Azad Jammu and Kashmir, abbreviated as AJK and colloquially referred to as simply Azad Kashmir, is a region administered by Pakistan as a nominally self-governing entity and constituting the western portion of the larger Kashmir region, which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947. The territory shares a border to the north with Gilgit-Baltistan, together with which it is referred to by the United Nations and other international organizations as "Pakistani-administered Kashmir". Azad Kashmir also shares borders with the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the south and west, respectively. On its eastern side, Azad Kashmir is separated from the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir by the Line of Control (LoC), which serves as the de facto border between the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. Geographically, the administrative territory of Azad Jammu and Kashmir covers a total area of 13,297 km2 (5,134 sq mi) and has a total population of 4,045,366 as per the 2017 national census.
Kashmir is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompasses a larger area that includes the Indian-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.
Muzaffarabad is the capital and largest city of Azad Kashmir, and the 60th largest in Pakistan.
The Poonch District is one of the 10 districts of Pakistan's dependent territory of Azad Kashmir. The Poonch District is bounded on the north by the Bagh District, on the north-east by the Haveli District, on the south-east by the Poonch District of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, on the south by the Sudhanoti District and the Kotli District, and on the west by the Rawalpindi District of Pakistan's Punjab Province. The Poonch District is part of the greater Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. The district headquarters is the city of Rawalakot. It is the 3rd most populus district of Azad Kashmir.
The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) is a militant separatist organization active in both the Indian-administered and Pakistani-administered territories of Kashmir. It was founded by Amanullah Khan, with Maqbool Bhat also credited as a co-founder. Originally a militant wing of the Azad Kashmir Plebiscite Front, the organization officially changed its name to the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front in Birmingham, England on 29 May 1977; from then until 1994 it was an active Kashmiri militant organization. The JKLF first established branches in several cities and towns of the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe, as well as in the United States and across the Middle East. In 1982, it established a branch in the Pakistani-administered territory of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and by 1987, it had established a branch in the Indian-administered Kashmir Valley.
The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, with China playing a third-party role. The conflict started after the partition of India in 1947 as both India and Pakistan claimed the entirety of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is a dispute over the region that escalated into three wars between India and Pakistan and several other armed skirmishes. India controls approximately 55% of the land area of the region that includes Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, most of Ladakh, the Siachen Glacier, and 70% of its population; Pakistan controls approximately 30% of the land area that includes Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan; and China controls the remaining 15% of the land area that includes the Aksai Chin region, the mostly uninhabited Trans-Karakoram Tract, and part of the Demchok sector.
Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan was the key instigator of the 1947 Poonch Rebellion in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir and the later establishment of Azad Kashmir under Pakistani administrative control. He served as the first President of Azad Kashmir. His dismissal in 1950 led to the 1955 Poonch Uprising against Pakistan. He served as the president thrice afterwards, ending his last term in 2001.
Sudhan is one of the major tribes from the districts of Poonch, Sudhanoti, Bagh and Kotli in Azad Kashmir, allegedly originating from Pashtun areas.
Maqbool Bhat also spelt Maqbool Butt was a Kashmiri separatist leader who migrated to Pakistan-administered Kashmir and founded the militant group National Liberation Front (NLF), which was a precursor to the present day Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). Bhat carried out multiple attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir. He was captured, tried and convicted, receiving double death sentence. He was hanged on 11 February 1984 in Tihar Jail in Delhi.
Gilgit-Baltistan, formerly known as the Northern Areas, is a region administered by Pakistan as an autonomous territory, and constituting the northern portion of the larger Kashmir region which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947, and between India and China from somewhat later. It borders Azad Kashmir to the south, the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the west, the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan to the north, the Xinjiang region of China, to the east and northeast, and the Indian-administered union territories Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to the southeast.
There are separatist movements in Pakistan which are based on ethnic and regional nationalism, including independence movements in Balawaristan, Sindh and Balochistan. The government of Pakistan has attempted to subdue these separatist movements.
