Escalating protests in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir expose deep socioeconomic grievances, military repression, and the failure of Pakistan’s nation-building project nearly 80 years after independence, experts say.

Policy analyst and columnist Dr. Tehmeena Rizvi and Professor Sreeram Chaulia, Dean, Jindal School of International Affairs and Director General, Jindal India Institute, dissected the escalating crisis in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) in the latest episode of Indian Diplomacy on Doordarshan. The discussion centred on deadly crackdowns against civilian protesters, the military-dominated character of the Pakistani state, and the stark contrast with improving conditions on the Indian side of the Line of Control.

The episode opened with a clear diagnosis from Rizvi: “The fight is actually about socio-economic issues. The fight is about accountability of (the) Pakistani state. The problem with them is that they have a very weak civilian and military cohesion. Their military establishment mostly deals with the issues. It’s not in a very democratic manner. Faith cannot run democratic country, as clear as that. So, even if on the very beginning it started with that point, it cannot sustain for longer duration. It’s a state which is looking for a nation. So, it cannot really… 80 years down the line, a state which is still looking for a nation and a democratic one while keeping everything in military establishment. It’s a paradox, I think. On this side of the country, we are seeing elections, we are seeing developments, we are seeing people living normally. And then on the other side, we are seeing clashes, internet shutdowns, and the main dissent around elections.”

Military Response to Civilian Dissent

Chaulia framed the crisis bluntly. At least 100 people have been killed and hundreds more injured in recent months of unrest. The Pakistani state, he noted, has resorted to “extreme brutality and force” to crush protests led by the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), a broad civil-society coalition representing traders, students, lawyers and local groups. Yet the revolt has not been fully extinguished.

Rizvi was unsurprised by the violence. “Pakistan is a military established state and they treat every dissent as a dissent against their hegemonic structure and they don’t really care whether the dissent, these are student leaders, these are community leaders, these are civil society actors. They don’t really care whether these people are armed or not. They treat everybody equally as thinking that one is a militant.” 

Recent statements equating the protesters with “enemies of the state as India is” only underscored the point, she said. “We don’t expect them to negotiate with these community leaders and Joint Awami Action Committee… Pakistan has been like this since many years. So, we can’t really right now expect them to uphold the rules and regulations of a democratic state.”

Chaulia agreed that the absence of accommodation with civilian demands creates “spirals” of repression and renewed revolt, visible not only in the Mirpur-Muzaffarabad belt but also in the broader PoJK region that includes Gilgit-Baltistan.

Socioeconomic Roots, Not Just Identity

Rizvi rejected the tendency to reduce the unrest to a Kashmiri identity crisis. “One of the problems with this conversation is that we try to reduce it to identity crisis… The fight is actually about accountability. The fight is actually about socio-economic issues… These people, when we talk about the larger region and PoJK, these people are not only Kashmiris. These people are Mirpuris. These are Gujjars. These are Paharis… The Kashmiri identity fight comes last. The first problem is with the accountability and socio-economic issues.”

Grievances date back to 2023. Residents of a region that generates substantial hydropower through the Mangla Dam faced prolonged power cuts and high tariffs. Wheat and flour subsidies were cut. Daily living became a struggle. In 2026 the immediate trigger was the 12 reserved seats in the 53-member PoJK assembly set aside for refugees living elsewhere in Pakistan. Locals asked why people who neither live in the region nor share its hardships should help choose their governors. The JAAC’s 38-point charter also sought fair electricity pricing, local representation, better services and an end to political interference from Islamabad. The group was banned under anti-terrorism laws days before major marches, intensifying the confrontation.

Failure of Nation-Building and Political Islam

Chaulia pressed the deeper structural question. Pakistan was founded on the idea that Muslims of the subcontinent needed a secure homeland. Yet religion has repeatedly failed to hold the country together – most dramatically with the 1971 breakaway of Bangladesh. Today Balochistan is in open revolt, Pashtun movements challenge the state in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindhi nationalists have long voiced discontent. Why, he asked, are Muslim populations across these regions rejecting the “land of the pure”?

Rizvi’s answer returned to the opening paradox: a state still searching for a coherent nation while power remains concentrated in the military establishment. Political Islam has not delivered democratic accountability or equitable development. The result is fragmented revolts that the centre can only manage through force.

Contrast Across the Line of Control and International Responsibilities

Both speakers highlighted the divergence between the two sides – on the Indian side, elections, infrastructure development and relatively normal civilian life continue. In PoJK, internet blackouts, security force deployments and lethal force have become routine responses to protest. Chaulia asked what India and the international community should do. The conversation underscored the need for sustained attention to systematic human-rights abuses and for pressure on Pakistan to address genuine socioeconomic and political grievances rather than criminalising them.

India has consistently described PoJK as territory under illegal occupation and has rejected recent local elections there as a “cosmetic exercise” meant to camouflage repression. Independent reporting has documented communication blackouts, troop deployments from mainland Pakistan, and casualties that include civilians, with some accounts alleging significant numbers of women and children among the dead – claims the Pakistani authorities dispute.

A Spiral That Haunts Pakistan

The experts concluded that the cycle of protest and crackdown is not an aberration but a structural feature of a military-dominated state that cannot negotiate with its own citizens. As long as the Pakistani establishment treats legitimate demands for accountability, fair resource distribution and local representation as existential threats, the revolts in PoJK and elsewhere will continue to haunt it. Nearly eight decades after independence, the search for a workable nation remains unfinished – and the cost is being paid in civilian lives, the two experts avered.

The full discussion is available on DD India’s YouTube channel under the title Indian Diplomacy: Human Rights in Pakistan-Occupied Jammu & Kashmir.