Ground Report: Road to Rawalakot, Crisis Begins Before City Part-I

This news article is a three-part series. Part-I is published today.

RAWALAKOT: The first indication that Rawalakot was not living through ordinary times came even before I reached the city, because these days simply getting there from Pakistan’s capital region has itself become part of the story.

Under normal circumstances, Rawalpindi and Islamabad are closely connected with Rawalakot. Buses, vans and private vehicles move regularly between the twin cities and the hills of Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

Families are divided between the two places, students travel to Islamabad and Rawalpindi for education, patients come down for medical treatment, and traders and government employees use the route so frequently that for many it is an ordinary journey. 

The political confrontation of recent months has altered that familiarity. 

With regular public transport to Rawalakot largely disrupted, I eventually found a seat through a WhatsApp carpool group called “Carpool Rawalakot Rawalpindi.” There was something almost ironic about finding transport through an internet application while preparing to travel towards a region where internet and mobile communications had themselves become casualties of the crisis.

On September 3 morning, I reached Rawalpindi Saddar, and at around 10 AM our small vehicle began moving towards the hills. Before starting, however, the driver turned towards the passengers and gave us an unusual warning.

Anyone carrying food, fruit or other supplies, he advised, should consider leaving them behind because police could stop such goods on the road towards Rawalakot.

It was a short instruction, delivered almost as part of the journey briefing, but it immediately changed the conversation inside the vehicle. Instead of weather, relatives, work or the condition of the mountain road, passengers began discussing the Joint Awami Action Committee, the authorities, road restrictions, casualties and the months-long agitation that has turned Rawalakot into the centre of one of the most serious political confrontations in the region in recent years.

At Sihala, on the outskirts of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, one of our fellow passengers asked the driver to stop and bought a considerable quantity of fruit. His purchase prompted warnings from others inside the car, who told him that the police might stop the supplies at Panjar.

The man remained unconcerned. 

If they stopped him, he said, he would deal with the situation when it happened.

It seemed like a minor episode, but over the coming days I realised that in Rawalakot even seemingly ordinary acts had acquired political meaning. Carrying food, opening a shop, driving a vehicle, making a telephone call or purchasing household goods could become entangled in the wider confrontation between protesters and the authorities.

As we moved beyond Kahuta, another change came quietly but decisively. Mobile internet disappeared and, after a little more travelling, ordinary mobile phone service also began fading away.

Phones that had connected us with virtually anywhere only an hour earlier became little more than cameras and clocks. News websites could no longer be checked, WhatsApp stopped functioning, and claims circulating inside the vehicle could not easily be independently verified.

Outside, the familiar mountain landscape unfolded through green slopes, deep valleys and narrow roads, but the silence of the phones gave the journey a very different quality. Politics filled the vacuum created by the disappearance of connectivity.

Passengers debated whether the Action Committee had achieved anything, whether the government had mishandled the agitation and whether negotiations could still offer a way out. Others discussed road closures, alleged restrictions on supplies and disputed accounts of violence.

For someone entering the region from Islamabad, the communications blackout is perhaps one of the most immediate manifestations of the crisis because it is experienced physically rather than politically. The signal simply disappears, and with it much of the outside world.

At Panjar, we reached the temporary police checkpoint that passengers had been talking about since Rawalpindi.

There was a moment of anticipation inside the vehicle as an officer approached, shook hands with the driver, and asked where we were heading.

“Rawalakot,” the driver replied.

The policeman simply waved us through.

Nobody searched the vehicle, inspected our bags or asked about the fruit bought at Sihala.

The mood inside the car immediately lightened, and several passengers who had followed the driver’s earlier advice began regretting that they had not brought food or other supplies themselves. The passenger with the fruit, meanwhile, had been proved right, at least on this particular journey.

The incident illustrated another reality of travelling through a communications-restricted environment. Rumour and experience do not always correspond. One traveller hears that supplies are being stopped, another says he crossed without difficulty, while someone travelling on a different day may tell a very different story.

In such circumstances, every journey becomes a small source of information.

We continued towards Azad Pattan bridge, one of the main entry points into Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, where AJK Police stopped the vehicle.

An officer looked inside and asked the driver a simple question.

