MAP 2. The Azad State of Jammu and Kashmir (2001).

      On the contrary, displaced Jammu and Kashmir hereditary state subjects (the “refugees” who are guaranteed representation) have a long history of actively demanding recognition from and a role in the AJK government. In fact, the “Kashmiri refugee” as a political identity emerged in part through efforts by AJK political elites to define an exclusive domain of state power. By restricting all forms of state patronage—including government employment, property ownership, and registration in government schools—to recognized Jammu and Kashmir state subjects (including refugees), they were able to limit Pakistan’s control over the administrative machinery of the AJK government. That government provides most of the public services available in AJK, and it employs only legally recognized Jammu and Kashmir state-subjects and bases civil service appointments on its own exam system.⁵⁸ Since the 1980s, small industry and private businesses, like construction firms, hydroelectric development projects, and private English-medium schools⁵⁹ have been a growing sector of the regional economy. Private employment opportunities also grew exponentially after the earthquake of 2005 with internationally funded rehabilitation and reconstruction. Historical restrictions on property ownership and employment created opportunities for AJK residents and documented state refugees to provide contract labor for international agencies and establish new local businesses, because Pakistani-owned firms did not have a foothold in the state. The political party or coalition in charge in the capital of Muzaffarabad supervises a vast structure of service provision, administration, and governance and therefore controls an important regional patronage system.

      Under the Interim Constitution, the executive branch of the AJK government is comprised of a Prime Minister, elected by a Legislative Assembly, and a Council of Ministers. The Assembly and the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs jointly elect a President, and the AJK Supreme Court and the High Court of Azad Kashmir exercise judicial oversight. The current Legislative Assembly is made up of forty-nine seats. Of these, forty-one seats are directly elected: twelve are elected by refugees living in Pakistan, and twenty-nine are elected by AJK residents. The elected members of the Assembly make appointments to eight reserved seats, of which one is for “overseas Jammu and Kashmir State Subjects.”⁶⁰ The AJK government is responsible for all internal law and order and internal security. It maintains its own police, whose elite investigative unit is the AJK Special Branch. AJK does not have its own professional army; the Pakistan Army provides border defense. A special regiment of the Pakistan Army called the “Mujahid Regiment” was established in the late 1980s. It recruits only Jammu and Kashmir state-subjects and is deployed only on the front line of the LoC. The AJK government has also developed an active civil defense program, which trains village-level militia to defend against external (Indian) invasion.

      Pakistan has always been sensitive about its international reputation on matters pertaining the UN resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir. For that reason, outright annexation was not a political option. Instead, Pakistan’s administrative penetration into the AJK state government was accomplished by making political alliances with AJK political leaders.⁶¹ The government of Pakistan legally exerts authority in AJK internal politics through the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council, through supervision of the state administrative services, and through control over the state budget.⁶² In addition, candidates for elected office are required to support Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan, and all government employees are required to sign an oath to that effect. For this reason, the nationalist, pro-independence political parties cannot forward candidates for election in AJK, and anyone in government service cannot be a registered member of a pro-independence party. This constraint has effectively kept independence parties (both pan-Kashmir and AJK-based) out of political office, although they have a presence in nongovernmental political contexts. It has also led to a widespread practice of multiple party affiliation, some that are documented for the purpose of employment and others that people espouse clandestinely.

      The Pakistan Army exercises coercive power but has to limit its interventions to those that can be hidden from international public scrutiny or that it can legitimate in the name of defending against external aggression. Pakistan treats the entirety of AJK as an area of security risk, because the former Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir has been at the center of regional instability since 1947, and because it is claimed by India. Pakistan exerts the most direct administrative influence within the official Military Security Zone, which covers a 16-km band along the LoC and encompasses areas within range of Indian Army artillery. Within the zone, the Military Intelligence (MI) of the Pakistan Army, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which recruits both from the Pakistan Army and the Pakistan Civil Services, along with the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) oversee the activities of the local population, and the military carries out identity checks at regular check posts. These practices remind the people who live there that AJK is an insecure state under constant impending threat of external armed aggression, and it allows Pakistan to suppress dissent in the name of security.

      Politicians, administrators, and civilians in AJK express deep suspicions about the indirect influence that representatives of the government of Pakistan play in their political lives. The rise of international access to AJK after the earthquake of 2005 facilitated vocal public critique.⁶³ Despite Pakistan’s influence, however, the reality is that the state of Azad Jammu and Kashmir plays a key role in organizing the experiences of daily life and in shaping the national historical consciousness of people who derive aspects of their political identity from its regulatory regime. For residents of AJK and for Kashmiri refugees resident in Pakistan alike, living a political life means negotiating AJK’s semiautonomous institutional structure, political parties, and civil associations, as well as the Pakistani state’s surveillance and oversight.

      ON THE RESEARCH, SITES, AND METHODS

      I conducted the fieldwork upon which this book is based between 1998 and 2008. That fieldwork included twenty-two months of ethnographic research with Kashmiri refugees in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and in Pakistan and four months of archival research at the National Archives of Pakistan. I maintain connections with overseas Kashmiris based in the United States and in England, and over the years I have met with Kashmiri political party leaders on extended political or personal visits in New York, London, and Geneva. My primary methods were participant observation, life-history interviews, and archival research. I also conducted numerous structured interviews on topical issues with government officials and administrators, politicians, and religious leaders. Published scholarship on AJK is limited, and a number of relevant sources are available only in Urdu. I use the available materials—including histories, pamphlets, and memoirs—to contextualize my analysis of the historical development of Kashmiri refugees as a political category, and I draw on government documents from the National Archives of Pakistan, which holds the original records related to Kashmir refugee relief in Pakistan from 1947 to 1965. I also examined jihadist publications, including magazines and taped lectures and songs (tarānas). The conclusions that I present in this book emerged from a sustained analysis of various kinds of information considered in light of others.

      I designed my research around the different categories of refugees rather than the places where I could encounter them. I thus met with men and women, displaced during each of the wars and from various parts of the Jammu and Kashmir region living in both AJK and Pakistan. This design accommodated the theoretical issues involved with working with Kashmiri refugees as well as the pragmatic concern that my access to any particular place could change unexpectedly. I was always aware that any number of factors could affect my ability to work with a particular community in a particular place, including the escalation of tensions between Pakistan and India or a decision by the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs that local conditions were dangerous for foreigners. On many occasions I adjusted the timing of meetings with people or visits to certain places in order to allow people to evaluate my project and reputation among other communities. In the first year of my research, I avoided developing close ties with political parties and formal associations to keep my research separate from their political projects, although I did visit a number of nongovernmental organization (NGO) projects on request. Once I felt that my research was well established and that I was not seen as affiliated with any particular group or party, I began meeting with political representatives. Over the years, my fieldwork within