The Forgotten Kashmir

And it's not as if the region is any less endowed by nature than the rest of the state. Hunza, the northernmost part, is the most beautiful part in this land and it is not uncommon for people to live more than 100 years. This brings the sick here in search of health and the healthy in search of longevity. Gilgit towards the north is the more populated region and Baltistan in the east the most strategic—the Karakoram highway to China passes through here. "We are," says Abdul Hamid Khan, the now jailed chairman of the increasingly active Balawarstan National Front, "a state without a status". Long after the Pakistani occupation of Kashmiri areas in October 1947, POK got an assembly with a prime minister, even if he is less powerful than a chief minister. Gilgit and Baltistan got nothing. Only in 1994 were elections first held in what local Kashmiris call Balawarstan. (Islamabad prefers the identity-shorn phrase 'Northern Areas'.) And this election was to no more than an "advisory council" whose advice counts for little. The chief executive of the council is a Pakistani minister.

On August 14 this year most people in Gilgit and Baltistan lacked even a dependency to celebrate. They are not quite a part of Pakistan; and there has been no getting away from Pakistan either. But increasingly there are attempts to. Political groups fighting for independence from Pakistan have become more active in recent years. August 14 was marked as a "black jubilee" by leaders of several groups like the Balawarstan National Front, the Mutahida Qaumi Party led by Maj Hussain Shah and the Karakoram National Movement.

Leaders of these groups fight-ing Pakistani occupation called a rally at Garhi Bagh in Gilgit, the largest town in the area with a population of 7 lakh. Protesters, carrying black flags and scrawling anti-Pakistan slogans on walls, organised a procession. The rally brought the inevitable police lathicharge and members from the political groups in Gilgit said 16 local leaders, including Abdul Hamid Khan, were arrested. Khan's supporters say he is in police custody, facing hard torture. He has been charged with treason.

In an interview to Outlook (on telephone from Gilgit) shortly before his arrest, Khan spoke of what the people in the Northern Areas are up against. "Nothing has changed, except for the worse," he said. "The Pakistani minister for Kashmir and the Northern Areas is like a badshah here. We cannot appeal against his orders in any court. There is now an advisory council that is meaningless. This is like no other place. We also want a place in the world."

Khan, Major Hussain Shah and Amir Hamza, a former police officer-turned-Kashmiri nationalist, have tried to use international meets to draw attention to Gilgit and Baltistan, once at an international conference in London and last year at the human rights meeting in Geneva. They were not given visas under Pakistani government pressure, they said. "They just watch us here all the time," Khan said. "But people are  getting fed up with this state of affairs. The youngsters are getting impatient. We can't be the fifth province of Pakistan any more."

Khan managed to fax a statement to the Geneva meet. "We do not have even the rights animals have in some countries," he wrote. "I am not being emotional. We know and God knows this is true." The Pakistanis, he says, "cheated us, they occupied Gilgit and Baltistan, they made us slaves in our own land." The excuse was "the Army had to be there to fight India. But the situation here is far worse than in Indian Kashmir."

Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, banning assembly of five or more persons, has been in force here for the last 50 years. "We have been deprived even of the fundamental rights we had under Dogra rule," Khan points out. And so the nationalist Kashmiri groups came together at a meeting this May to fight Pakistani occupation together. "So far we were asking for the right to join Pakistan, for the rights that other Pakistanis enjoy. Now, we do not want those rights. Call it the third or fourth option, but now we want to fight for liberation."

 Afzal Tahir, head of the Kashmir International Front in London, claims the government has imposed a "total news blackout" on the region. Foreign journalists do not have easy access to Gilgit and Baltistan. Little information is allowed out. "Half-a-dozen journals are published from Srinagar, international correspondents can go there, but there is no media base in Gilgit," he says. "Local journalists can only report for the Pakistani press." Gilgit can be reported a little by a correspondent in London. By a correspondent in Islamabad, almost not at all. Growing unrest remains unreported.

June 1996 saw clashes and confrontations all over Gilgit. The police fired upon a group of students who had turned up for job interviews at a degree college 9 km from Gilgit. Students hit back, attacking police stations and Pakistani government offices. Several buildings were attacked and police jeeps were burnt. The violence brought various protesting groups together, Tahir says.

Violence has followed a religious divide earlier. The Shia majority Gilgit and Baltistan have witnessed Shia-Sunni violence before. The Pakistani Army fired upon Shias protesting against settlements of outsiders in the region. Scores died in violence in 1988 when Shias were burnt alive on the streets of Gilgit. Police and military officers accused Shias of loyalty to Iran rather than to Pakistan.

