Two boys scale the rusted corner of a shipping container marked “EVERGREEN” in block white letters.
asserted
boys → scale → letters
They kick up into handstands, legs steady, without so much as a glance upward, even as traffic passes on the road behind them.
asserted
traffic → kick → them
The clip runs 27 seconds, cut exactly to a verse from rap singer Cheema Y’s Punjabi track “Police”, about containers of smuggled goods crossing the border that nobody can account for.
asserted
nobody → run → that
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Afridi → win → Khan
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Pakistan → crack → release
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The four-tonne container beneath their feet carries nothing at all.
asserted
container → arrest → nothing
It is one of what transport associations and officials put at between 1,500 and 2,000 heavy steel boxes barricading Islamabad’s roads ahead of an opposition march.
asserted
associations → put → march
The idea for the video, shared on Instagram six days ago, was the brainchild of 26-year-old Mujaddad Asrar, a callisthenics and parkour athlete.
asserted
idea → share → Asrar
Asrar has been staging shoots like this one on Islamabad’s containers for several years.
asserted
Asrar → stag → years
This clip, along with several others, went out from a friend’s account rather than his own, because the friend has a bigger following, he says.
asserted
he → go → following
“It’s like clockwork every year,” he told Al Jazeera.
asserted
he → ’ → Jazeera
“One lot of containers or another comes right on time, like it’s part of the calendar.
asserted
it → come → calendar
It’s basically a fifth season.
asserted
It → ’ → ?
“Yeah, these containers have now made Islamabad as Containerabad,” he added, cheerfully.
asserted
he → make → Containerabad
The containers have been up for nearly four weeks as part of efforts by the country’s government to block an upcoming march on the capital by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
asserted
containers → block → Khan
The party had planned to set off on September 27 from Peshawar, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, then pushed the date back to October 4, citing “strategic reasons.”
asserted
party → plan → reasons
The march is PTI’s latest attempt to pressure the government into releasing Khan, the country’s most popular political figure according to polls, who has been behind bars for more than three years.
uncertain
who → pressure → years
In August 2024, as PTI petitioned the Islamabad High Court over a cancelled rally permit at D-Chowk, the square where the city’s high-security Red Zone starts, then-Chief Justice Aamer Farooq remarked that the authorities had turned the capital into a “container city”.
asserted
authorities → petition → city
Talal Chaudhry, the state minister for interior, however, said the use of containers ahead of the coming protest reflects standard practice rather than overreach.
asserted
use → say → overreach
“Security preparations are based on intelligence assessments and anticipated security requirements, not simply on the date a political event is formally announced,” he told Al Jazeera.
asserted
he → base → Jazeera
“Islamabad is the federal capital, so precautionary security arrangements are often put in place well in advance.”
asserted
arrangements → put → advance
The price of security
The containers come with a price tag, though no one agrees on what it is.
asserted
it → come → tag
Islamabad police initially sought roughly 820 million rupees ($2.9m) for a week of security arrangements around PTI’s planned march, according to local media reports.
uncertain
police → seek → reports
With the march delayed a week, officials now expect the final bill to top 1 billion rupees ($3.6m).
asserted
bill → delay → rupees
Container rental sits at the centre of that budget: one estimate puts the daily rental for more than 1,500 containers at 46.5 million rupees ($167,000).
asserted
estimate → sit → rupees
While owners maintain they have not been paid for their containers, Chaudhry disputes this.
asserted
Chaudhry → maintain → this
“What I can say with certainty is that legitimate container rentals are documented and paid through the proper process,” he said.
asserted
he → say → process
In a written reply to the National Assembly in March 2025, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi disclosed that the government had spent 1.35 billion rupees ($4.9m) on law-and-order deployments in Islamabad over five years, with a peak of 724 million rupees ($2.6m) in 2022-23.
asserted
government → write → 2022
The reply itemised personnel movement, housing and meals for deployed police, and, in one year, anti-riot equipment, but excluded the period covering the 2024 PTI protest.
asserted
reply → itemise → protest
Nowhere in the government response did the word “container” appear.
asserted
container → appear → response
Chaudhry rejected the idea that this amounted to an omission.
asserted
this → reject → omission
“Container rentals are not necessarily recorded as a separate political-protest expenditure category,” he said.
asserted
he → record → category
“They are processed through the established administrative and contractual mechanism.
asserted
They → process → mechanism
Every container hired is recorded, and the corresponding payment is traceable through official accounts.”
asserted
payment → hire → accounts
The containers fall into two categories: trucks with containers welded on to them owned by individuals, and containers owned by foreign shipping lines sitting on someone else’s vehicle.
asserted
containers → fall → vehicle
Roughly 2,000 vehicles and containers are held across Islamabad, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to transporters’ associations, though the figure remains an estimate rather than a definitive number.
uncertain
figure → hold → associations
Muhammad Owais Chaudhry, a lawyer who heads the All Pakistan Goods Transport Owners Association, represents owners in the first category — those whose trucks and containers have been grabbed by the police.
asserted
trucks → head → police
“If you combine the container and the vehicle, the total cost comes to 30,000 to 40,000 rupees ($108 to $144) a day,” he told Al Jazeera, describing earnings lost per truck-container combination while idle.
asserted
he → combine → combination
“Not a single rupee has been given,” he said of compensation from the government.
asserted
he → give → government
“No procedure has ever been worked out for how it would be paid.
asserted
it → work → ?
…and 64 more, not listed.
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