Rawalakot is located at a high elevation in the Pir Panjal range, which travel writers used to refer as the Pearl Valley of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. But on Saturday, it was something more: the grinding weight of economic despair and political exclusion finally combined with live ammunition.

Over the weekend, at least 11 people were killed and over 70 injured as protesters clashed with security forces in Rawalakot. That's the official count and official counts in PoK are a habit of shrinking from the ground to the short briefing rooms in Islamabad. Protest groups say over 30 people have been killed and some 200 injured in what is essentially a Security Cordon off in conjunction with a regional shutdown ordered today (Tuesday, June 9). Images on social media, the only journalism in a territory where internet has been banned, display running mobs, uniformed men shooting at streets that were once markets and stretchers.

The initial cause of this was a ban. In fact, the Home Department made the formal notification to proscribe the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) under the Anti-Terrorism Act just days before the massive wheel-jamming strike and shutdown of the territory. It does take a certain kind of audacity or fear to label a civil society alliance of traders, lawyers, students and farmers a terrorist organisation. It appears that Islamabad possessed both.

What JAAC is really.

The JAAC is not a new entity. The movement was triggered by localised sit-ins in Rawalakot in protest against the steep prices of wheat flour in the area. For several years, the JAAC has been able to turn a collection of disparate local economic complaints into a well-organised, state-wide political movement, mobilizing thousands of regular people, women and children.

The JAAC movement is led by a broad 38-point Charter of Demands under the umbrella of economic relief and economic structural reform. Economically, the JAAC requires a major cut in power tariffs for the consumers of the Azad Kashmir that are based on the cost of power generation from the local hydro-projects such as Mangla Dam and subsidised prices of wheat flour equivalent with neighbouring Gilgit-Baltistan.

The fault lies in the next part of the story, where things get really bad for Pakistan. Mangla Dam is located in PoK. It costs about 2 Pakistani rupees per unit to generate that electricity, while PoK residents pay over 30 rupees per unit. The electricity produced by the dam provides power to large areas of Pakistan and the local people consume it at 15 times the production cost. It is not government. That is extraction.

The IMF in the Room

This didn't come out of the blue. In FY2023-24, Pakistan increased electricity tariffs by 26 percent and in July 2024 by 20 percent and in June 2025, petrol prices were hiked by more than PKR 10/-. By 2025, electricity costs had increased more than doubled from 2021 due to government compliance with the IMF to remove electricity subsidies and impose higher electricity tariffs.

Pakistan is implementing an IMF supervised austerity programme for years now. The conditions are well known: elimination of energy subsidies, increases in tariffs, augmentation of fiscal revenues. What's missing from the IMF's programme documentation is what happens at the pointy end of the adjustments in a territory like PoK, where it gives Pakistan its rivers, its land, and in return gets neither political representation nor economic justice.

Pakistan had headline inflation of 38 per cent, 700,000 Pakistanis were jobless and unsustainable debt levels, and in August 2023, the highest number of people committed suicide after electricity bill increases. The domino impact of these austerity measures was no theoretical possibility for PoK, which is already paying more than any other part of the country per dollar of production generated. Monthly survival.

A Promise Made, Then Broken

The JAAC protested in November 2023 to raise similar issues to calls for assurances from the AJK government, which ended the protest. The government's inability to do so was the immediate and main impetus behind the large-scale confrontations that ensued in 2024.

A six-day period of protests, sit-ins and strikes swept AJK in May 2024. The protests, which started over the prices of subsidised flour and electricity rates, turned into crowds in major towns. The public response was heightened by the government's attempt to forestall the large planned demonstration by arresting leaders of the JAAC, leading to deadly clashes.

The response at that time from Islamabad was that it would provide a grant. The Pakistani government has provided small, short-term financial packages to defuse public rage including a Rs 23 billion one in 2024 yet it has been adamant about not going for structural reforms. The subsidy was used up. The tariff tariff system was not altered. The JAAC continued its operations.

Last year, at least nine people, including three police officers, were killed and hundreds injured in widespread protests against exorbitant electricity rates and the price of flour in PoK. Every cycle begins and concludes with a promise and a promise is broken each time.

The Crackdown Logic and Its Contradictions

The unrest began in Rawalakot after the government had banned the JAAC, an alliance of civil society groups which has led protests on economic and political matters throughout the area for the last two years. Last week the regional administration declared the organisation illegal under anti-terrorism legislation.

Fights erupted when JAAC supporters assembled outside a hospital mortuary, where the remains of an activist who was killed in a previous shooting were brought to. Days after the regional administration ruled the organisation illegal under anti-terrorism laws, security forces stepped in to disperse the crowd.

