Hamid Mir
It is a strange government, those with whom it negotiates and then enters into a written agreement, after some time it declares them terrorists. It bans them. The issue of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir government banning the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Public Action Committee is raising many questions about the government itself. I have a document in front of me. This is an agreement signed between the government and the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Public Action Committee on October 4, 2025, which is signed by five ministers of the current federal government, the current Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir, Faisal Mumtaz Rathore, and three leaders of the Action Committee, Raja Amjad, Shaukat Nawaz Mir and Anjum Zaman Awan. The ministers who signed this agreement are now declaring the Action Committee as terrorists. People are asking me why this government did not realize eight months ago that the members of the Action Committee are terrorists and anti-nationals? Now this matter has reached the British Parliament. Imran Hussain, the head of the Kashmir group in the British Parliament, has sent a joint letter to the Pakistani government, signed by 30 other members, expressing concern over the situation in Azad Kashmir. India has always been unhappy with Imran Hussain and his Kashmir group because they have always raised their voice against India’s atrocities on the Kashmiris.
Today, the same Imran Hussain is expressing regret over the situation in Azad Kashmir. Will Imran Hussain also be called an Indian agent now? In the past one year, Pakistan has forced India to retreat in the military and diplomatic fields, but now such wrong political decisions are being made that India will try to take advantage of. The current unrest in Azad Jammu and Kashmir needs to be understood in a historical context. Whenever someone raises their voice for their rights in this region, they are considered a foreign agent. At every important juncture of the freedom movement, the Kashmiri leadership starts fighting among themselves and their struggle is negatively affected. Don’t forget that Pakistan was established on August 14, 1947, and the current Kashmiri freedom movement began on July 13, 1931. July 13 is still observed as Kashmir Martyrs’ Day. The Kashmiri resistance had already begun before the establishment of Pakistan.
On October 24, 1947, the first interim government of Azad Kashmir, headed by Sardar Ibrahim Khan, announced that our main goal was to free the entire state from the domination of the Dogra dynasty. Unfortunately, the Kashmiri leadership started fighting among themselves within a few months of the formation of the government in Azad Kashmir. In 1948, when the head of the Muslim Conference, Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas, was released from Jammu jail and came to Pakistan, his quarrel with Sardar Ibrahim began. Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas was a refugee. Sardar Ibrahim was a local. Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas led the Muslim Conference. Sardar Ibrahim had the government of Azad Kashmir. The then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, supported Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas and in 1950, Sardar Ibrahim’s government was abolished. The Muslim Conference split into three factions. One faction was that of Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas, who was the representative of the refugees of Jammu. The second faction was that of Sardar Ibrahim, who was influential among the local tribes, and the third faction was that of Mirwaiz Yousaf Shah, who was a representative of the refugees of the Kashmir Valley. After the end of his rule, Sardar Ibrahim established his own parallel government in some areas of Azad Kashmir. Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas held a rally against him in Rawalpindi, where Sardar Ibrahim’s supporters rioted and a Kashmiri refugee, Khwaja Ghulam Din Wani, was killed. Prime Minister of Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan ordered a military operation in Rawalakot to end Sardar Ibrahim’s parallel government.
Fighting broke out between the army and the local tribes. This fighting continued for a long time. The governments that came after Liaquat Ali Khan’s assassination made peace with Sardar Ibrahim Khan and he regained power. Another rebellion in Poonch took place in 1955. In this rebellion, Colonel Khan Muhammad Khan, known as the Khan of Mang, established his government in the garden. The reason for this rebellion was the breach of promises made by the local administration. Later, the Khan of Ming arrested him. He was declared a foreign agent, but no charges could be proven against him in court. In 1958, General Ayub Khan declared martial law and Sardar Ibrahim Khan’s government was abolished and a Kashmiri refugee, KH Khurshid, was made the president of the state. KH Khurshid could not stay with Ayub Khan for long. When Mrs. Fatima Jinnah contested the presidential election against Ayub Khan, KH Khurshid was the supervisor of the election campaign of the Motherland. Another refugee, Maqbool Butt, who migrated to Pakistan from occupied Kashmir, also participated in the election campaign of the Motherland, but after the defeat of the Motherland, he became disillusioned with Pakistani politics. He believed that the only way to free the state of Jammu and Kashmir from Indian occupation was through armed resistance. He went to Srinagar to organize armed resistance and was arrested there. In 1968, he escaped from Srinagar jail and returned to Azad Kashmir, where he was arrested here.
He was declared an Indian spy and tortured. After the hijacking of the Indian plane Ganga in 1971, he and other comrades were tortured in the royal fort of Lahore. The court did not prove his accusation of being an Indian spy. After his honorable release, he was offered the presidency of Azad Kashmir by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but he rejected the presidency and returned to occupied Kashmir. He was arrested there again and was hanged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in 1984. His body is still buried in Tihar Jail. Maqbool Butt’s tragedy is actually the tragedy of the Kashmir freedom movement. India has always called him an agent of Pakistan and Pakistan has called him an Indian agent. The starting point of the recent unrest seen in Azad Kashmir is the Indian move of August 5, 2019, when the special status of occupied Kashmir was abolished and Pakistan could not do anything.
On September 7, 2019, the JKLF protested in Rawalakot and started a long march towards the Line of Control, which was stopped by shelling on the protesters. Then on October 23, 2019, there was a huge protest in Muzaffarabad, which was stopped by shelling and lathi charge. It is worth thinking that these protests started against India, but how did they later turn towards the Pakistani rulers? In 2022, this unrest took the form of a public rights movement, which was actually a distrust of the leadership of political parties, because at that time, the Tehreek-e-Insaf government in Azad Kashmir also called the Action Committee a foreign agent. The rulers of Pakistan and the Kashmiri leadership should learn from their mistakes. Don’t fight each other. Come back to negotiations. Stop calling each other foreign agents. If the Kashmiri people and the Pakistani rulers get into trouble, India will benefit. What can we say about the Public Action Committee, which is being called Indian agents today, who signed an agreement with these Indian agents just eight months ago? Tomorrow you will again hold talks with the same Action Committee, which was declared terrorists. This is not only a tragedy for Kashmir but also for Pakistani politicians, who have been calling each other enemies of the country at different times and then become allies of each other.
