By Abdul Wasey
Origins of a Movement
When residents of Rawalakot first took to the streets demanding cheaper flour and lower electricity bills, few imagined they were witnessing the opening act of a movement that would shake the constitutional foundations of Pakistan’s relationship with Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Three years later, that modest protest has transformed into something far more troubling: a sustained campaign of street agitation, political confrontation, and escalating violence that has left police officers dead, hundreds injured, and serious questions unanswered about who is truly pulling the strings.
The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee, known as JAAC, formally emerged in 2023. On the surface, its founding grievances were seen as legitimate and relatable: inflated electricity tariffs, unaffordable wheat prices, and governance failures that had long burdened ordinary people in one of Pakistan’s most politically sensitive territories. But the trajectory of the movement from welfare advocacy to constitutional contestation, from protest banners to firearms, has prompted serious alarm and a question that grows louder with each passing month: Is JAAC a genuine voice of the people, or has it become an instrument of a foreign agenda?
Leadership and Rhetoric
Shaukat Nawaz Mir emerged as the most visible leader of JAAC, a figure who has positioned himself as a champion of ordinary Kashmiris against an indifferent state. He became a founding member of the committee in August 2023 and by May 2024 had emerged as its principal public face. His rhetoric sharpened steadily over that period. In October 2025, standing before television cameras at Lal Chowk in Muzaffarabad, Mir declared with unmistakable clarity that Azad Kashmir is not free. The statement was not merely political theatre. It was broadcast across Indian television networks and amplified through Indian media platforms within hours, reinforcing a narrative that India has promoted for decades regarding Kashmir’s political status. For Pakistan’s security establishment, the speed and enthusiasm with which Indian media seized upon the words of a Pakistani-side Kashmiri activist was not a coincidence; it was a pattern.
Intellectual Architecture
If Shaukat Nawaz Mir is the movement’s public face, the intellectual architecture of JAAC bears the unmistakable imprint of Dr. Amjad Ayub Mirza, a man born in Mirpur who has lived in the United Kingdom for many years and currently resides in Glasgow, Scotland. His book ‘Ao Inqalab Karain’, written in Urdu, advances a central argument that meaningful change cannot be achieved through conventional political processes. More significantly, the book deliberately reframes everyday economic grievances—including electricity costs, wheat prices, and administrative failures—as symptoms of a deeper structural problem in the relationship between Azad Kashmir and Pakistan. This rhetorical shift moves public discourse away from governance reform and toward questions of sovereignty and political status.
Critics point out that this is precisely the narrative framework that Indian information operations have advanced for decades. The difference, they note, is that it is now being delivered in Urdu, by a Kashmiri voice, through a platform that claims grassroots legitimacy. Dr. Mirza’s public conduct has done little to dispel these concerns. He has publicly offered his services to the Government of India following that country’s 2024 general elections. In January 2024, he called for the formation of a government of Pakistan-administered Kashmir in exile if JAAC’s demands were not addressed. In October 2025, he appeared on Indian television and described JAAC as the only legitimate representative of the people’s will in Pakistani-occupied Jammu Kashmir—language that mirrors official Indian government terminology almost verbatim. In June 2025, during an interview with ANI, a media outlet closely associated with Indian state interests, Dr. Mirza rejected Pakistan’s accusations of Indian sponsorship of terrorism and dismissed them as baseless. A man who co-founded the largest civil society movement in Azad Kashmir was defending India on Indian state-affiliated media against the security concerns of the Pakistani government.
Violence and Escalation
Whatever the movement’s origins or external influences, the violence it has generated on Pakistani soil is beyond dispute. The first major confrontation erupted between 8 and 13 May 2024, when JAAC mobilized supporters across Muzaffarabad, Mirpur, Kotli, Dadyal, Rawalakot, and other districts. What began as shutter-down strikes, road blockades, and sit-ins descended rapidly into armed confrontation. On 11 May, as security forces attempted to prevent protesters from reaching Muzaffarabad, violent clashes broke out at multiple locations including Islamgarh, Sultan Shah Bridge, and Aziz Chowk. Amidst the throng, armed individuals unleashed gunfire upon the police. Assistant Sub-Inspector Adnan Qureshi, struck by a bullet, succumbed to his injuries and achieved martyrdom. At least seventy-eight police personnel sustained injuries. By the time order was restored, four people had lost their lives—including three protesters and one officer—schools and businesses were shuttered across the region, and the movement had crossed a threshold from civil disobedience into something far more dangerous.
