Gilgit Agency

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Gilgit Agency was the name of most of the area of northern Kashmir which formed a de facto dependency of Pakistan from 1947 to 1970, which was then merged into Northern Areas. The Agency was administered directly from Islamabad separately from the neighbouring state of Azad Kashmir and the princely states of Hunza and Nagar. The area of the Agency comprised the traditional region of Gilgit and most of the region of Baltistan. The Agency also bordered the Sinkiang region of China to the northeast, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir to the south, and the North-West Frontier Province to the west. Both India and Pakistan recognise the regions of Gilgit and Baltistan as disputed and technically part of the divided State of Jammu & Kashmir.

The chief towns of the Agency were Gilgit and Skardu with the small town of Ghyari also holding significance for Shia Muslims as the site of a mosque built by Sayyid Ali Hamadani, a fourteenth century Persian who brought Islam to the region.

[edit] History

The regions of Gilgit and Baltistan were formerly principalities. The actual name of the 'Northern Areas' is Gilgit & Baltistan. Baltistan is the Pakistani controlled part of Ladakh province now incorporated into the Northern Areas. The rulers of Gilgit (also known as Dardistan) were styled Raas ruling from the town of Gilgit. The rulers of Baltistan were styled with the Tibetan title of rGyal-po, having been founded as a western Tibetan kingdom in the thirteenth century. The state of Baltistan included the area of Kargil in Indian Jammu and Kashmir. The two states, together with their neighbours Hunza and Nagar, became vassals of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the middle of the nineteenth century but maintained considerable autonomy. Gilgit Agency became part of Gilgit province or Wazarat and later leased to British Raj by Maharaja of Jammu in 1889.

The local rulers continued to appear at the Kashmir Durbars until 1947. The events of Partition and the subsequent invasion of the Kashmir by Pakistani tribals led to most of the Agency becoming part of Pakistan Administered Kashmir, but the Kargil area remained with India. The Agency was not absorbed into any of the provinces of West Pakistan but continued to be ruled by Political Agents of the federal government. A small part of the Agency (the Trans-Karakoram Tract) was transferred by treaty in 1963 to China with the proviso that the settlement was subject to the final solution of the Kashmir dispute. The dissolution of the province of West Pakistan in 1970 was accompanied by the name of the Agency being changed to the Northern Areas. This was followed in 1974 by the incorporation of the states of Hunza and Nagar and independent valleys of Darel-Tangir, which had been de facto dependencies of Pakistan. The entire Northern Areas region is claimed by India as part of the Jammu & Kashmir state.