Shehbaz Sharif’s Kashmir speech turns the spotlight on Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir

As my friend Safdar from POJK told me later that while Shehbaz Sharif was speaking in New York about Kashmir, it felt for a moment that he is actually acknowledging his government’s handling of the current situation of Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir. POJK for past many months now has been passing through months of political unrest.

When Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif stood before the 81st United Nations General Assembly and once again placed Kashmir at the centre of Pakistan’s foreign-policy narrative, he was following a script Islamabad has repeated for decades. Kashmir was presented as an unfinished international dispute, Pakistan positioned itself as the voice of the Kashmiri people and India was held responsible for what Islamabad describes as the denial of Kashmiri political and human rights.

But this time there was a striking contradiction sitting much closer to home. As my friend Safdar from POJK told me later that while Shehbaz Sharif was speaking in New York about Kashmir, it felt for a moment that he is actually acknowledging his government’s handling of the current situation of Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir. POJK for past many months now has been passing through months of political unrest. The protests taking place in Rawalakot, Muzaffarabad and across towns and districts of the territory occupied by Pakistan have been relentless. The grievances are directed primarily at governance, political repression, economic hardship, public services and the growing distance between the people and the political establishment governing them.

That makes the timing of Sharif’s Kashmir rhetoric particularly revealing. Pakistan has spent decades asking the international community to look at what happens on the Indian side of the Line of Control. Yet it is the developments in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir that raises an important question about what happens when the people living under Pakistan’s occupation of the disputed territory themselves begin demanding political accountability.

The ongoing protests have exposed a widening disconnect between Islamabad’s international narrative and the political reality inside the territory it occupies. The........

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