Political Positions
The party does not consider areas of Gilgit and Baltistan to be legally or constitutionally part of Pakistan or India. Nor does it regard neighboring regions of Chitral, Kohistan, Ladakh, or Kargil to be legitimately part of India or Pakistan. It demands freedom not just for regions within Pakistan, but also Kargil and Ladakh.
The party asserts that as per UNCIP resolutions, Pakistan (and India) must withdraw their forces and handover the control of the region to the people of Gilgit Baltistan, under the supervision of the United Nations, until a final settlement of the whole Jammu and Kashmir issue is reached, as per a United Nations sponsored plebiscite that would be held in both Pakistan and Indian-Administered Kashmir." This grievance was directly addressed in the 2009 political reforms for the region, which granted the region self-rule with its own elected legislature - rather than being administered directly from Islamabad, although the Pakistani military has not evacuated the region, and nor has the UN been introduced to oversee the administration of the region. The party pointed out that the old arrangement, by which the region was directly ruled from Islamabad, was unlike that of neighboring Azad Kashmir, which was granted its own legislative assembly shortly after the first Kashmir war in 1948.
It does not want to join India or Pakistan for religious or any other reason. It condemns what it sees as religious and sectarian games played against its people by Pakistan and its intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence, and indeed even terms sectarian violence as full-fledged genocide. It opposes what it claims are attempts of the Pakistani administration to alter the demographic profile of the area, reducing the indigenous people to a minority. In 2002, it opposed what is saw as the Pakistan government's attempts to impose Wahhabi Islam on the region's predominantly Shia population under the rule of General Pervez Musharraf. Currently, Pakistan is governed by secular and left-leaning PPP, which is headed by Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari who is himself Shia.
Read more about this topic: Balawaristan National Front
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