When the state becomes the problem

By Zain Amjad

Governments facing civil unrest have historically had two options — accommodation or suppression. The choice between them is rarely about capability. It is about political will, and what that choice reveals is usually more consequential than the unrest itself. In Azad Jammu and Kashmir, that choice has been made, consistently, at every turn, in favour of escalation.

The sit-in outside Rawalakot, sustained for nearly two weeks by residents of Mirpur and Poonch divisions, was not the beginning of this story. It was its latest chapter. The Joint Awami Action Committee had held its position within deliberate bounds — demonstrators carrying white flags, leadership repeatedly stating its position clearly: the movement is not anti-Pakistan. These are not the gestures of an organisation seeking confrontation. They are the gestures of one that understands it is being watched, and has chosen, consciously, to deny the state the imagery it would need to justify what it had already decided to do.

What followed was a sequence of administrative decisions that told their own story. Fuel distribution was suspended by Deputy Commissioner order. Food supplies were disrupted until prices exceeded what a daily wage earner could meet. The internet was shut down across the region — an instrument governments reach for not when they are confident, but when they cannot afford transparency. Businesses were seized, homes raided, transport suspended. Each measure, taken alone, might be explained. Taken together, they constitute a policy.

Then came the night of June 7th. Security forces launched an operation in Rawalakot under cover of darkness, with electricity cut to localities before the crackdown began. Power was deliberately switched off across towns prior to each operation — a detail that does not belong to the vocabulary of law enforcement. It belongs to the vocabulary of siege. Official figures confirmed at least seven civilian deaths. Other accounts placed the figure considerably higher. The gap between what was reported and what could be verified is, in itself, a consequence of the blackout the state imposed.

The AJK government’s formal response was to proscribe the JAAC under anti-terrorism legislation. The invocation of terrorism to describe a civil society coalition of traders, lawyers, transporters, and students — one that had maintained a peaceful sit-in for nearly a fortnight — is not a legal characterisation. It is a political one. Two senior members of the Action Committee subsequently disappeared, resurfacing in recorded statements announcing their resignation from the movement — both filmed in the same room, against the same wall. A state confident in the legitimacy of its position does not need to produce that kind of confirmation.

This pattern did not begin with the current crisis. When a politically connected figure in a previous JAAC protest opened fire on demonstrators with prohibited weapons in full view of law enforcement — which did not intervene — and faced no legal consequence, the population did not simply register anger. It registered information. It updated its understanding of who the law is designed to protect and who it is designed to manage. That calculation, once made, does not reset between protest cycles. It compounds.

Pakistan’s established parties have processed this crisis with their electoral arithmetic intact and their principles largely undisturbed. Neither the PPP, which holds the prime ministership in AJK, nor PML-N was willing to absorb the political cost of a clear position. Reconciliation was offered to one side only, on the condition that the other stand down unconditionally. Reconciliation on those terms is not reconciliation. It is the management of optics.

What this political posture obscures is the substance of what AJK’s population is actually asking for. The demands of the JAAC are rooted in documented grievances: affordable food, functional hospitals, employment for its youth, and the abolition of legislative seats reserved for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir that allow mainland parties to influence government formation in Muzaffarabad. These are not manufactured grievances. They have paper trails. The movement that arose from them is not an insurgency. It is an invoice.

It is worth acknowledging that not every voice within this movement has exercised the same restraint. Certain individuals have used slogans that cross from dissent into territory the state has legitimate cause to address. The law must reach them. But when a politician who opens fire on demonstrators with a prohibited weapon, on camera, in front of witnesses, remains free — while an advocate who attends a protest disappears and resurfaces reading from a script — the machinery of accountability is moving in one direction only. That does not strengthen the state’s position. It undermines it.

The path out of this impasse exists. Dialogue in AJK has historically succeeded when mediated by credible third parties rather than administered by the political class that created the conditions for unrest. A commission of retired judges and civil society figures from outside AJK could provide a neutral mediation framework. A formal, written agreement on specific demands — healthcare, employment, and a constitutional review of the twelve reserved seats — would give the movement something concrete to take back to its constituency, and give the state something force has not produced: a durable resolution.

The communications blackout will eventually lift. The numbers from Rawalakot will eventually be verified. The same wall in those two recordings will eventually require a public explanation. AJK’s people are not asking for what they have not been promised. They are asking for what was written down and not delivered. Agreements exist to be honoured — and when they are, they have a way of making everything else easier. That is where this ends, if those in power choose to let it. The question is whether they will choose in time.