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For decades, global discourse surrounding the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir has centered almost entirely on the Indian-administered side of the Line of Control (LoC), the heavily militarized de facto border that divides the territory between India and Pakistan. International coverage has fixated on insurgency, state repression, large-scale military deployments, and high-stakes diplomatic clashes between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. Far less scrutiny has been directed at the political shifts unfolding across the LoC in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, officially designated Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

Long framed by Islamabad as a model of autonomous self-governance in contrast to Indian-administered Kashmir, AJK is now experiencing one of the largest waves of popular unrest the region has seen in decades. What began as scattered frustration over skyrocketing household electricity costs and soaring flour prices quickly grew into a systemic challenge to Pakistani federal authority over the territory. Departing from the long-dominant narrative of cross-border geopolitical rivalry with India, this new uprising is rooted in deep, long-simmering discontent with local and federal governance structures that have marginalized AJK residents.

Leading the protest movement is the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), a broad grassroots coalition formed in 2023 that operates outside the established party system. The alliance brings together traders, legal professionals, students, civil society organizers, and independent local political figures, who reject mainstream Pakistani political parties as either ineffective or overly subservient to federal interests in Islamabad. The JAAC centered its initial platform on bread-and-butter issues that resonate across AJK’s diverse communities: exorbitant energy costs, inflated staple food prices, punitive taxation, and chronically underfunded public services.

That platform struck a chord with a population grappling with severe systemic economic hardship. Data collected by researchers puts youth unemployment in AJK at roughly 27 percent, nearly three times Pakistan’s national average. Fewer than 8 percent of women in the region participate in the formal workforce, according to Danish Khan, co-director of the Inequality, Poverty, Power and Social Justice Initiative at Franklin & Marshall College, who outlined the crisis in a recent analysis for *The Friday Times*. Khan warned that the region has produced a growing “reserve army of young unemployed people” with little economic prospect to sustain themselves.

Development across AJK’s mountainous terrain has long lagged far behind the rest of Pakistan. Poorly maintained, inadequate roads severely limit access to critical public services including healthcare and education, a problem that becomes life-threatening during the region’s long, harsh winters. Many communities still carry the physical and economic scars of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake that killed more than 70,000 people across the region, with full reconstruction never completed.

As the movement grew, initial demonstrations over affordable living expanded into mass public gatherings across major towns, shutting down commercial centers and forcing government representatives to enter negotiations. By early 2024 and 2025, the federal government conceded to key immediate demands, agreeing to lower electricity rates for AJK residents and extend wheat subsidies that set prices below the national average. But movement organizers and local activists dismiss these concessions as temporary, superficial fixes that do not address the root causes of hardship.

“ The price reductions addressed immediate grievances, but they did not address the deeper structures of economic exclusion,” explained Faisal Mir, a political economy researcher based in the region. What began as a campaign against inflation has since evolved into a broader rebuke of AJK’s entire governing system, linking daily economic struggle directly to political arrangements that concentrate power in Islamabad rather than in the region.

A new generation of AJK residents, tired of outdated rhetoric about competing Indian and Pakistani nationalist claims, is now demanding accountability, transparent governance, and genuine political representation. Rather than debating the long-term international status of Kashmir, they are asking basic questions: who governs them today, and whose interests do their leaders actually serve?

“No one knows when the Kashmir dispute will finally be resolved,” Mujtaba Naqvi, a JAAC supporter in the regional capital of Muzaffarabad, told Middle East Eye. “What we need to know is who will provide us with jobs and a fair life today.”

These demands have zeroed in on one of the most controversial provisions of AJK’s constitutional framework: the 12 legislative seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees who reside outside the territory. With a total population of roughly 5 million, AJK is formally structured as a semi-autonomous region with its own president, prime minister, regional parliament, and supreme court. All candidates for office are required to swear an oath of allegiance to Pakistan to stand for election.

The current controversy centers on the composition of the regional legislative assembly. Of the body’s 53 total seats, 33 are elected by residents living within AJK’s borders. The remaining 12 seats are reserved for Kashmiris who migrated from Indian-administered Kashmir to Pakistan during and after the 1947 and 1965 Indo-Pakistani wars. Even though these voters reside permanently in Pakistan’s four mainland provinces rather than in AJK, they retain the right to elect their own representatives to the regional assembly.

