Islamabad, July 23, 2026
The ongoing unrest in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) is increasingly challenging Islamabad’s long-standing narrative of control over the region, exposing a system of domination masked by the term “Azad” (freedom). While Pakistan may suppress the protests through crackdowns, arbitrary arrests and manufacturing temporary agreements, its exclusive hold over the Kashmir narrative has failed.
“The people living there are now demonstrating what that freedom actually means. It means a regional government whose ultimate authority rests not in Muzaffarabad but in Islamabad. It means an assembly whose composition can be influenced through constituencies located outside the territory. It means economic exploitation, elite privileges, internet shutdowns, political arrests and anti-terrorism laws deployed against civilian protest movements,” a report in Stringer Asia detailed, highlighting Islamabad’s sweeping control over the region, repression and suppression of dissent.
“Increasingly, it also means bodies in the streets. The latest unrest has produced demonstrations, strikes, road blockades and violent confrontations between protesters and Pakistani security forces. In July, nine people were killed during clashes in Tararkhal and Rawalakot. Six protesters and one police officer died in Tararkhal, while another protester and a security official were killed in Rawalakot. The latest deaths brought the number of people killed since the beginning of the current turmoil to roughly thirty, according to local estimates,” it added.
The report argued that Pakistan’s response in PoK followed a familiar pattern, portraying the political movement as a terrorist organisation. It noted that the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), a coalition of traders, lawyers, transport workers and civil society activists, was banned under anti-terrorism laws. Several of its members were arrested, communication channels were restricted, and security forces were deployed in the occupied territory in a manner that treated the movement as an insurgency rather than a civilian campaign seeking political representation and economic justice.
“This is the Pakistani establishment’s most reliable administrative miracle. Citizens become terrorists, demands become conspiracies, demonstrations become foreign-sponsored destabilisation, and military violence becomes law enforcement. The method has already been tested in Balochistan, where families searching for disappeared relatives are accused of serving foreign intelligence agencies,” the report noted.
“It has been refined in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where opposition to military operations is treated as sympathy for terrorism. It has been deployed against journalists, lawyers, students, ethnic movements and supporters of Imran Khan,” it added.
Pakistan continues to frame every domestic unrest against the authorities as an act of foreign interference, according to the report, with Islamabad portraying every Baloch activist as an Indian agent, every Pashtun critic as a terrorist sympathiser, every journalist as part of a conspiracy, and every protester in PoK who questions Islamabad as a national security threat.
“The alternative explanation—that Pakistan’s citizens and subject populations are capable of recognising oppression without foreign assistance—is apparently too dangerous to contemplate,” it noted.(Agency)
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