The federal government responded with a Rs 23 billion relief package covering wheat and electricity subsidies. JAAC interpreted this as vindication. The lesson the movement drew from the bloodshed was that coercive pressure worked and that the state would yield when confronted with sufficient disruption.
The movement’s most lethal episode came in the autumn of 2025. After issuing a six-month ultimatum tied to a new thirty-eight-point charter of demands, JAAC launched a region-wide shutdown on 29 September 2025. Within twenty-four hours, the protests had turned violent across Muzaffarabad, Bagh, Rawalakot, Kotli, and surrounding areas. Thousands of demonstrators occupied roads and public spaces, many visibly armed with firearms, sticks, and other weapons. The worst violence occurred in Dhir Kot on 1 October 2025. Armed individuals fired directly on law enforcement personnel. Three police officers—including Constable Khurshid, Constable Jameel, and Constable Tahir Rafi—were martyred. Nine others were wounded. Six civilians also lost their lives during this wave of unrest. Hundreds more were injured. Government vehicles were destroyed, public property was vandalized, and mobile and internet services were suspended across the territory.
Constitutional Demands
Among the most revealing aspects of the thirty-eight-point charter issued in 2025 are the demands that have nothing to do with electricity or wheat. JAAC called for the abolition of the twelve seats reserved in the AJ&K Legislative Assembly for refugees from Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir—a deeply symbolic arrangement that reflects the unresolved nature of the Kashmir dispute and Pakistan’s longstanding political commitments. The committee also demanded the implementation of a separate State Subject Rule and the reversal of the merger of the AJ&K Bank with the State Bank of Pakistan. These are not welfare demands. They are constitutional demands. They touch upon the legal and political architecture that governs the relationship between Azad Kashmir and the Pakistani state. That they appear alongside subsidy requests in the same charter is not incidental. It is the clearest indicator that JAAC’s agenda has always extended far beyond the price of bread.
Government Response and Unanswered Questions
On 30 May 2026, Pakistan assembled one of its most senior political delegations in recent memory to negotiate a final resolution with JAAC before a threatened strike and long march planned for 9 June. Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Rana Sanaullah, Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, Qamar Zaman Kaira, former Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, the Prime Minister of AJ&K, and numerous other senior figures sat across the table from the committee’s representatives. The government’s position was backed by a substantial record of concessions. Thirty-five of the thirty-eight demands had been accepted, implemented, or were in advanced stages of resolution. Approximately 177 first information reports linked to earlier protest activity had been withdrawn. Compensation was paid to the families of those who died during previous disturbances. Progress had been made on wheat subsidies, electricity tariffs, healthcare, education, merit-based recruitment, and infrastructure projects. And yet the strikes were not called off. The deadlines were not lifted. The protest infrastructure remained in place. If the overwhelming majority of demands had been met, why was the agitation continuing? It is a question that the government is now asking publicly, and the answer it has arrived at is a deeply uncomfortable one.
Conclusion: A Call to Action
Among the most formidable challenges confronting Pakistan is the question posed by JAAC, precisely because it subtly masquerades as a straightforward issue of public welfare. Its slogans and statements have been amplified from the other side of the Line of Control. Its most politically charged demands target the constitutional arrangements that connect Azad Kashmir to Pakistan. Whether JAAC represents a genuine expression of popular frustration, a vehicle for a foreign intelligence operation, or a complicated entanglement of both, Pakistan can no longer afford to treat the question as academic. Every institution, every constitutional guarantee, and every Pakistani life lost in AJ&K’s streets makes the answer more urgent. The question before every citizen is now unavoidable: should the state allow this to continue, or is it time to act?
