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Amjad Ayub Mirza
While Pakistan is in deep economic crisis, the plight of the people of Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan (PoJK, PoGB) has multiplied. As I sit down to write this, both PoJK and PoGB are suffering from severe shortages of wheat and electricity.
As small businesses and workshops closed, hundreds of families went hungry and thousands lost their jobs.
Protests against economic dispossession have been a daily occurrence for nearly a year.
People braved minus 20 degrees Celsius temperatures to observe the daily sit-ins.
Pensioners in both regions have not been paid for months as state coffers dry up. PoJK government employees have not been paid for three months.
Attempts to rally support for Pakistan in the PoJK-GB by designating 5th February as Kashmir Unity Day have also backfired.
Protests were held in several cities on the day, and a barrage of speakers refuted Pakistan’s claims that India mistreated Kashmiris in the Union Territory.
Price comparison of flour, onions, tomatoes and other daily necessities between Kashmir Valley and PoJK is the talk of every town and village in PoJK-GB.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) team has arrived in Pakistan and is demanding that Islamabad slash the privileges and allowances of the military and bureaucracy.
The International Monetary Fund has called for higher fuel and electricity prices, as well as raising $6 billion over the next five months and a total of $16 billion in foreign exchange before the next fiscal budget is presented in June this year.
The IMF mandated these reforms and met the target to free up just $1.3 billion in loans that the IMF has held on hold since last November.
As Pakistan’s economy plummets, its military has just reaped a huge profit of Rs 4,000 crore from defense-industrial firm Fauji Fertilizer Company Limited’s record fertilizer sale worth Rs 10,900 crore. Not to mention its former army chief, General Kamal Javed Bajwa, who amassed Rs 1,200 crore before retiring last November.
Every day, millions of dollars worth of lithium and other valuable minerals from PoJK-GB are looted and smuggled into Pakistan, whereabouts are unknown.
To give you an idea of the value of the loot, I must tell you that a truckload of 25 tons of lithium is worth Rs 53 crore. Pakistan is not poor and neither is PoJK-GB.
Yet the military-mullah-feudal troika collectively usurped the land and the minds of the people.
The people of Baloch, Sindhi, Pashtun and PoJK-GB live under the barrel of army guns. They are not allowed to freely exercise any real political or economic rights. For 75 years they have been taught that Pakistan is a creation of Allah and that “Hindu” India is their enemy and they want to destroy Pakistan at the first chance.
Under the guise of the two-state theory of the Jinnah Republic, the above-mentioned “troika” in Pakistan propagates that all ethnic groups occupying Pakistan are the bond of Islam, oppressing the people of all countries, and exploiting the land of the people of all countries. Now the tide is changing.
With Baluchi and Pashtuns armed and the people of PoJK-GB taking to the streets, the control of these oppressed countries by the Pakistani troika is slipping from their hands.
Right now, the current economic crisis is only heading in one direction, and that is total collapse.
Most of the checkpoints set up by the Pakistani military in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were allegedly abandoned by soldiers. Tensions are high between Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan.
China is abandoning PoJK-GB project after project due to non-payment for services and materials provided by Chinese companies.
The political crisis has also deepened to pre-war levels in 1971, when the Pakistani military began Operation Blue Star in eastern Pakistan to crush the mandate of the Awami League, which won a majority in the National Assembly a year earlier. A dysfunctional coalition of 13 parties is running the country.
In the current situation, Balkanization of Pakistan is very likely to happen, thereby liberating all oppressed peoples.
read also: Jasia Akhtar from Kashmir successfully advances to Delhi Capitals WPL
However, for liberation from Pakistan, all stakeholders including PoJK-GB, oppressed people of Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa must do their best and only collectively This is only possible with warring alliances.
(Dr. Amjad Ayub Mirza is a writer and human rights activist from Mirpur, PoJK. He is currently in exile in the UK.)
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