RAWALAKOT: When I returned to Rawalakot’s main protest sit-in on September 6, the gathering was smaller than the large crowd I had seen earlier, but another presence was impossible to ignore, surveillance drones repeatedly flying low over the protest area.
Their buzzing had become part of the atmosphere.
I happened to be carrying a mobile-phone stand in my hand and, looking at the drones overhead, joked with my cousin that some propaganda page might soon publish a photograph of me with a caption claiming an armed terrorist had been spotted roaming around the Rawalakot dharna site.
We laughed, but there was an uncomfortable truth behind the joke.
People here are intensely conscious of how competing narratives surrounding the agitation are constructed. A mobile stand can resemble something more sinister in a photograph taken from a distance, just as a gathering can be described as peaceful protesters in one account and violent agitators in another.
In an environment where communications have been restricted, and independent verification is difficult, such competing narratives acquire enormous importance.
I spent considerable time at the sit-in asking people what they expected from the newly formed government.
Most of those I spoke with displayed little optimism.
Some questioned the political process through which the new administration had emerged, while others argued that the continuation of restrictions after the elections strengthened the Action Committee’s argument that changing the government would not necessarily alter the underlying political system.
The new administration has inherited an exceptionally difficult situation because it must simultaneously restore communications, reopen roads, revive commercial activity, address educational disruption and find some formula for engaging a movement the state has formally proscribed.
More difficult still will be rebuilding trust.
People in Rawalakot remember the events of June and July not simply as entries in a political chronology but through deaths, injuries, arrests, funerals and weeks in which normal communication with the outside world became extraordinarily difficult.
A government can announce a negotiating committee relatively quickly but rebuilding trust after such experiences is a much slower task.
On Sunday, a delegation led by a government legislator arrived in Rawalakot and began preliminary contacts aimed at exploring whether negotiations might resume.
People at the sit-in followed the development closely, although by the time I left there was no obvious breakthrough.
Despite the bitterness surrounding the confrontation, however, one theme emerged repeatedly in my conversations.
Very few ordinary people seemed to want another violent confrontation.
Even individuals who strongly supported the Action Committee frequently spoke of the need for dialogue, while those who criticised prolonged shutdowns also believed political negotiations were necessary.
The disagreement, therefore, was increasingly about the terms of a settlement, accountability for what had already happened and whether either side could trust commitments made by the other.
That question of trust may now be more difficult than resolving some of the original demands.
The Joint Awami Action Committee emerged as a broad civic platform involving traders, lawyers, transporters, students and other sections of society, with demands ranging from cheaper electricity and subsidised flour to improved healthcare, education, infrastructure, curbs on elite privileges and political reforms.
One of its most contentious demands concerns the 12 Legislative Assembly seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees living outside the territory.
The government says substantial progress has already been made on earlier agreements and maintains that many demands have either been implemented or remain under process.
Action Committee leaders dispute that assessment and argue that key commitments remain unresolved.
The events since June have further complicated the dispute because the government’s decision to proscribe the committee under anti-terrorism provisions fundamentally changed the nature of the relationship between the two sides.
The authorities were no longer dealing simply with an organised pressure group.
Legally, they were dealing with an organisation they had banned.
That creates an obvious political contradiction.
How does a government formally negotiate with a group it has declared proscribed, and how does that group negotiate with authorities it accuses of using lethal force, detaining activists and imposing collective restrictions?
These questions are not theoretical in Rawalakot.
They shape almost every discussion about what happens next.
On Monday, I began the journey back towards Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
By then the Goain Nala road had reopened, making the return journey easier than the route through Mang that I had taken while coming into Rawalakot.
This time the people travelling with me were complete strangers.
Yet within minutes the conversation returned to exactly the same issues that had dominated my journey into the city: the movement, negotiations, shutdowns, markets, schools, roadblocks, police and the pressure being placed on ordinary residents.
One passenger, a transporter, argued that if a shutdown was genuinely intended to exert political pressure, then everything should stop, including private vehicles.
Another questioned why restrictions appeared less severe in some other parts of Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir while Rawalakot had carried such a large share of the disruption.
Listening to them, I increasingly felt that the most important political debate inside the region was no longer simply between the government and the Action Committee.
There was another debate underway within society itself about the cost of resistance.
People were asking how long businesses could remain disrupted, how much schooling children could afford to lose, whether private cars should continue moving during transport strikes and whether repeated shutdowns were strengthening the movement or gradually exhausting the very population whose support it required.
