page_title: Azad Kashmir
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Azad Kashmir / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Kashmir Region 2004
context_page_description: Azad Jammu and Kashmir, abbreviated as AJK and colloquially referred to as simply Azad Kashmir, is a region administered by Pakistan as a nominally self-governing jurisdiction, and constituting the western portion of the larger Kashmir region which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947. The territory shares a border to the north with Gilgit-Baltistan, together with which it is referred to by the United Nations and other international organizations as "Pakistani-administered Kashmir". Azad Kashmir is one-sixth the size of Gilgit-Baltistan and constitutes part of what is Kashmir proper—a valley divided between Indian and Pakistani control in which the majority of the ethnic Kashmiri population lives. Azad Kashmir also shares borders with the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the south and west, respectively. On the eastern side, Azad Jammu and Kashmir is separated from the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir by the Line of Control, which serves as the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir.
context_section_description: At the time of the Partition of India in 1947, the British abandoned their suzerainty over the princely states, which were left with the options of joining India or Pakistan or remaining independent. Hari Singh, the maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, wanted his state to remain independent. Muslims in Western Jammu province (current day Azad Kashmir) and the Frontier Districts Province (current day Gilgit-Baltistan) had wanted to join Pakistan.
  In Spring 1947, an uprising against the Maharaja broke out in Poonch, an area bordering the Rawalpindi division of West Punjab. Maharaja's administration is said to have started levying punitive taxes on the peasantry which provoked a local revolt and the administration resorted to brutal suppression. The area's population, swelled by recently demobilised soldiers following World War II, rebelled against the Maharaja's forces and gained control of almost the entire district. Following this victory, the pro-Pakistan chieftains of the western districts of Muzaffarabad, Poonch and Mirpur proclaimed a provisional Azad Jammu and Kashmir government in Rawalpindi on October 3, 1947. Ghulam Nabi Gilkar, under the assumed name "Mr. Anwar," issued a proclamation in the name of the provisional government in Muzaffarabad. However, this government quickly fizzled out with the arrest of Anwar in Srinagar. On October 24, a second provisional government of Azad Kashmir was established at Palandri under the leadership of Sardar Ibrahim Khan.
  On October 21, several thousand Pashtun tribesmen from North-West Frontier Province poured into Jammu and Kashmir to liberate it from the Maharaja's rule. They were led by experienced military leaders and were equipped with modern arms. The Maharaja's crumbling forces were unable to withstand the onslaught. The raiders captured the towns of Muzaffarabad and Baramulla, the latter 32 kilometres (20 mi) northwest of the state capital Srinagar. On October 24, the Maharaja requested military assistance from India, which responded that it was unable to help him unless he acceded to India. Accordingly, on October 26, 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh signed an Instrument of Accession, handing over control of defence, external affairs and communications to the Government of India in return for military aid. Indian troops were immediately airlifted into Srinagar. Pakistan intervened subsequently. Fighting ensued between the Indian and Pakistani armies, with the two areas of control more or less stabilised around what is now known as the "Line of Control".
  India later approached the United Nations, asking it to resolve the dispute, and resolutions were passed in favour of the holding of a plebiscite with regard to Kashmir's future. However, no such plebiscite has ever been held on either side, since there was a precondition which required the withdrawal of the Pakistani Army along with the non-state elements and the subsequent partial withdrawal of the Indian Army.  from the parts of Kashmir under their respective control – a withdrawal that never took place. In 1949, a formal cease-fire line separating the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir came into effect.
  Following the 1949 cease-fire agreement with India, the government of Pakistan divided the northern and western parts of Kashmir that it controlled at the time of cease-fire into the following two separately-controlled political entities:
  Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) – the narrow, southern part, 400 km (250 mi) long, with a width varying from 15 to 65 km (10 to 40 mi).
  Gilgit–Baltistan formerly called the Federally Administered Northern Areas (FANA) – the much larger political entity to the north of AJK with an area of 72,496 km² (27,991 sq mi).
  At one time under Pakistani control, Kashmir's Shaksgam tract, a small region along the northeastern border of Gilgit–Baltistan, was provisionally ceded by Pakistan to the People's Republic of China in 1963 and now forms part of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
  In 1972, the then current border between the Indian and Pakistani controlled parts of Kashmir was desig
caption: Map of the entire region of Jammu and Kashmir
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