Listening to GB.

Local protesters have been peacefully demonstrating in Skardu for two weeks, under the shadow of the fluttering green-and-white Pakistani flag. All profess to be Pakistanis, and have Pakistani passports and ID cards. Their elders liberated this region after an armed struggle with the regular army of the Kashmir state.

Today, the protesters lobby for GB as a federating unit of Pakistan. Their major demands include: integration of the region as a province thus resolving its status as disputed territory; land ownership rights in the liberated area; exemption from taxes without defined status; opening the border with Kargil to facilitate cross-border interaction of divided families; and restoring the wheat subsidy granted by the PPP government in 1973.

Provincial status is key to settling all other demands. After acceding to Pakistan in 1947, the trusting GB residents presumed that the deputation of a semi-literate junior officer as political agent by the Pakistani government signified acceptance of their request for integration. However, the region's fate was sealed by the Karachi Agreement with Kashmiri leaders who consented to indefinite bureaucratic control of GB without consulting the local leadership. And yet, GB residents remained loyal.

For almost 25 years, the area was ruled under the black colonial FCR. In the hope of creating support for a plebiscite, our foreign affairs czars defined GB as a disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir. This twisted narrative was used to legitimise the repressive GB administration in the name of national interest.

The demand for rights is getting louder.

Education and awareness via social media have fuelled the demand for resolving GB's contested status. Civil society took its case to the Supreme Court. After years of hearings, a landmark judgement in 2019 rescinded the Government of Gilgit Baltistan Order, 2018, in favour of a newly agreed draft Gilgit-Baltistan Governance Reforms Order, 2019. On the pretext of converting it into an act of parliament, the PML-N continued to administer the area through the 2018 order, thus diluting the powers delegated by the PPP under the 2009 law. The subsequent PTI government also continued with the 2018 order, reneging on its pledge to accord GB full provincial status and rights.

Impelled by public pressure and the verdict, the PTI government finally launched a process to grant provisional provincial status to GB via a constitutional amendment, ensuring its...