Supporters of the arrangement argue that the 12 reserved seats protect the political rights of displaced Kashmiri families and sustain Pakistan’s diplomatic position that the entire former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir remains an internationally disputed territory. Removing refugee representation, they contend, would weaken Pakistan’s hand in its decades-long standoff with India — a conflict that has sparked four full-scale wars since the 1947 partition of British India, and a brief four-day military confrontation as recently as 2025.

In early June, AJK’s supreme court ruled that the 12 reserved refugee seats are constitutionally protected, upholding the existing arrangement. But the JAAC and local critics frame the system as a mechanism for covert federal interference in regional politics. Mainstream Pakistani federal parties regularly use the 12 reserved seats to tip the balance of power and form majority governments in Muzaffarabad, a dynamic that has fueled persistent political instability: the current assembly has already seen four different prime ministers take office in rapid succession.

“These 12 seats continuously dictate government formation,” political activist Raja Nafees, who backs the JAAC’s reform demands, told Middle East Eye. “Voters who don’t even live here end up deciding who rules us.”

For decades, mainstream AJK political parties, which operated largely as extensions of the Pakistani federal government, controlled regional politics without meaningful opposition. Today, that long-standing status quo has collapsed entirely.

Alarmed by widespread unrest and informal boycott calls led by the JAAC over the reserved seats, federal and regional authorities scheduled 2026 AJK regional elections across three staggered phases held between July 27 and August 10. The strategic move backfired dramatically: voter turnout plummeted in the first two phases, leading independent analysts to question the election’s legitimacy and warn that any resulting assembly will lack a credible popular mandate. Political infighting between major Pakistani parties has further eroded public trust, with the Pakistan People’s Party, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, accusing ruling party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of widespread vote rigging.

At the same time, the long-standing nationalist slogan “Kashmir Banega Khudmukhtar” — meaning “Kashmir will be sovereign” — promoted by groups such as the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), has gained unprecedented public support during the protests. This reflects a growing political narrative that rejects the traditional binary of alignment with either India or Pakistan, calling instead for full self-determination for the region’s people.

Since protests first escalated in 2024, authorities in Islamabad and Muzaffarabad have responded to the uprising with a combination of policy concessions and coercive crackdowns. While early negotiations produced agreements on electricity and wheat subsidies, the government shifted to a far harsher approach once demonstrations expanded to demand structural political reform.

When the JAAC announced a mass protest march from Rawalakot to Muzaffarabad scheduled for June 9, Pakistani authorities labeled the group a threat to public order. On June 5, the JAAC was officially banned under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism legislation, and dozens of key leaders, including JAAC head Shaukat Mir, were taken into custody. After a second round of negotiations collapsed on July 26, the JAAC called for a renewed protest march. The group accuses state security forces of using lethal force to block demonstrators from assembling.

Independent estimates confirm that more than 45 people — the majority of them protesters, alongside law enforcement personnel and civilian bystanders — have been killed in clashes since the June 5 ban. Official government information on casualties remains extremely limited, as widespread internet blackouts and strict region-wide curfews have prevented independent journalists and human rights observers from verifying the full scale of violence.

Government officials maintain that all constitutional disputes should be resolved through established legal channels rather than public protest. In a July 31 press briefing, military spokesperson Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry stated that the region has historically received substantial federal attention, care, and resource allocation. He said authorities had “wholeheartedly” urged the JAAC to participate in elections and pursue reform through the courts and parliament.

“But they want to pursue this by force, but only the state has the monopoly of violence,” Chaudhry added. Other federal ministers have gone even further, dismissing the JAAC as an “armed mob” and making unsubstantiated claims that the group has secret ties to India and Taliban militants. JAAC leaders have firmly denied these allegations, emphasizing that their campaign is strictly peaceful and centered on defending basic democratic rights for AJK residents.

As the political standoff drags on, ordinary local residents are bearing the worst of its consequences. Persistent internet blackouts have crippled local commerce and the region’s critical summer tourism sector. In Rawalakot, the JAAC’s main stronghold, where organizers called for the mass march, heavy curfews and road blockades have brought the usually busy peak summer travel season to a complete standstill. Local traders face growing risk of financial ruin, while ordinary residents endure prolonged communication blackouts and disrupted access to basic services, leaving the entire region mired in deep uncertainty about its future.

