The mountains around Rawalakot have witnessed bloodshed before. But the violence that erupted there in early June 2026, leaving at least eleven people dead and dozens wounded in clashes between security forces and protesters, carried a particular and dispiriting quality. The tragedy is not only the lives lost but that they need not have been. A political process was yielding ground, slowly but perceptibly, before the barricades went up.

The Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), which has led rolling protests across Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) since 2023, frames itself as a movement of the dispossessed, a grassroots uprising driven by socioeconomic and political grievances. AJK does face real hardships: inflation bites hard, infrastructure lags, and unemployment among the young is stubborn. These are legitimate grievances deserving of a political response. What is not legitimate, nor remotely conducive to resolution, is the translation of those grievances into barricades, armed confrontation and the surrounding of a military hospital. The JAAC's tactics have not advanced its cause. They have endangered the civilians it claims to represent.

Before rehearsing the JAAC's demands, it is worth pausing on a number that rarely features in its rallies. Pakistan transfers approximately Rs140 billion annually to AJK through federal current expenditure allocations. It absorbs a further Rs108 billion in electricity tariff differentials, effectively paying the gap between what AJK consumers are charged and the actual cost of generation. In 2024 alone, Islamabad approved a further Rs23 billion ($83m) subsidy package, cutting the price of a 40kg bag of wheat flour from Rs3,100 to Rs2,000 and capping residential electricity rates well below the national average. AJK's total budget for 2025-26........

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