Pakistani clampdown tries to crush revolt spreading from Kashmir

Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Photo: WikipediaCommons)

Pakistan’s military-run government has launched a massive clampdown on dissent in Kashmir.

It fears the ongoing rebellion in the Pakistan-administered part of the territory could connect with discontent across the country and lead to widespread revolt.

Heavily armed police have so far killed 89 people in Azad Jammu and Kashmir since June, according to the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC). Tensions have risen as the supposedly ­autonomous territory has gone to the polls.

Protest groups, and ousted prime minister Imran Khan’s PTI party, say the ­election is a sham and are calling for a boycott.

Turnout at the polls is down from previous elections and is expected to reach only around 50 percent.

Meanwhile, Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s de facto ruler, is trying desperately to muzzle ­coverage of his clampdown.

This week he moved to restrict journalists from travelling outside the cities of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi without permission.

And he insisted that ­journalists in Azad Kashmir leave immediately.

Munir knows that the issues ­driving the unrest—including lack of democracy and high youth ­unemployment—are present throughout Pakistan.

Azad Kashmir is one of Pakistan’s most deprived regions, with a youth unemployment rate of roughly 27 percent.

“Political movements have a way of travelling,” said Professor Danish Khan. “Pakistan’s elites are alert to the fact that Kashmir’s core grievances aren’t actually unique to Kashmir.

“There’s a real incentive to ­contain this story, because of what people elsewhere in Pakistan might recognise in it.”

The government has banned the JAAC, which coordinates most protests in Azad Kashmir. It calls the Committee a terrorist ­organisation “funded by India.”

This coalition of small business people, students and some political figures is demanding constitutional and economic reform.

It wants an end to the 12 of the 45 elected seats in the ­territory’s parliament being reserved for Kashmiris who live elsewhere in Pakistan. It rightly says that Pakistan’s main political ­parties use these seats as a means of ­controlling the territory.

The region has its own ­president and prime minister, but major decisions are made in Pakistan’s parliament and Azad Kashmir’s 4 ­million citizens have no direct ­representation there.

The Pakistani state has, since its inception in 1947, ­masqueraded as a defender of Kashmir. It points to the repression that the Indian state carries out in the ­portion of the territory that it controls and talks of the need for reunification.

But by ramping up repression, the Pakistani state proves what many Kashmiri socialists have long argued—that neither Islamabad nor New Delhi has Kashmir’s ­interests at heart.

Instead, both states use Kashmir as an outpost in their own imperialist manoeuvres.

Kashmir has the right to be ­reunified under its own ­government.