohail Afridi allegedly addressing people in Pashto and saying the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) loyal young supporters — often known as “Tigers” — know where “those who seek to intimidate us” would be hiding to take note of the party’s activities and that once they are caught, they would be forced into negotiations.
The Urdu subtitles provided in the video read as follows:
“ہمیں ڈرانے والے کان کھول کر سن لیں کہ عمران خان کے ٹائیگر کسی سے ڈرنے والے نہیں۔ ہم تمہیں ڈرائیں گے۔ ہمیں اچھی طرح سے پتہ ہے کہ کوہاٹ میں تم کہاں چھپ کر بیٹھے ہو۔ ہمیں پتہ ہے کہ سوات میں کہاں چھپے ہو۔ ہمیں پتہ ہے کہ جب ہمارے ٹائیگر خیر آباد آئیں گے تو تم کہاں چھپ کر ہمیں دیکھو گے۔ پھر ہم جب تمہیں آنکھیں دکھائیں گے تو تم نے مذاکرات کے ترلے کرنا ہیں۔
[Let those who seek to intimidate us listen closely: Imran Khan’s Tigers will not be cowed by anyone. We are the ones who will make you afraid. We know exactly where you are hiding in Kohat; we know where you are hiding in Swat. We know where you will be lurking and watching us when our Tigers arrive at Khairabad. And when we stare you down, you will be the ones begging for negotiations.]”
Screenshot of one of the viral Facebook posts
Some of the captions accompanying the viral posts are as follows:
- “سہیل آفریدی نے لائیو پشتو خطاب کے دوران فوجی اہلکاروں کے حوالے سے سخت اور دھمکی آمیز لہجہ اختیار کیا۔ انہوں نے دعویٰ کیا کہ وہ اہلکاروں کے ٹھکانوں سے واقف ہیں اور ان کے ساتھی انہیں تلاش کر لیں گے، جس کے بعد مخالفین کو مذاکرات کی درخواست کرنا پڑے گی [During a live address in Pashto, Sohail Afridi adopted a harsh and threatening tone regarding military personnel. He claimed to be aware of the personnel’s hideouts and stated that his associates would track them down, after which the enemies would have to plead for negotiations.]”
- “‘ہمیں پتہ ہے کہ تم فوجی کہاں چھپے ہو، تم جہاں چھپے ہوگے ہمارے ٹائیگر تمہیں ڈھونڈ لائیں گے اور پھر جب وہ پکڑیں گے تو تم مذاکرات کی بھیک مانگو گے۔’ سہیل آفریدی کی لائیو پشتو زبان میں دھمکیاں [‘We know where you military men are hiding; wherever you are, our “Tigers” will hunt you down, and once they catch you, you will beg for negotiations.’ — Sohail Afridi’s threats delivered in a live Pashto address.]”
A team member of Soch Videos — our sister company — who speaks Pashto transcribed the KP CM’s following remarks from the viral video:
“Moong che sok yarawi aghwi de pa khpal ghwagoona waori, da Imran Khan tiger cha na na yaregi. Moong ba taso yarao. Moong ta pata da che taso pa Kohat ke cherta pat yay, moong ta pata de che taso pa Swat ke koom zaai yay. Che kala zamoong tiger Khairabad ta rashi, no taso ba charta moonga gorai? Che moonga taso ta stargay ukhayoo no taso ba da muzakirato da para meenatoona kaway.”
Translated to English, they read as follows:
“The people who try to scare us should hear with their own ears: Imran Khan’s tiger is not afraid of anyone. We will scare you. We know where you are hiding in Kohat. We know where you are in Swat. When our tiger comes to Khairabad, where will you see us? When we show you our eyes [i.e., anger], you will beg for these negotiations.”
PTI’s Long March
On 25 September 2026, the PTI announced that it was postponing their long-planned protest — originally set to take place on 27 September — to 4 October. The “Long March” is aimed at demanding the release of the party founder and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, from prison, where he has been incarcerated since August 2023 over various charges.
In response to the original announcement, the government had taken major steps to restrict the scheduled protest that some commentators and citizens said were disruptive and mishandled. In addition, there was a wave of preventive arrests targeting PTI’s organisers and associated figures, including Khan’s sisters.
Amnesty International termed the arrests a “flagrant violation of human rights.”
On 2 October, the military’s top brass issued a warning that “any attempt to cause agitation or create [a] 9 May-like situation, on any pretext whatsoever, will be dealt with decisive force and rule of law, without hesitation and discrimination”, according to a statement issued by its media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), following the 277th Corps Commanders’ Conference.
At the same time, representatives from the federal government and the PTI met to discuss an alternate way forward on 2 and 3 October but the talks ended in a deadlock.
On 4 October, Afridi finally launched the “Long March” from southern KP. In the following days, the participants progressed through the outskirts of Peshawar before travelling through Kohat and Darra Adam Khel.
By 8 October, the rally reached Attock and Khairabad borders, which led authorities to block entryways to the country’s capital, Islamabad. The intended route for the march was reportedly changed several times since it was launched.
