Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) is a part of the former Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir. In Pakistan, it is commonly referred to as Azad Kashmir (Free Kashmir), although in India it is known as POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir). It has a semiautonomous regional government and has been administered internationally by Pakistan since 1949, but it is not constitutionally a part of Pakistan and its people are not represented in the Pakistan National Assembly. Under the 1949 UN agreements on Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan was recognized as temporarily in charge of AJK’s international status. Successive governments of AJK have struggled to maintain their control as “local authorities,” in the UN treaty terminology, over AJK’s internal administrative structures and governance practices. Formally, AJK operates as a limited parliamentary democracy, as established in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Interim Constitution Act, adopted in 1974. The territory of AJK comprises about five thousand square miles of the former State of Jammu and Kashmir, one of the largest Indian Princely States during British colonial rule in South Asia (see map 1). The borders with Pakistan’s Provinces of Punjab and Khyber Phaktunwa (formerly known as the NWFP, North West Frontier Provinces) determine its territorial boundaries to the west and south. The military Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan demarcates the eastern border. At the time I was doing field research, AJK was comprised of six administrative districts, all of which bordered the LoC (see map 2).53 To the north, another part of the former princely state known as the Northern Areas, until it was renamed Gilgit-Baltistan in 2010, has a separate governmental and administrative structure.54 It is governed directly through the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan in Islamabad.55
MAP 1. The Former Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir (2012).
AJK’s political status within Pakistan is complex and widely misunderstood, because its internal governance is marked by a long history of tension between the formal structural limits on Pakistan’s power and the informal influence and coercion wielded by Pakistani bureaucrats and military personnel. Study of AJK politics has been dominated by a kind of proxy government theory, which explains political developments in AJK by analyzing the interests and influence of Pakistan.56 This perspective keeps the focus firmly on the international politics of the Kashmir Dispute and denies the political agency of Kashmiri peoples in producing the conditions of their own political lives. It also overemphasizes formal institutional politics and underestimates the role that Kashmiri politicians, administrators, and political society played in shaping political practices and institutions as they developed in the postcolonial period. As a result, a consensus opinion in the scholarly literature is that the institutionalization of refugee representation in the AJK government was a deliberate strategy through which Pakistan guaranteed itself representation in AJK internal politics.57
MAP 2. The Azad State of Jammu and Kashmir (2001).
On the contrary, displaced Jammu and Kashmir hereditary state subjects (the “refugees” who are guaranteed representation) have a long history of actively demanding recognition from and a role in the AJK government. In fact, the “Kashmiri refugee” as a political identity emerged in part through efforts by AJK political elites to define an exclusive domain of state power. By restricting all forms of state patronage—including government employment, property ownership, and registration in government schools—to recognized Jammu and Kashmir state subjects (including refugees), they were able to limit Pakistan’s control over the administrative machinery of the AJK government. That government provides most of the public services available in AJK, and it employs only legally recognized Jammu and Kashmir state-subjects and bases civil service appointments on its own exam system.58 Since the 1980s, small industry and private businesses, like construction firms, hydroelectric development projects, and private English-medium schools59 have been a growing sector of the regional economy. Private employment opportunities also grew exponentially after the earthquake of 2005 with internationally funded rehabilitation and reconstruction. Historical restrictions on property ownership and employment created opportunities for AJK residents and documented state refugees to provide contract labor for international agencies and establish new local businesses, because Pakistani-owned firms did not have a foothold in the state. The political party or coalition in charge in the capital of Muzaffarabad supervises a vast structure of service provision, administration, and governance and therefore controls an important regional patronage system.
Under the Interim Constitution, the executive branch of the AJK government is comprised of a Prime Minister, elected by a Legislative Assembly, and a Council of Ministers. The Assembly and the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs jointly elect a President, and the AJK Supreme Court and the High Court of Azad Kashmir exercise judicial oversight. The current Legislative Assembly is made up of forty-nine seats. Of these, forty-one seats are directly elected: twelve are elected by refugees living in Pakistan, and twenty-nine are elected by AJK residents. The elected members of the Assembly make appointments to eight reserved seats, of which one is for “overseas Jammu and Kashmir State Subjects.”60 The AJK government is responsible for all internal law and order and internal security. It maintains its own police, whose elite investigative unit is the AJK Special Branch. AJK does not have its own professional army; the Pakistan Army provides border defense. A special regiment of the Pakistan Army called the “Mujahid Regiment” was established in the late 1980s. It recruits only Jammu and Kashmir state-subjects and is deployed only on the front line of the LoC. The AJK government has also developed an active civil defense program, which trains village-level militia to defend against external (Indian) invasion.
Pakistan has always been sensitive about its international reputation on matters pertaining the UN resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir. For that reason, outright annexation was not a political option. Instead, Pakistan’s administrative penetration into the AJK state government was accomplished by making political alliances with AJK political leaders.61 The government of Pakistan legally exerts authority in AJK internal politics through the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council, through supervision of the state administrative services, and through control over the state budget.62 In addition, candidates for elected office are required to support Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan, and all government employees are required to sign an oath to that effect. For this reason, the nationalist, pro-independence political parties cannot forward candidates for election in AJK, and anyone in government service cannot be a registered member of a pro-independence party. This constraint has effectively kept independence parties (both pan-Kashmir and AJK-based) out of political office, although they have a presence in nongovernmental political contexts. It has also led to a widespread practice of multiple party affiliation, some that are documented for the purpose of employment and others that people espouse clandestinely.
The Pakistan Army exercises coercive power but has to limit its interventions to those that can be hidden from international public scrutiny or that it can legitimate in the name of defending against external aggression. Pakistan treats the entirety of AJK as an area of security risk, because the former Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir has been at the center of regional instability since 1947, and because it is claimed by India. Pakistan exerts the most direct administrative influence within the official Military Security Zone, which covers a 16-km band along the LoC and encompasses areas within range of Indian Army artillery. Within the zone, the Military Intelligence (MI) of the Pakistan Army, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which recruits both from the Pakistan Army and the Pakistan Civil Services, along with the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) oversee the activities of the local population, and the military carries out identity checks at regular check posts. These practices remind the people who live there that AJK is an insecure state under constant impending threat of external armed aggression, and it allows Pakistan to suppress dissent in the name of security.
Politicians, administrators, and civilians in AJK express deep suspicions about the indirect influence that representatives of