“Family or passengers?”

“Family,” the driver replied.

No further questions followed, and we were allowed to proceed.

The exchange lasted only seconds, but it stayed with me because checkpoints during politically tense periods develop their own informal vocabulary, and sometimes a single answer determines whether a traveller faces further questioning or is allowed through.

Behind us lay Punjab. Ahead was a region where the political confrontation had continued for months.

The normal road through Goain Nala was closed, forcing us to take the route through Mang. The road there is narrow, broken in places, and continuously climbing, and the diversion considerably slowed our journey.

In ordinary reporting, the condition of a road might appear incidental, but in a prolonged shutdown it becomes part of the political geography. A closed route determines whether food reaches a community on time, whether patients can reach hospitals, whether people can travel to Rawalpindi for urgent work and whether a journey of three hours becomes one of four or five.

When we reached Mang Bazaar, I encountered my first real surprise because much of the market appeared open.

Mang is generally regarded as an area where the Action Committee enjoys considerable sympathy, and after hearing so much about shutdowns, I had expected rows of locked shutters.

Local residents explained that the apparent normality was deceptive. Businesses were not operating regularly, they said, but shops were being allowed to open for limited periods so that families could purchase essential goods.

This prompted another debate inside our vehicle.

One passenger asked why, if this was a movement for all of Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, Rawalakot seemed to be bearing such a disproportionate share of the economic and social burden. Why, he wondered, were shutdowns not equally strict in other parts of the region?

I would hear versions of that question repeatedly over the next several days.

What made it particularly significant was that it did not necessarily reflect opposition to the movement’s demands. Rather, it revealed growing fatigue over the unequal distribution of sacrifice.

A person can support a political cause while still questioning whether its methods are sustainable, and that distinction seemed increasingly important in understanding Rawalakot.

A journey that ordinarily takes around three hours stretched beyond four hours and 15 minutes before we eventually arrived at Rawalakot bus terminal.

One passenger asked the driver to take him farther towards the Baldia Bus Stand, but the driver refused, citing the presence of Rangers in that direction and saying he did not want to proceed.

As we got down, I reflected on something that had not happened.

Despite all the discussion about Action Committee checkpoints and protest-controlled areas, our vehicle had not been stopped or searched at a single Action Committee checkpoint during the entire trip.

That was my personal experience on this journey and should not be interpreted as proof of what happened to every traveller or on every road, but such distinctions matter in a region where competing narratives have become part of the conflict itself.

From the bus terminal, I tried to travel towards Dareek. A journey that normally takes ten or twelve minutes required almost half an hour, and eventually I got out near Eidgah and walked the remaining distance home.

By then I had moved from the outer geography of the crisis into its heart.

The roads, shops and neighbourhoods were familiar, but their meanings had changed. Places once known simply as markets, intersections, mosques or residential areas were now also described in terms of protest camps, security positions, trenches and the locations where people had died.

Only after reaching home did I fully understand the scale of the communications problem.

During the following four days, I managed barely three or four proper phone calls.

At some locations, a faint signal from one network would suddenly appear, and people had learned where those spots were. One would stand there, dial repeatedly, move the phone slightly and try again. Sometimes dozens of attempts were required before a call finally went through.

At other times the connection disappeared before the phone even began ringing, while hours of effort produced no contact.

For people outside the region, an internet shutdown may sound like an inconvenience involving WhatsApp, Facebook or YouTube. Inside Rawalakot, it has much broader consequences.

A son in Islamabad may struggle to speak to his parents, a worker overseas cannot easily check on his family, traders face difficulty completing transactions, students lose access to educational material, and families cannot quickly verify whether relatives are safe when rumours of an incident begin circulating.

Information itself becomes uncertain.

News can begin as a whispered report, move from one neighbourhood to another and remain unverified for hours because nobody can telephone the person who was supposedly there.

By the time I reached Rawalakot, I realised that the journey from Islamabad had already told me much of what I needed to know about the political crisis.

The confrontation was not confined to speeches, sit-ins or negotiations. It existed in road diversions, silent mobile phones, police checkpoints and nervous conversations between strangers.

Rawalakot was still ahead of me when the crisis had already become visible.