The current constitutional and political upheaval in AJK has unfolded against the backdrop of India’s 2019 revocation of Article 370, the constitutional provision that granted limited autonomy and special status to Indian-administered Kashmir. New Delhi’s decision to place Indian-administered Kashmir under direct federal control fundamentally reshaped the political landscape on both sides of the LoC.

The move drew widespread condemnation from Pakistan and sparked large solidarity demonstrations in AJK. When protesters organized by groups including the JKLF attempted to march toward the LoC in solidarity with Indian-administered Kashmir, Pakistani security forces forcibly dispersed and blocked the march. Analysts note that many of the key organizers of those 2019 demonstrations are now leading figures within the JAAC. Many AJK residents viewed Islamabad’s diplomatic response to the 2019 revocation as weak and inadequate, leading growing numbers to question Pakistan’s commitment to protecting AJK’s distinct regional identity.

A further source of public anxiety is the impact of Kashmir’s unresolved international status on major infrastructure investment, particularly for projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This vacuum has fueled widespread public speculation that Islamabad may eventually move to redefine AJK’s legal status, potentially merging it with neighboring mainland Pakistani provinces or converting it into a formal province of Pakistan. While the Pakistani government has never publicly stated any such plans, pervasive anxiety about a potential takeover has reshaped public discourse, deepened distrust of federal institutions, and strengthened popular demands for greater regional autonomy.

In a sunlit classroom at an elder learning center in Lhasa, the capital of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, 73-year-old retired nurse Kalsang Lhamo carefully draws vertical Tibetan script, her movements slow but steady. For her entire life, Lhamo has spoken her native Tibetan, but she never had the opportunity to learn to write it. Now, as a student at the center, she is finally immersing herself in mastering the traditional language of her people, while also navigating the sweeping political and cultural shifts brought by China’s new national “ethnic unity” law that took effect on July 1.

Under the terms of this landmark legislation, Mandarin Chinese is designated as the primary working language for all public schools and government agencies across the country. The law explicitly bans any activity deemed to incite division among China’s 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, and requires all social institutions—from schools to families to community organizations—to actively foster patriotism, national cohesion, and a shared collective identity as part of the Chinese nation.

The legislation has drawn fierce international condemnation from rights groups, Tibetan activists, and global observers, who argue it represents a significant escalation of Beijing’s campaign to erode the cultural and political rights of Tibetan and other ethnic minority communities. Critics note the law grants the Chinese central government broad authority to crack down on any activity labeled as separatist, extending that jurisdiction even to activities conducted outside China’s borders. Beijing has dismissed all international criticism of the policy as unfounded ideological bias, framing the law as a critical measure to safeguard national unity and improve development opportunities for minority groups.

Tensions over the new law are particularly acute in Tibet, a remote Himalayan region that Beijing labels an autonomous region but controls with strict security and political oversight. This year marks the 75th anniversary of what China calls the “peaceful liberation” of Tibet—an event widely viewed by Tibetans in exile and independent critics as an unlawful invasion of a sovereign Tibetan state.

Tibetan activists warn the law advances a decades-long project of forced cultural assimilation, extending Beijing’s tight control over minority community life. They point to similar language policies already rolled out in other minority regions, including the expansion of Mandarin-only education for Uyghur communities in Xinjiang and the replacement of Mongolian-medium instruction with Mandarin in parts of Inner Mongolia. Writing in *Foreign Affairs*, ethnic studies scholar James Leibold of La Trobe University and Tenzin Dorjee of advocacy group Tibet Action Institute warned that minority communities seeking to preserve their distinct cultures will be forced into a “double life” of public conformity to state policies and private retention of cultural traditions.

This report from the Associated Press is based on reporting conducted during a government-organized press tour of Tibet last month, which included stops in Lhasa and the southern city of Shannan. Chinese authorities arranged all visits to sites including historic palaces, Buddhist temples, tourist attractions, local businesses, and the elder learning center where Lhamo studies, and government officials accompanied foreign journalists for the full duration of the trip, barring independent travel or unapproved reporting. The Associated Press retained full editorial control over all content produced from the tour.

Across Tibet, constant visual reminders reinforce Beijing’s narrative that the region is an inalienable part of China: welcome messages at airports, ubiquitous billboards promoting ethnic unity, Chinese national flags flying over public squares and government buildings, and official portraits of President Xi Jinping displayed in most public institutions.

