THE last few weeks have once again confirmed that the very people in whose name the `Kashmir dispute` has persisted for eight decades have little say in the conflicts which take place in their name.

Exposed only to statist discourse, most of the subcontinent`s people have little awareness of the actual history, geography and politics of the areas that are all clumped together under the epithet of `Kashmir`.

Gilgit-Baltistan is one such region.

Administered by Pakistan since 1948, GB`s two million people have been in limbo for almost 80 years under the pretext that their destiny will be decided when the Kashmir dispute is finally resolved. There is no mention of GB in the Constitution, leaving its administration at the discretion of the power wielders.

This is a travesty for many reasons, including the fact that GB is home to the thousands of glaciers that constitute the life source of the Indus river system. The region boasts rich deposits of minerals and other natural resources from which Pakistan benefits. And it is the gateway to China and the rest of Central Asia.

For downcountry Pakistanis, GB is only a beautiful, faraway place that functions as the perfect tourist destination. There is little understanding of how incessant road-building, luxury hotels and other `developmental` interventions are causing irreversible damage to the region`s highly vulnerable ecologies. Indeed, GB`s constitutional vacuum is now giving rise to initiatives to expropriate nature and dispossess local people.

Earlier this week, a new legislation entitled the Land Reform Act was promulgated to govern land and other natural resources in GB. By giving it this name, the authorities ostensibly want to make it sound like the law is progressive and will guarantee that local people are being given control over local resources. In fact, there is widespread trepidation amongst GB`s youth and seasoned political campaigners that they are being further disenfranchised.

GB was indirectly ruled under the British Raj under a Sikh-era colonial modality called the Khalisa Sarkar. This allowed the state to take possession and ownership of large swathes of land under the pretext that it was `barren`. Yet much of the land that the state declared `barren` was in fact used by local communities as common property. What in local parlance is called `shamilar deh` served agricultural, grazing and many other purposes, and remained somewhat immune to the capitalistic logics of private property.

This historic connection of GB`s peopleto the land has been gradually severed as private and state profiteers have extended their control over the region. Since 1974 non-locals have been permitted to buy up land most of which has been used for mass tourism, or wanton mineral exploration and mining.

Approximately two-thirds of GB`s total area is on the face of it `protected area` that should preserve both local livelihoods and ecologies. Instead, exploitation and expropriation is commonplace even within so-called `national parks`.

The Land Reform Act claims to create new legal modalities that benefit local communities by doing away with Khalisa Sarkar. But it is riddled with a host of ambiguities, and in some places, provides for the state to exercise colonial-style powers. There are many clauses that give arbitrary power to the authorities to determine whether or not a piece of land and the minerals that it holds belongs to a vaguely defined local stakeholder.

Furthermore, there are numerous provi-sions within the Act for non-locals and state institutions to acquire and alienate land at will.

It is worth bearing in mind that the adjacent AJK continues to be governed by statutes such as the State Subiect Actwhich protect against demographic change and the acquisition of resources by non-locals. Across the LoC in India-held Kashmir the revocation of Article 370 by the Modi regime in 2019 was highly controversial in large part because it changed residency and ownership rules to facilitate the buying up of land by non-locals.

Yet in GB, there is no consideration at all for age-old concerns about demography, the rights of local people and the perils of ecocide.

There is considerable resistance to the unending encroachment of the state into the lives, livelihoods and ecosystems of GB, particularly on the platform of the Awami Action Committee, a broad-based coalition of political workers and intellectuals from across the ideological spectrum. Recent arrests of AAC leaders confirm that GB is being steadily militarised like so many other peripheries. History will not be kind to those who usurped the rights and resources of GB`s people.• The wnter teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.