THERE are signs that the anti-Pakistan groups within Balawarstan have begun to work with groups opposing Pakistani occupation within POK. August 14 also saw protests and arrests in Muzaffarabad, Baag and Rawalakot. Kashmiris from Gilgit and Baltistan joined protests in POK against the Pakistani government earlier in February 1996. Students fought the police on the streets of Gilgit. Several were arrested and charged with treason. Gilgit was put under curfew for several days. The events ran with similar protests that lasted several weeks within POK.

But the protests have been sporadic in a land with a 1.2 million population spread over a 28,000 square mile area. Gilgit is the hotbed of protests but the 24-member advisory council in Gilgit has been able to do little for the protesters or their cause. The Nafaz Fika-e-Jafriya, a local party with a majority in the council, is said to be trying now to win over what Pakistan sees as troublesome leaders.

It has never been more important for Pakistan to neutralise the agitation against its occupation. The Karakoram Highway goes through Baltistan; and the region borders Tajikistan. Pakistan, looking for money and a power corridor to the Central Asian republics, needs to keep Baltistan, and to keep it quiet. "This is why you see some softening in the Pakistani position on Indian Kashmir," says Afzal Tahir. "If a plebiscite is held all over Kashmir, Pakistan will certainly lose this area."

 Little is spent in these areas on education, health or civic facilities, says Shaukat Ali Kashmiri, a leader who has been to jail over his campaign against Pakistan. "When we ask for funds, they tell us they are needed for the jihad in Indian Kashmir," he adds. The Pakistani PR teams, he notes, have the world fooled: "Visiting leaders are taken to Muzaffarabad and they are introduced to people the Pakistan government wants. Nobody is allowed to meet us." Kashmiri leaders who demand rights for their people are hounded. "They file cases against us everywhere, people are picked up, no questions asked, no answers given. It is their wish who they pick up, who they torture, who is killed, who is spared. They force us to sign all sorts of confessions. We are agents of RAW, we are Mossad agents, we are KGB agents. There I am, everyone's agent."

 Not just leaders, but "everyone living in the border areas is a victim", Kashmiri emphasises. "People here are forced to become guides for people trained in camps to go into Indian Kashmir. They tell us we will shoot you if you refuse. People who refuse are tortured, we know of cases where their women have been abducted."

 A Pakistani group, the Al Jihad Trust, filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking an order to ensure fundamental rights in these areas. The government dodged behind the region's uncertain status. They "fall outside the territorial jurisdiction of this Honourable Court", it said. This is an area that gets defined by all that it is not. It has no recourse to the Pakistani courts, it has no independent court of its own.

Afzal Tahir calls it a "tremendous success of the Pakistan PR machinery to have kept Gilgit and Baltistan behind an iron curtain for so long". The people of Gilgit and Baltistan had more rights under the Maharaja before 1947, Tahir notes: "They had the right to appeal to the High Court of the state and to send a representative to the state assembly. Now a Pakistani sessions court can pass the death sentence, and we have no right to appeal. This is the worst colonial rule in the world today." His group has now announced a hunger strike at London's Trafalgar Square to get people to notice these forgotten lands.

Shaukat Ali Kashmiri sums up the status of the region: "We are a part of Pakistan when they want to rule us and our land, but not a part of Pakistan when we want the rights that other Pakistanis have." Gilgitis and Baltistanis do not vote when Pakistani elections do come along. Nor do Kashmiris in POK. Other Pakistanis elect the government that rules these Pakistanis. "People here have no representation in the Pakistani Parliament, and no role in electing the president, but the laws of Parliament and the decrees of the president are enforced in the Northern Areas," says Afzal Tahir.

Significantly, many Kashmiri leaders campaigning for freedom from Pakistani occupation blame India for their state. "Why has India done nothing for us?" demands Kashmiri. "If India accepts the accession, then they have a responsibility here, they must do something for us." All Indian leaders do is to say now and then that these areas belong to India, Kashmiri notes. "But unless they do something about it, these daavas are just daavas." Constitutionally, he explains, POK and Gilgit and Baltistan are a part of Jammu and Kashmir state. If India claims these areas, it must follow these claims with some action. "Nobody speaks for us, nobody. But we want to talk to the Government of India." Is New Delhi listening?