Consider the meaning of that sequence. An activist was shot. People came to visit the hospital where his body was. Those mourners were dispersed by security forces. More people died. A shutdown on June 9th ensued. The administration created conditions to ensure a protest and a bloody one at that in an attempt to prevent a protest.

The shutdown of June 9th was to not only condemn reserved seats in the assembly but also to protest the killing of one of the JAAC's leaders, internet restrictions and the ban on the JAAC. This extended period of civil agitation hangs like a cloud over the scheduled general elections in the last week of July 2026.

The election aspect is of huge significance. Islamabad does not desire an energised, organised civil movement to set the terms of a campaign. So the designation of ‘anti-terrorism’ is less a security rating and more a campaign management device criminalizing opposition even before ballot papers are even printed.

Political Marginalisation is Deep-rooted

The JAAC movement calls for a removal of the 12 seats on the AJK Legislative Assembly reserved for Pakistani refugees from Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, and abolition of perks and privileges enjoyed by political elite and bureaucracy. According to JAAC, these seats are given on fake State Subject certificates for the benefits of influential political figures and not genuine stakeholders. Citizens are also protesting the allocation of land and resources in their localities to people who are elite and not deserving in the name of the welfare of the local destitute.

That is not the only reason why people are complaining; it is not only because of their electricity costs it is because of the structure of the government that puts someone in their assembly who does not really live in PoK. It is a colonial system in a democratic garb.

Pakistan's Own Rights Organization Speaks Up

If, instead, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (a domestic entity, not a foreign critic) dares to take on the government, then the situation has reached a certain point. The HRCP reported being "deeply alarmed at the continued violence" and voiced grave concern over the regional government's ban on the JAAC under anti-terrorism laws.

The commission said there was no room for meaningful dialogue in the context of ongoing political disenfranchisement and that the right to peaceful protest needed to be safeguarded. It announced it will "send a fact-finding mission to assess the ground situation.

It is not a fact-finding mission that Pakistan's Foreign Office will welcome facts. The government reaction to the international concern is in the usual defensive manner. The ministry of foreign affairs of Pakistan called the letter sent by the British MPs "irresponsible" and "ill-informed" and made it abundantly clear that any international criticism of PoK is a big red line for Pakistan.

Diplomacy Stirs

The international aspect has progressed more rapidly than Islamabad had hoped. Over 50 UK Parliament members wrote to the Foreign Secretary of the UK, Yvette Cooper, about a communication blackout, mass arrests, and curbing of democratic freedoms in PoJK.

Due to the worsening security situation, both the United Kingdom and the United States issued fresh advisories. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office issued a new travel guidance for the area, warning of political meetings and protests and a breakdown in law and order. From June 5 to June 20, the United States issued a security advisory to its citizens not to travel through certain areas of the region.

The British Parliamentarians pointed out extreme concern of British Kashmiris who have not been able to communicate with their relatives in PoK in any way whatsoever and also mass arrests which are reportedly taking place in which British nationals that have visited Kashmir have also been detained.

Pakistan's response, that the British government should "educate" its own MPs is the diplomatic equivalent of slamming a door and hoping no one heard the crash.

The Broader Pattern

Nothing has changed in PoK today is unprecedented. It is a pattern. A complaint is filed, organizers spring to life, the government promises, the promise is broken, demonstrations are restarted bigger; the government goes for the anti-terrorism law, people die. The time interval between cycles is decreasing and the number of bodies is increasing.

A prior wave was observed during September and October 2025, resulting in 21 fatalities in the districts of Muzaffarabad, Mirpur, Poonch, Neelum, Bhimber and Palandri. In May 2024, there were 9 deaths. 11 people were confirmed dead at the start of the current round this weekend and the shutdown continues. The direction is clear.

What distinguishes June 2026 from previous iterations is the fact that Islamabad faces three pressures at the same time: an upcoming election that they can't risk being recorded by an organised JAAC electorate, an IMF program that doesn't allow for the kind of subsidy compromises that have always served as a de facto solution, and an international community that is, at least this time, listening.

The problem of Pakistan isn't something that can be addressed through monetary means. There is no possibility of dismantling Mangla Dam. The electricity it produces can't be diverted away from Pakistani consumers without any political price. Yet paying PoK residents 15 times the cost of generation for power generated in their own backyard, and sending Rangers to shoot the mourners outside a hospital, is not a viable governance model either.

It's a simpler and sicker calculation for the Rawalakot and Muzaffarabad residents who have seized those streets. They have trouble paying their electric bills. They are unable to pay the price for flour. They saw their representatives making written agreements and ripping them up. Now they are seeing their neighbors arrive in pallinados.

Somewhere the numbers of repression just fail. The issue is how many more times does Islamabad believe it can say "no" before PoK starts to say "no," and that in a language that no travel warning, no internet ban, and no proscription as an act of terror can stop.