Pakistan to Elevate Portion of Kashmir to Full Province Status
Pakistan’s decision regarding Kashmir will have serious implications for its fragile relationship with India, as well as its strengthening relationship with China (Wikimedia Commons).
In a major development for the hotly contested Kashmir region, Pakistan has revealed plans to elevate status of the autonomous Kashmiri territory of Gilgit-Baltistan, a Pakistani senior minister said on September 17.
“After consultation with all stakeholders, the federal government has decided in principle to give constitutional rights to Gilgit-Baltistan,” Minister of Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan Affairs Ali Amin Gandapur said. “Our government has decided to deliver on the promise it made to the people there.”
Gandapur also claimed that Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan would visit the region and soon make an official announcement regarding the development. He also emphasized how an elevation to province status would allow for the government to improve healthcare, tourism, transportation, and education in the region. “To provide better healthcare facilities to the people of Gilgit-Baltistan, the government will provide MRI and CT scan machines to all District Headquarters Hospitals, while the basic health units (BHUs) to be [sic] provided ultrasound machines,” he said.
Currently, Pakistan is composed of four provinces, two autonomous territories, and the capital territory of Islamabad. In 2009, the federally-administered territory known as the Northern Territories became the autonomous territory of Gilgit-Baltistan, the only region in Sunni-dominated Pakistan to have a Shia Muslim majority. The change granted the territory its own chief minister and a legislative assembly. But Gilgit-Baltistan, along with the neighboring autonomous territory of Azad Kashmir, lacks full constitutional rights, meaning that they do not have representation in either house of the Pakistani Parliament.
If taken, this action by Pakistan would resemble the revocation of Indian Kashmir’s autonomy in August 2019. The revocation, which ultimately necessitated months of strict lockdown and a total communications blackout so as to maintain order in the state, incited widespread anger within Pakistan’s government. The removal of Gilgit-Baltistan’s autonomy will likely anger India, which claims that both Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir as integral parts of India, referring to the regions as “Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.”
This revocation of autonomy may also have to do with Pakistan’s increasingly close relationship with India’s rival, China. In the same press conference, Gandapur said that work would begin on the Gilgit-Baltistan section of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). A 46 billion dollar portfolio of infrastructure projects that makes up a portion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the CPEC would connect the Pakistani port cities of Gwadar and Karachi with China’s Xinjiang province. This would grant China direct access to the Indian Ocean, allowing them to completely bypass the contested Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea when transporting goods and energy.
India has protested the CPEC as illegal because its groundwork passes right through the contested territory of Gilgit-Baltistan. Nonetheless, neither Pakistan nor China intend to stop construction.
Regardless of the reason that Pakistan ultimately decided to take this action in the Kashmiri territory, it will certainly add another layer of complexity to the already tense situation that has gripped the region for more than half a century.