Even amid the new regulatory environment, some Tibetans have found ways to maintain connection to their language and cultural identity. For Lhamo and others, that means taking classes to learn Tibetan script, speaking the language at home with family, preserving traditional weaving crafts, and continuing to participate in Buddhist religious practices. Critics, however, argue the overall effect of the law is to entrench the dominance of China’s majority Han ethnic culture across public life in minority regions.

At the Jokhang Temple, one of the holiest sites in Tibetan Buddhism, visitors—both Han Chinese tourists and local Tibetan pilgrims—wander the temple grounds and rest in the surrounding courtyards. Nineteen-year-old student Qongqiu Quco, who visits the temple with her aunts (several of whom are Buddhist nuns), says preserving Tibetan language and culture is a core priority for her community. “Everyone in our ethnic group hopes that our culture can be passed down to future generations,” said Quco, an aspiring teacher who speaks Tibetan in most of her daily life. She added, however, that students at her school use Mandarin as a common language to communicate across different regional Tibetan dialects.

For the majority of Tibetans who practice Tibetan Buddhism, the 14th Dalai Lama is their revered spiritual leader. But across all official religious sites in Tibet, there are no public references or portraits of the current Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in India following a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, and has led the unrecognized Tibetan government-in-exile ever since. The question of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation remains one of the most contentious issues in China-Tibet relations: the Dalai Lama has stated his successor could be born outside China, and that only his own religious office has the authority to recognize a new reincarnation, while Beijing insists any selection must comply with Chinese law and receive formal approval from the central government. China has long labeled the Dalai Lama a separatist agitator seeking to split Tibet from China.

The Potala Palace, once the winter residence of successive Dalai Lamas and one of Tibet’s most iconic cultural sites, also has no public references to the current Dalai Lama. Today, thousands of visitors—Chinese domestic tourists and local Tibetan pilgrims alike—visit the site daily, where the Chinese national flag flies above the historic compound.

Historians and Tibet experts note that the new ethnic unity law does not represent a sudden policy shift, but rather codifies trends that have been unfolding for decades. “I don’t think the law itself changes things,” explained Benno Weiner, a professor of modern China and Tibetan studies at Carnegie Mellon University. “I think it sort of codifies and summarizes a trend that’s been going on,” particularly the gradual erosion of minority language rights and community control over education.

Beijing frames its policies as a way to expand educational access and deliver equal economic opportunity to ethnic minority communities. During the same week the AP conducted its tour, top Chinese Communist Party leader Wang Huning—ranked fourth in the party’s central leadership—visited Tibet, where he stated that maintaining political stability is the top priority for governing the region. Wang called for full implementation of the new ethnic unity law, and urged authorities to “guide Tibetan Buddhism to adapt to socialist society,” according to official reports from China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.

During its tour, AP visited a range of cultural sites, including a traditional Tibetan medicine clinic, artisan workshops preserving traditional crafts like ceramic making and hand textile weaving, and a public Tibetan opera performance. At each site, workers and performers spoke about their work to preserve local cultural traditions. Weiner, however, notes that Beijing’s approach to cultural preservation often prioritizes elements of Tibetan culture that are deemed politically neutral and beneficial to the growing tourism industry. “The parts of culture that they want to protect and maybe even enhance are the sort of anodyne or non-dangerous clothing, certain celebrations that are not religious in many cases,” he explained. “Things that maybe not that coincidentally also attract tourists.”

At Lhasa’s Tibet Museum, a permanent exhibit highlights centuries of historical ties between Tibetan political authorities and Chinese imperial dynasties, the official narrative Beijing uses to support its claim that Tibet has been an inalienable part of China for centuries. This narrative is vigorously disputed by Tibetans in exile, who argue that Tibet functioned as an independent sovereign state for much of its modern history.

Laba Ciren, the top Chinese Communist Party official at the Tibet Museum, rejected all criticism of the new law in comments to journalists. “It only brings benefits and does not have any negative effects,” he said.

Access to Tibet remains tightly restricted for foreign journalists and independent travelers. For visitors who are permitted to enter, one of the first observations after adjusting to the high altitude of Lhasa’s 3,600-meter Gonggar International Airport is the constant presence of official messaging promoting the new law’s goals of ethnic integration. While some public signs are printed in both Tibetan and Chinese, a large welcome sign outside the airport terminal is printed only in Mandarin, reading simply: “Xizang welcomes you.”