Law enforcement agencies have intensified their defensive posture around the federal capital and Rawalpindi, with Section 144 imposed in Islamabad and Punjab.
On 11 October, Section 144 was also imposed in Karachi for day 10, effective immediately.
However, on 11 October, President Asif Ali Zardari signed a summary to remove the KP government and impose emergency in the province, paving the way for governor rule, following “decisions by the Federal Cabinet, the Prime Minister [Shehbaz Sharif’s] advice, reports from relevant agencies regarding the law-and-order situation, and the failure of negotiations” with the Centre.
The federal government’s move came amid what it claimed was the KP administration’s “deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism”, as well as its failure “to tackle Islamist militancy”, a move that senior PTI leader Zulfiqar “Zulfi” Bukhari alleged was “more of a coup disguised as emergency”.
The PTI also announced that some of its leaders, including Afridi and the party’s KP president, Junaid Akbar, “had been taken into custody”.
On 12 October, State Interior Minister Tallal Chaudhry said the now-dysfunctional CM and some members of his Cabinet were “taken into protective custody”, Geo News and Reuters reported.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the viral video to trace the original footage and found that it was posted on 5 October 2026 on the PTI’s official YouTube channel with the title, “لانگ مارچ کا دوسرا روز شروع ہوچکا!کرک میں سہیل آفریدی کا پہلا اہم خطاب [The second day of the Long March has begun! Sohail Afridi’s first important speech in Karak]”.
We observed that Afridi spoke in Urdu in the video, as opposed to the viral one, in which he can be heard addressing the people in Pashto.
Then, we compared his body movements as well as those of the people next to and around him to ascertain if the audio component of a particular portion of the authentic YouTube video was altered or dubbed with a different sample. This occurs at the 15:32 mark and ends at the 15:53 mark, in line with the 21-second duration of the viral clip.
The same video was posted on the KP CM’s Facebook page, in which matching body movements start at the 15:32 mark as well.
A livestreamed video on Afridi’s Facebook page — shot from a different and distant angle — also shows matching body movements starting at the 15:37 mark.
Screenshots comparing the viral video with the one posted on the PTI’s official YouTube channel
He does not speak in Pashto or make the remarks attributed to him in the viral video in any of these clips.
Deepfake detection tools
Suspecting manipulation, possibly using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, we tested the video with different deepfake detectors.
According to Hive Detect’s results, the sample is “0.4% likely to be AI-generated video”.
Screenshot of Hive Detect’s results
NVIDIA Synthetic Video Detector said the clip’s score was 74.5%, which is “greater than threshold (30%), meaning it’s likely synthetic or AI-generated”.
Screenshot of NVIDIA Synthetic Video Detector’s results
According to the DeepFake-O-Meter, a tool developed by the University at Buffalo’s Media Forensics Lab (UB MDFL) — the video is “likely AI-generated”, with “high” confidence. Six of its available detectors yielded probabilities of 100%, 99.9%, 99.9%, 99.8%, 97.2%, and 93.1%.
Screenshot of DeepFake-O-Meter ’s results
Sound engineer’s analysis
For further corroboration, we requested an analysis from Shaur Azher, a lecturer who teaches sound design and sound recording at the University of Karachi and the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST). He also works as an audio engineer at our sister organisation, Soch Videos, and specialises in mixing and mastering audio.
Azher explained that for comparison purposes, Sample A is the claim and Sample B is Khan’s actual speech.
He said that based on his calculations, “Sample A is heavily-processed audio with signs of audio cloning. While it is a fact that both audios are different, Sample B is far more real in nature.” To support his findings, he provided the following observations:
- Usable bandwidth is about 15.8 kilohertz (kHz) for Sample A and 11.9 kHz for Sample B. Sample B’s noise floor drops to nothing above approximately 12 kHz, whereas Sample A’s noise extends through 12-20 kHz.
- Both samples exhibit natural speech prosody and similar intonation, spanning about 7 semitones. The Harmonic-to-Noise Ratio (HNR) is approximately 5.1 decibels (dB) for Sample A and 7.8 dB for Sample B, showing that Sample A is less harmonic.
- Sample A has a median pitch of 307 Hz and Sample B has a median pitch of 250 Hz, which creates a 3.6-semitone gap between them.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the viral video is manipulated.
Virality
The video was posted multiple times on Facebook, including in different public groups, as well as on X (formerly Twitter).
Interestingly, the original video was also used by social media users to spread a separate false claim earlier this month, asserting that Afridi had delivered a speech in support of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a terrorist group also known as the Pakistani Taliban. We debunked it here.
Similarly, the KP CM has been targeted by disinformation not just this month but earlier as well.
Conclusion: The video is manipulated. In his authentic speech, Afridi spoke in Urdu, not Pashto, and did not make any such threatening remarks as in the viral clip.
Background image in cover photo: ImMuhammadSohailAfridi
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com