What is unfolding today in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (Azad Jammu and Kashmir, or AJK) is not a passing protest—it is an historic uprising of the working class against decades of exploitation, deprivation, and betrayal. The working class in Kashmir, long silenced by colonial dependence and capitalist greed, are breaking their chains and stepping into history as conscious agents of change. Their revolt challenges not only the despotic local bosses, but the entire capitalist-imperialist system that sustains it.

The Jammu Kashmir Awami Action Committee (JAAC) did not emerge overnight. It grew out of years of organizing by progressive and communist students, workers, and activists who united beyond sectarian and nationalist divisions. When the state unleashed brutal violence during the strike on September 29, 2025—killing more than a dozen and injuring hundreds—it hoped to crush dissent. Instead, the blood of martyrs ignited a broader rebellion. The state’s machinery faltered before the united strength of the working people, forcing the rulers to concede.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stresses that temporary reforms cannot end permanent exploitation. The next task is to channel mass anger into revolutionary organization—linking every struggle for bread, electricity, and basic needs to the fight for communist power.

Roots of the JAAC Movement

JAAC’s roots trace back to the 2017–18 mobilizations against unfair electricity bills, wage theft, and privatization. Local traders, transport workers, teachers, and government employees built networks of solidarity that coordinated strikes and protests across AJK (PoK). By 2020–21, these struggles had evolved into a united front against systemic exploitation.

The May 2023 general strike marked a turning point. Markets shut down, transport halted, and tens of thousands demanded relief from unbearable tariffs and inflation. The government’s partial concessions proved that mass struggle—not parliamentary politics—is the true engine of change. That victory laid the groundwork for the revolutionary upsurge of 2024–25, when the movement’s class character became unmistakable.Exploitation and inequality

AJK generates more than 3,000 megawatts of electricity, yet its own people face blackouts and unaffordable tariffs. The Mangla Dam, built in the 1960s, displaced over 100,000 workers in Kashmir—many of whom remain uncompensated. While local communities bear the cost, Pakistan’s capitalist elite and corporate allies reap the profits.

Over 40 percent of AJK’s population suffers from food insecurity. Unemployment exceeds 30 percent, and public services have collapsed under austerity. The region’s hydropower, forests, and minerals are plundered in the name of “development.” This is not mismanagement—it is the logic of a semi-colonial capitalist system that treats AJK (PoK) as an internal colony of Pakistan, itself subordinate to global imperialism.

Political domination and “refugee seats”

One of the clearest instruments of this domination is the system of “refugee seats” in the AJK Legislative Assembly. Twelve seats are reserved for people who claim to be refugees from Jammu and Kashmir but have lived in Pakistan since 1947. They neither reside in AJK nor share its material conditions—yet they rule over it.

These individuals already enjoy full political rights in Pakistan, participating in its provincial and national assemblies. The Pakistani ruling class uses them as proxies to dominate AJK’s politics, install puppet governments, and suppress local self-rule. The JAAC’s demand to abolish these twelve seats is therefore not a minor reform—it is a major challenge to a colonial political structure that denies AJK’s people sovereignty over their land and labor.

Radical organization threatens bosses

Through determined struggle, the JAAC has won partial rollbacks of anti-people tariffs, restored flour subsidies, united workers, peasants, traders, teachers, and students under one banner, and created local coordination committees—the first seeds of direct workers’ power. These efforts have exposed the capitalist nature of the Pakistani state and its local collaborators.

Yet contradictions remain. Elements within JAAC’s leadership—petty-bourgeois, reformist, and nationalist—seek compromise rather than revolution. As Marx and Lenin taught, without a revolutionary communist party, spontaneous struggle remains confined within capitalist limits. The movement must advance from reform to revolution.

The massacres in Mirpur, Bagh, and Muzaffarabad were not accidents but deliberate acts of class war. The state defends profit through bullets and prisons. What it fears most is not protest but organization—workers and peasants developing class consciousness and preparing to seize power.

Communist internationalism is key

The oppression of AJK (PoK) cannot be separated from global capitalism. The same system that enforces IMF austerity in Pakistan funds Zionist genocide in Palestine, fuels wars in Sudan and Congo, and exploits workers from Dhaka to Detroit. The enemy is international—so our struggle must be internationalist.

As the Progressive Labor Party teaches: “The fight for reforms can only serve the revolution when it exposes the class nature of capitalism and helps workers organize for power.”

Class-conscious workers in the JAAC must now take concrete steps to build communist-led workers’ committees in every district—to control resources, administration, and production. Unite workers, peasants, students, and youth across religious and regional lines. Reject NGO politics, electoral illusions, and nationalist distractions that divide the working class. Link AJK’s fight with broader anti-imperialist movements—from India to Palestine, from Cuba to Sudan.

Toward a new communist dawn

The blood spilled in AJK has not been in vain—it has watered the seeds of a new dawn, a dawn of revolution. The people demand bread, but they are learning to fight for power. They demand relief, but they are beginning to build communism. They mourn their martyrs, but they also organize in their name.

The uprising in AJK (PoK) reveals a universal truth: the oppressed cannot rely on parliaments or promises—only organized working-class power can end exploitation. Reform was the spark; revolution is the fire. The battlefield is global, and the working class is its vanguard.

The International Communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) strives to provide leadership and raise class consciousness among workers and students, uniting them under the red flag for an international communist revolution.
Long live PLP.