Amanullah Khan was the founder of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a Kashmiri militant activist group that advocates independence for the entire Kashmir region. Khan's JKLF initiated the ongoing armed insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir with backing from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which lasted until Pakistan dropped its support of secular Kashmiri separatists in favour of pro-Pakistan Islamist groups, such as the Hizbul Mujahideen. In 1994, the JKLF in the Kashmir Valley, under the leadership of Yasin Malik, renounced militancy in favour of a political struggle. Amanullah Khan disagreed with the strategy, causing a split in the JKLF.
The history of Azad Kashmir, a part of the Kashmir region administered by Pakistan, is related to the history of the Kashmir region during the Dogra rule. Azad Kashmir borders the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the south and west respectively, Gilgit–Baltistan to the north, and the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir to the east.
Human rights abuses in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, have been a partial issue, ranging from forced disappearances, claimed torture to political repression and electoral fraud and suppression of freedom of speech. According to the human rights commission of Pakistan, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) carries out extensive surveillance operations on the press and pro-independence groups, they have carried out arbitrary arrests in which people have been tortured and several have died. Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) is cited to indicate that dozens have disappeared after their arrests in Pakistan-held Kashmir. A significant number of cases point to the Inter-Services Intelligence’s involvement in these disappearances".
Christopher Snedden is an Australian political scientist and author. He has studied and published on the long-running Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan. In his book, The Untold Story of the People of Azad Kashmir (2012), he proposed that the origins of the Kashmir dispute lay in the protests and eventual rebellion by the Kashmiri people of Poonch and Mirpur against Maharaja Hari Singh, and not in the subsequent invasion of Kashmir by Pashtun tribal militias from the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
Karachi Agreement is an agreement purportedly executed on 28 April 1949 between the Government of Pakistan and the then Government of Azad Kashmir governing the relations between Pakistan and Azad Kashmir. It set down the division of the powers between the two governments as well as the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference. Through the agreement, Azad Kashmir ceded to the Government of Pakistan complete control over Gilgit-Baltistan, and the control over subjects of defence, foreign affairs and communications in its area.
The Plebiscite Front in Azad Kashmir, also called Mahaz-i-Raishumari, was founded by Amanullah Khan in collaboration with Abdul Khaliq Ansari and Maqbool Bhat in 1965. The organisation had an unofficial armed wing called National Liberation Front, which carried out sabotage activities in Jammu and Kashmir as well as the hijacking of Ganga. Amanullah Khan later moved to England, where he revived the National Liberation Front under the new name Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).
Jammu and Kashmir is a region administered by India as a union territory and consists of the southern portion of the larger Kashmir region, which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947, and between India and China since 1962. The Line of Control separates Jammu and Kashmir from the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan in the west and north. It lies to the north of the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab and to the west of Ladakh, which is also subject to the dispute as a part of Kashmir, and administered by India as a union territory.
The 1992 India–Pakistan floods was a deadly flood caused by a five days long heavy monsoon rains and severe weather that occurred on 7 September 1992 across the north-Pakistan of Azad Kashmir, North-West Frontier Province and Indian administered state of Jammu and Kashmir. Severe floods left more than 2,500 fatalities, including 2,000 deaths in Pakistan administered state, 300 in Punjab province, and 200 in India administered state with several other missing. The floods swept away more than 12,672 villages and several people were buried alive due to landslides near mountains. Punjab, that shares its borders with Azad Kashmir, suffered a heavy agriculture loss in its economic history.
Kashmiris in Azad Kashmir are the ethnic Kashmiri people who reside in Azad Kashmir, a territory which constitutes part of Pakistani-administered Kashmir since the end of the First Kashmir War. Their demographic includes up to 40,000 registered Kashmiri refugees who have fled the Kashmir Valley, located in Indian-administered Kashmir, to Pakistan since the late 1980s due to conflict in the region. As of 2010, only around 60 percent of Kashmiri refugees had acquired Pakistani citizenship.