These questions should not automatically be interpreted as rejection of the movement.
Many of the people raising them continued to support its principal demands.
Rather, their concerns reflected the tension that develops when a political struggle becomes prolonged enough to interfere repeatedly with ordinary life.
During the journey we stopped at a roadside hotel to eat.
I chose a separate table without giving the decision much thought.
After we resumed travelling, I realised that my fellow passengers had become suspicious.
Eventually one of them asked directly what I did for a living.
Apparently, my decision to sit separately, observe more than speak and occasionally use my phone had led them to wonder whether I might be connected with a security agency.
When I introduced myself as a journalist, the atmosphere changed immediately.
One passenger recognised my name and referred to some of the reports I had written, after which what had briefly resembled an interrogation returned to an ordinary conversation.
The episode was amusing, but it also revealed another consequence of prolonged political confrontation.
In an atmosphere of uncertainty, strangers begin wondering who everyone else might be.
A fellow traveller is no longer simply another passenger. He might be a policeman, activist, government official, intelligence operative, journalist, supporter of the movement, or informant.
When political distrust persists long enough, it eventually begins entering ordinary human relationships.
As we descended from the hills towards the Islamabad-Rawalpindi region, our phones gradually returned to life.
Messages arrived almost at once, WhatsApp notifications accumulated, news alerts appeared, and telephone calls could again be made without standing at a particular corner and dialling the same number dozens of times.
The contrast was striking.
Only a few hours away, people in Rawalakot were still struggling with basic communication.
Geographically, Islamabad and Rawalakot are close enough to be connected by a journey of a few hours, but politically and psychologically they currently appear much farther apart.
From Islamabad, the crisis can be discussed through official notifications, government statements, political negotiations, casualty figures, and legal decisions.
From Rawalakot, it looks very different.
It is a driver warning passengers about carrying food, a man buying fruit despite that warning, a police officer waving a vehicle through, a market opening for only a few crowded hours, a mother worried about her child’s schooling, a telephone searching endlessly for a signal, a roadside memorial carrying the name of somebody’s son, doctors working inside an improvised treatment facility and surveillance drones circling above a protest camp.
Even a cup of “desi doodh ki chai” sold beneath rows of closed shutters becomes part of the landscape of a political movement that has lasted long enough to develop its own routines.
After several days in Rawalakot, I did not leave with the impression of a population experiencing one simple emotion.
There is clearly anger and grief, particularly among families and communities affected by deaths, injuries, arrests and restrictions, while political defiance continues to sustain the agitation.
At the same time, there is unmistakable fatigue.
Traders want regular business to resume, parents are worried about lost schooling, young people are frustrated by communications restrictions, transporters want roads functioning again, and families simply want to speak freely with relatives living elsewhere.
Yet many residents also believe that returning to ordinary life without resolving the political questions raised by the agitation would make the sacrifices of previous months appear meaningless.
That is perhaps the central tension running through Rawalakot today. People want normal life back, but not at the cost of surrender. Many do not want the old normal back.
They want markets open and children in school, but they also want questions of political representation, governance, accountability and economic rights addressed.
The issue, therefore, is not simply when normality will return, but what kind of normality people will consider acceptable.
The Action Committee is out to demonstrate that the movement continues to command public support beyond Rawalakot and Poonch. For the government, it is judging how much space exists for restoring commercial and political normality.
For that reason, dialogue is no longer merely a political option discussed by leaders.
For many people I met, it appears increasingly to be the only sustainable way out.
When I first left Rawalpindi Saddar, I thought I was making a reporting trip to Rawalakot.
By the time I returned towards Islamabad, it felt more like travelling between two realities separated by only a few hours of mountain road.
In one, the internet works, markets remain open, traffic moves and carrying a bag of fruit attracts no particular attention.
In the other, each of those ordinary things can acquire political meaning.
Rawalakot is not a city frozen permanently in confrontation. Children continue to play, relatives still visit one another, people drink tea, families shop when markets open and humour survives even under surveillance drones.
Life adapts remarkably quickly.
But adaptation should not be confused with normality.
Roads can reopen, trenches can eventually be filled, markets can raise their shutters and mobile towers can be switched back on. Governments can announce negotiations and committees can sign agreements.
Restoring trust will be considerably more difficult.
As our vehicle descended towards Islamabad and the telephone signal finally returned, the unresolved questions I had heard throughout Rawalakot travelled back with me.
Unlike the mobile signal, they did not disappear when we crossed the mountains.
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