Old but relevant POK - Gilgit Baltistan
'Roof of the World' rebels against Pakistan - Features - Al Jazeera English
'Roof of the World' rebels against Pakistan
Protests over poor public services have escalated into challenges to Islamabad's rule in rugged northern territory.
Umar Farooq Last updated: 02 Jul 2014 14:10
Gilgit, Pakistan - Escalating protests in villages perched on the "Roof of the World" - a mountainous territory disputed between Pakistan and India - have exposed deep animosity towards Islamabad. After 67 years of control by the Pakistani government, many local people want the country to either accept them as a new province - or grant them independence. Pakistan's authorities have responded to the unrest - sparked by poor public services and anger at corruption - with a brutal crackdown.
"The problem is in the system - it's a colonial system. The laws come from Islamabad and we have to live under them," Nazir Ahmed, a local lawyer who helped organise the protests, told Al Jazeera.
'Massive corruption'
The two hundred thousand residents of Ghizer district now have an ambulance, a crucial service in a region where the nearest hospital is a precarious five hour drive along narrow roads hugging cliff faces thousands of feet above fast-moving rivers. Two weeks ago, hundreds of residents converged to besiege government offices, demanding that officials provide an ambulance and basic medical facilities. Ghizer has no surgeon or gynaecologist, and just one female health worker. Similar unrest has erupted in villages across Gilgit-Baltistan in protests that began with calls for an end to government corruption. "There is massive corruption, and no one here is answerable," said Ahmed, who adds that the struggle for better medical facilities is just the beginning. The protests have been met with a brutal crackdown by authorities, who are using special courts to prosecute 'terrorists' and who have jailed hundreds on charges of sedition and 'terrorism'.
In April, hundreds of thousands of protesters held an 11-day sit-in in Gilgit's legislative assembly after Islamabad threatened to end a wheat subsidy established in 1972 to match a similar package in India-administered Kashmir. The protesters won back the subsidy but their other demands, including self-rule for Gilgit-Baltistan, have yet to be met.
"Pakistan is seeking that the United Nations solve the Kashmir dispute, and is unwilling to officially integrate Gilgit-Baltistan into its political system," said Ahsan Ali, the head of the Gilgit-Baltistan High Court Bar Association, and an expert on constitutional law in the region.
Disputed territory
The Roof of the World is part of a pre-1947 Kashmir, claimed by Pakistan and India and home to the only land route to the Indian Ocean for Pakistan's closest ally in the region, China. The territory is home to 12 of the 30 highest peaks on Earth, and its massive glaciers are the source of water for most of the Indian subcontinent. Since independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan and India have fought several wars over the status of Gilgit-Baltistan - part of the Pakistan-administered Kashmir - and the rest of disputed Kashmir to its east. According to binding resolutions from the UN, a plebiscite is to be held to determine whether the region is to join India or Pakistan, or become an independent state, but this has yet to happen, leaving millions in legal limbo.
Pakistan has not constitutionally integrated Gilgit-Baltistan into its political system because it believes the area could one day prejudice the plebiscite vote to settle the Kashmir dispute with India.
No taxation without representation
Ghizer district is an unlikely place to find such animosity towards Islamabad as it is the home to 12,000 soldiers in an elite division that specialises in high-altitude warfare. Nearly 500 have died fighting India since 1999, manning border posts in the highest battlefield on earth. Islamabad has also spent billions of dollars building infrastructure in the area like the Karakoram highway, which links remote mountain communities and provides a reliable land route to China.
Yet locals receive no revenue from customs duties with China, or the sales tax collected by Pakistan, which generates up to $550m in annual revenue and is destined entirely for Islamabad. Stretching 28,000 square miles, and home to 2 million people, the region is not even mentioned in Pakistan's constitution, a fact that irks young activists like Sajjid Rana, 19, who says textbooks only refer to it as "the land of glaciers".
If Gilgit-Baltistan gained self-rule, Rana would like to see it become a crossroads for trade between India and Central Asia, as it was for thousands of years before its western and eastern borders were closed under Islamabad's foreign policy priorities. "A lot of people care about the region, but no one cares about the people," Shabbir Hakimi, a Shia-cleric who helped mobilise thousands for the April sit-ins, told Al Jazeera.
"As Muslims, we care about Kashmir, but give us our rights, make us like Kashmir, or let us go altogether." Unlike the rest of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which has its own constitution, democratically-elected legislature, and independent judiciary, Gilgit-Baltistan was long governed by a federally-appointed civil servant who could impose collective punishment on local tribes.
