Opinion | Pakistan-Occupied Jammu And Kashmir On The Brink

To ban POJK’s most powerful people's movement under an anti-terrorism law and arrest 72 of its members immediately after imposing the ban has only made matters worse

Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) is on the edge once again, but for those observing and analysing the evolving situation there, this development does not come as a surprise. Pakistan watchers are convinced that the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in general, and Field Marshal Asim Munir in particular, is in a tailspin, having bitten off more than they can chew. Friday’s (June 5, 2026) move by the Home Department in POJK to proscribe the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), the territory’s most prominent civil society platform, as a terrorist organisation under the POJK Anti-Terrorism Act, 2014, was expected. This extreme step clearly exposes Islamabad’s growing anxiety about the likely regional and global impact of the territory-wide strike and ‘Chakka Jam’ (wheel-jam) shutdown called by the JAAC for June 9.

Both Sharif and Munir appear quite desperate to divert the Pakistani public’s attention from the setbacks and embarrassment inflicted on the nation through India’s well-orchestrated and documented “Operation Sindoor" last year, which was a firm and strategic counter to Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorist strike that claimed 26 innocent civilian lives in Pahalgam. It appears that Field Marshal Munir has simultaneously opened multiple fronts of confrontation and ended up widening the scope of his challenges. Today, Pakistan’s security matrix is inexplicably engrossed and engaged in one conflict or another, be it with the Afghan Taliban, or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), and now with the JAAC in POJK, just ahead of crucial assembly elections. To ban POJK’s most powerful people’s movement under an anti-terrorism law and arrest 72 of its members immediately after imposing the ban has only made matters worse.

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