From mountain highways to city streets in Lhasa and Shannan, billboards promoting ethnic unity are a constant presence, with slogans printed in both Mandarin and Tibetan calling to “Forge a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation.”

For Lhamo, who retired from her nursing career 22 years ago and now has adult children with families of their own, attending daily classes at the elder center is a chance to make up for lost opportunity: she was unable to attend formal school as a child. Standing by her notebook filled with neat Tibetan script, she says simply, “Our mother tongue is the Tibetan language,” speaking with quiet pride.

Months of sustained military operations against Iran have left the United States nearly drained of its most advanced long-range precision surface-to-surface missiles, new reporting reveals, creating critical supply constraints that have undermined the Trump administration’s repeated threats of massive, unprecedented escalation against the Islamic Republic.

Citing two anonymous defense sources, Reuters reported Tuesday that the U.S. military has exhausted “virtually all” of its stockpiles of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and the newer Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM), two cornerstone weapons in America’s conventional arsenal. These munitions are prized for their ability to strike enemy targets with high accuracy from hundreds of kilometers away, eliminating the need to deploy crewed warplanes that face risk from enemy air defense networks.

The depletion has forced U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), the military command responsible for all operations across the Middle East, to reallocate missile stockpiles from other active combat theaters around the world to replenish its supplies, according to the report.

Hostilities between the U.S., Israel and Iran first erupted on February 28, when joint U.S.-Israeli strikes opened the current round of conflict. A ceasefire was negotiated in June via the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, but skirmishes and low-intensity fighting have continued to escalate through the summer months.

To support operations against Iran, the Trump administration repositioned key air defense batteries and active duty troops from East Asia at the start of the conflict. The ATACMS missiles now expended in the Middle East were also a critical capability that the U.S. had supplied to Ukraine for use against Russian invading forces, creating cross-theater resource strains.

For months, the Trump administration claimed its strikes had completely destroyed Iran’s integrated air defense network. But independent reporting from Middle East Eye and other international outlets has confirmed that Iran has received new advanced air defense systems from both China and Russia to reinforce its capabilities. In April, an American F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet was shot down over Iranian territory, triggering a large-scale rescue operation for the downed crew that nearly escalated tensions even further – had Iran captured the pilot, the captive would have represented a major diplomatic bargaining chip during subsequent ceasefire negotiations.

The current munitions shortage extends far beyond offensive long-range missiles. Even before the full-scale outbreak of conflict, the U.S. was already facing low stockpiles of missile and drone interceptors, a gap created by months of supporting Israeli air defense operations during the 2025 June conflict that culminated in U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. For weeks, senior U.S. military leaders have warned the Trump administration that stockpiles of key defensive interceptor systems, including Patriot surface-to-air missiles, are also declining rapidly, the Reuters report added.

The revelation of deep military resource depletion has validated longstanding criticism from both anti-intervention conservative and progressive analysts who argue the conflict is eroding American military power and draining critical strategic resources at the global level.

“CENTCOM used everything they had before the war and have drawn down from rest of the world to critical levels,” Saagar Enjeti, a conservative commentator and co-host of the popular Breaking Points political program who has opposed U.S. intervention in Iran, wrote on social media platform X.

Amir Handjani, board member of the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank that opposes aggressive U.S. foreign intervention, offered a sarcastic rebuke to pro-war lobbying groups in a post on X. “Thank you FDD and UANI for the wonderful policies you have been advocating for. They have made America stronger!” Handjani wrote, referencing the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and United Against Nuclear Iran – two organizations that critics say led lobbying efforts to push the U.S. into war with Iran.

The Reuters report comes just days after former President Trump reversed his own public pledge to launch massive new strikes against Iran. Just over a week ago, Trump threatened to carry out “the biggest attack since World War II” against the Islamic Republic. But he walked back that threat on Monday, claiming that Gulf Arab states had requested he avoid further escalation and that negotiations for a renewed ceasefire are underway. “I want to give them every last chance before decapitation,” Trump stated Monday. Iranian officials have repeatedly denied that any direct bilateral talks with the U.S. are currently ongoing.

This coverage draws on original reporting from Middle East Eye, an independent outlet focused on unrivaled, unbiased coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and global affairs.