How the Fire Lit for Kashmir Is Now Burning PoK
I. Ahmad Wani
دل کے پھپھولے جل اٹھے سینے کے داغ سے
اس گھر کو آگ لگ گئی گھر کے چراغ سے
Dil ke phaphole jal uthe seene ke daagh se
Is ghar ko aag lag gayi ghar ke chiraagh se
People are still unaware who wrote this couplet. But we all know one thing. At the behest of Pakistan, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference has always tried to stage unusual events that damage the peace and harmony of Jammu and Kashmir. The couplet fits Pakistan today. It lit a fire for others and kept it burning for decades. Now that fire is consuming its own house, in the territory it calls Azad Kashmir.
October 27 is the date that Pakistan, the APHC and allied groups mark every year as “Kashmir Black Day”. It recalls the arrival of Indian troops in Srinagar in 1947 after the Instrument of Accession. This year, the ritual is being prepared again. APHC chapters in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistani authorities have called for rallies, shutdowns, seminars, black flags and diplomatic events. High-level meetings in Islamabad, involving the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and APHC leaders based in PoK, have finalised programmes for Pakistan and for overseas chapters. The stated aim is to protest Indian control of Jammu and Kashmir and to demand self-determination under UN resolutions.
The plan is familiar. Keep the pot boiling in Kashmir, keep the world’s attention on Delhi, and keep the people of PoK looking across the Line of Control instead of at their own rulers. For a long time this worked. It does not work any more. The fire Pakistan tended so carefully has turned on its keeper.
The fire in so-called Azad Kashmir
The sharper reality in Pakistan-administered Kashmir is sustained popular unrest directed at Pakistani authorities, not at India. The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee, a coalition of traders, civil society groups and activists, has led wave after wave of protests since 2025. The grievances are local and basic: electricity tariffs, wheat and flour prices, taxes, governance failures, reserved assembly seats for refugees settled in Pakistan, political representation and alleged military excesses.
Pakistan’s answer has been force. Reports describe Rangers and police using live ammunition, tear gas and batons against demonstrators and even against mourners. Clashes in June this year, including around funerals and marches, produced disputed death tolls. Indian and other reports cited significant civilian casualties, with claims of children and pregnant women among the dead. Communication blackouts and fresh troop deployments followed. Later crackdowns, including on long marches in places such as Rawalakot, brought reports of dozens killed in single incidents. Protest groups say the cumulative toll is higher. Sit-ins continue. Leaders have been arrested. Internet access has been restricted. Families speak of missing persons and harsh treatment in custody.
This is the “Azad” Kashmir that Islamabad holds up as a model for the Valley. Its people are being shot for asking about the price of flour. Its leaders are in jail for demanding a vote that counts. The freedom in its name is a label, nothing more.
The people of PoK have changed the script
Here lies the irony Pakistan cannot hide. In late October, the same protest groups in PoK announced a “Protest Week”, running roughly from October 24 to November 1. It culminates in a “Black Day” on October 27. But this Black Day is not against India. It is against alleged atrocities by the Pakistani military. The groups have called for peaceful demonstrations at home, protests outside Pakistani embassies abroad, and a later “Day of Furqan” to honour the dead and the missing.
So on the same date, two Black Days will be observed. One is the official ritual, organised by the Pakistani state and its Hurriyat partners, pointing the finger at Delhi. The other is a people’s protest, born of real grief, pointing the finger at Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The second has crowds, funerals and the names of the dead. The first has press releases and seminar halls.
Kashmiri diaspora communities have also voiced anger at Pakistan over these events. Overseas Kashmiris have been urged to hold sit-ins and protests targeting Pakistani missions. Large street protests in Gulf countries are less consistently documented than the broader diaspora mobilisation, but the direction of that anger is clear. It is frustration with Islamabad, not solidarity with Islamabad’s script.
Why the Valley will not boil again
Having lost control of the narrative in PoK, Pakistan now turns to its oldest tool. It wants the APHC’s PoK chapter to do what the Hurriyat once did inside the Valley: call a shutdown, raise a black flag, and let the closed shutters speak for Pakistan. The aim is to bring Kashmir to the boil once more.
That is dead impossible now, and the facts show why.
Since the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, Jammu and Kashmir has seen sharply reduced violence, regular elections, an infrastructure push and a tourism recovery. Official and independent reporting points to steep declines in terror incidents, in local recruitment into militancy and in street unrest. Organised stone-pelting, once a weekly ritual, has nearly disappeared. Road and tunnel connectivity has expanded. New medical colleges and higher-education institutions have opened. Industrial investment interest has grown. Welfare schemes have reached households ignored for decades. Tourist numbers have hit records in recent years. An elected government is in place, and the debate over full statehood runs through democratic channels. Daily governance is about projects, winter preparedness and public services, not about shutdowns called from across the border.
For decades, the Hurriyat’s politics ran on a simple formula. Call a hartal, hand the microphone to Islamabad, and let the people of Kashmir pay with their livelihoods and their children’s education. The people have stopped paying. The shutters stay open in Srinagar. The ones closing are in Muzaffarabad and Rawalakot, and they are closing against the state that sponsors the Hurriyat.
Jammu and Kashmir has its problems. Unemployment, drug abuse and the statehood question are real. But these are the problems of a functioning society, argued over in the assembly and in newspapers. They are not the problems of a population facing bullets and blackouts. Nobody who has watched both sides of the Line of Control this year will mistake one for the other.
A fire that cannot be exported
Pakistan kept the fire alive in so-called Azad Kashmir for its own purposes. It needed a grievance to export and a population to keep angry. Today that population is angry, but at Pakistan. The APHC’s October 27 ritual is an attempt to carry that fire back across the Line of Control. It will not travel. The Valley has seen where that road leads and has chosen a different one.
The couplet says it best. The blisters of the heart have caught fire from the scars on the chest, and the house has burnt down by its own lamp. The APHC can wave as many black flags as it likes on October 27. It cannot put out that fire in PoK, and it cannot light a new one in Kashmir.
