'Roof of the World' rebels against Pakistan

[mota bhai 2,675]

Umar Farooq

02 Jul 2014

Gilgit, Pakistan - Escalating protests in villages perched on the "Roof of the World" - a mountainous territory disputed between Pakistan and India - have exposed deep animosity towards Islamabad.

After 67 years of control by the Pakistani government, many local people want the country to either accept them as a new province - or grant them independence.

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"The problem is in the system - it's a colonial system. The laws come from Islamabad and we have to live under them," Nazir Ahmed, a local lawyer who helped organise the protests, told Al Jazeera.

The two hundred thousand residents of Ghizer district now have an ambulance, a crucial service in a region where the nearest hospital is a precarious five hour drive along narrow roads hugging cliff faces thousands of feet above fast-moving rivers.

Two weeks ago, hundreds of residents converged to besiege government offices, demanding that officials provide an ambulance and basic medical facilities.

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Ghizer has no surgeon or gynaecologist, and just one female health worker.

Similar unrest has erupted in villages across Gilgit-Baltistan in protests that began with calls for an end to government corruption.

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In April, hundreds of thousands of protesters held an 11-day sit-in in Gilgit's legislative assembly after Islamabad threatened to end a wheat subsidy established in 1972 to match a similar package in India-administered Kashmir.

The protesters won back the subsidy but their other demands, including self-rule for Gilgit-Baltistan, have yet to be met.

"Pakistan is seeking that the United Nations solve the Kashmir dispute, and is unwilling to officially integrate Gilgit-Baltistan into its political system," said Ahsan Ali, the head of the Gilgit-Baltistan High Court Bar Association, and an expert on constitutional law in the region.

The Roof of the World is part of a pre-1947 Kashmir, claimed by Pakistan and India and home to the only land route to the Indian Ocean for Pakistan's closest ally in the region, China.

The territory is home to 12 of the 30 highest peaks on Earth, and its massive glaciers are the source of water for most of the Indian subcontinent.

Since independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan and India have fought several wars over the status of Gilgit-Baltistan - part of the Pakistan-administered Kashmir - and the rest of disputed Kashmir to its east.

According to binding resolutions from the UN, a plebiscite is to be held to determine whether the region is to join India or Pakistan, or become an independent state, but this has yet to happen, leaving millions in legal limbo.

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Islamabad has also spent billions of dollars building infrastructure in the area like the Karakoram highway, which links remote mountain communities and provides a reliable land route to China.

Yet locals receive no revenue from customs duties with China, or the sales tax collected by Pakistan, which generates up to $550m in annual revenue and is destined entirely for Islamabad.

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Stretching 28,000 square miles, and home to 2 million people, the region is not even mentioned in Pakistan's constitution, a fact that irks young activists like Sajjid Rana, 19, who says textbooks only refer to it as "the land of glaciers".

If Gilgit-Baltistan gained self-rule, Rana would like to see it become a crossroads for trade between India and Central Asia, as it was for thousands of years before its western and eastern borders were closed under Islamabad's foreign policy priorities.

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The narrow roads throughout Gilgit-Baltistan are littered with checkpoints, manned by paramilitary soldiers and police who question all travellers.

In April, police climbed the cliffs overlooking the narrow highway near the village of Sikandarabad to drop giant boulders on to the roadway in an unsuccessful attempt to keep protesters from reaching the Gilgit sit in.

But blocked roads are not the only obstacle protesters face, with special courts set up to prosecute 'terrorism' suspects now being used against political activists.

More than 250 people have been tried in the anti-terrorism courts, alongside the 300 or so political cases that have been held in conventional criminal courts.

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"We always raised our voices over local problems in our areas, simple things," says Hussain, who is a member of the Karakoram National Movement, a party advocating for self-rule.

"They don't like this, so they call it sedition."

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/06/gilgit-baltistan-rebels-against-pakistan-201462984334940614.html

[mota bhai 2,675]

"We always raised our voices over local problems in our areas, simple things," says Hussain, who is a member of the Karakoram National Movement, a party advocating for self-rule.

A Facebook search for Karakoram National Movement leads to a group by the same name, with this description. They're little Marxists!

Karakorum National Movement (KNM)

Karakorum National Movement (KNM) is a left leaning organisation, which represents aspirations of Karakorum people. We fight against foreign domination and internal oppression. We stand for Sovereign Socialist Karakorum.

KNM is a democratic party and has a complete faith in the principle that people are real sovereign. They should decide everything and participate in all endeavours. The party has firm conviction that national and democratic rights of Karakorum people can only be restored through revolutionary struggle against the occupying powers – India and Pakistan.

KNM takes the stand that Karakorum is a historic, cultural and legal entity, and any attempt to divide it, is bound to fail.

KNM is a progressive party, which stands on the side of the oppressed and struggling masses across the globe. Our initial goal is to create an independent and sovereign socialist Karakorum, but we shall continue to fight for socialist Asia and ultimately a socialist World.