Pakistan's plan to annex Kashmir's Gilgit-Baltistan hits snag amid disputed election fallout

A hotly disputed election in Gilgit-Baltistan, part of the wider Kashmir region administered by Pakistan that borders China, has not delivered the mandate for annexation that Prime Minister Imran Khan was hoping for, amid swirling allegations of federal interference in the electoral process.

For the first time since Gilgit-Baltistan's legislative assembly was established in 2009, the party of power in Islamabad has failed to win a clear majority in the region's elections. Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and its ally Majlis-i-Wahdat-i-Muslimeen won just 10 of the assembly's 24 directly elected seats, according to official results issued on Tuesday - a full nine days after voting concluded on November 15.

The PTI is still able to form a government for the region after striking a deal last weekend with six victorious independent candidates - all of them former party members. Six more PTI candidates have been elected to the nine seats reserved for women, technocrats and professionals under the region's system of proportional representation.

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Yet instead of strengthening the case for making Gilgit-Baltistan the fifth province of Pakistan, the election's disputed outcome could now drag the remote mountainous region into a burgeoning opposition movement that seeks to overthrow Khan's government.

Supporters of the Pakistan Democratic Movement attend an anti-government rally in Peshawar on November 22. Photo: AP

The Pakistan Democratic Movement was formed in September with the express purpose of bringing an end to political interference by the country's powerful military, which the opposition accuses of rigging the 2018 general elections in favour of Khan and his PTI. Its leaders had warned that their support for the annexation of Gilgit-Baltistan would be contingent upon free and fair elections being held in the region.

Shahzad Ilhami, a Gilgit-based spokesman for the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which forms part of the opposition coalition, said it was still unclear whether Khan's government would go ahead with the constitutional reforms required to make Gilgit-Baltistan a province.

"The ruling party does not have a two-thirds majority in parliament, so it can't get the reforms approved. We suspect this [promised reform] was just an election stunt," Ilhami told This Week In Asia.

The PPP secured just three of the seven seats it expected to win in the Gilgit-Baltistan elections, and dozens of its activists were arrested for rioting in the regional capital of Gilgit on Monday after violent protests broke out amid allegations of vote-rigging.

Khan's administration has only a thin majority in the directly elected lower house of Pakistan's parliament, and is dependent on support from regional parties with strong ties to the military. A PTI-led coalition is expected to gain control of the upper house, however, following indirect elections to be held in March.

Professor Ajmal Hussain, financial secretary of the PTI's Gilgit-Baltistan chapter, dismissed opposition allegations of vote-rigging as a "rejection of the democratic expression of the people", and said suggestions Khan's administration would back out of constitutional reforms to upgrade the region's status were "shocking".

"These elections were important, and not just for Gilgit-Baltistan. For 73 years, we have not had fundamental rights and Prime Minister Imran Khan took a bold decision, despite pressure from India, the US and others," he said.

Geopolitical analysts focused on South Asia say Pakistan's move to settle the constitutional status of Gilgit-Baltistan has been encouraged by China, at least in part.

China and Pakistan have been close allies since a 1963 agreement establishing their shared border in Gilgit-Baltistan, which is also home to the starting point of the US$60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that stretches to the Chinese-operated port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea.

Retired Lieutenant General Asim Bajwa, chairman of the authority formed last year to oversee the corridor's second phase, has been a focal point of opposition criticism following media revelations in August that his family built a multimillion-dollar US-based business that grew in parallel to his ascent through the ranks.

Corruption allegations against Bajwa have fuelled the opposition's campaign to prevent full control of the CPEC being transferred from the civilian government to the military. A draft bill to replace the lapsed presidential ordinance which established the CPEC Authority is currently making its way through parliament, with the PTI requiring full attendance by party MPs and the cooperation of all its allies to ensure the bill's approval.

It is further rumoured that the Chinese embassy in Paris helped orchestrate the return to Pakistan in 2019 of Hamid Khan, a Gilgit-Baltistan separatist leader who formerly lived in France, after 23 years in exile. He recently announced his retirement from "anti-state activities" after a year in a safe house in Islamabad. A well-placed official in Gilgit denied any knowledge of China's involvement in the affair.

The political unrest in Gilgit-Baltistan comes amid resurgent tensions between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, which recently sparked the biggest artillery duel along their de facto border since a ceasefire agreement was struck in 2004.

Tensions spiked after Pakistan's prime minister officially announced his government's intention to annex the Gilgit-Baltistan region during a visit to its capital on November 5.

"The state of play is quite volatile now," said Michael Kugelman, senior South Asia associate at the Wilson Centre, a Washington-based think tank. "Pakistan will worry about restiveness in Gilgit-Baltistan and fear that New Delhi, on the heels of the latest threats from Indian political leaders about taking muscular actions, will somehow seek to exploit it."

The heated situation does not augur well for Pakistan or China, Kugelman said.

"This comes with much at stake with CPEC, as both Beijing and Islamabad are keen to expand the project into Gilgit-Baltistan. But this is harder to do when the security environment isn't stable, and when the region's political and legal status remains unclear," he said.

Observers have called on Pakistan to act quickly in granting citizenship rights to Gilgit-Baltistan's residents, to pre-empt an anticipated outbreak of separatist sentiment.

The region's caretaker government recently released nine of the 14 men sentenced to life imprisonment for rioting in 2011, after police opened fire on protesters demanding compensation for residents of a village that had been destroyed by a landslide.

Threats of an election boycott by activists, who renewed their campaign for the men's release in September by blocking a stretch of the Karakoram Highway near the border with China, seemingly persuaded the caretaker administration - with the blessing of the federal authorities - to begin releasing the prisoners in batches.

Their release has been viewed as key to quieting separatist sentiment amid the process of making Gilgit-Baltistan a fully fledged province.

Meanwhile, in a dossier released following the recent artillery duel between Indian and Pakistani forces in Kashmir, Pakistan accused India of attempting to stir nationalist and sectarian tensions in Gilgit-Baltistan through covert operations. The dossier also included purported evidence of an intelligence cell dedicated to disrupting CPEC, allegedly operated from Indian consulates in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has accused Indian intelligence agencies of bringing together disparate insurgent factions and sponsoring a fresh wave of terrorist attacks in Pakistan - including a failed assault in November 2018 on the Chinese consulate in Karachi.

India, for its part, has accused Pakistan of attempting to sabotage local government elections in the part of Kashmir it administers, which has been under security lockdown and disconnected from the internet since New Delhi revoked its special constitutional status in August 2019.

Additional reporting by Tuyyab Babri in Gilgit

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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