Pakistan, June 6 -- Azad Kashmir's present crisis should not be reduced to a childish contest between a virtuous street and a heartless state. The grievances that fed the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee did not fall from the sky. Electricity bills hurt people. Flour prices hurt people. Elite privilege offended people. Governments in Muzaffarabad and Islamabad allowed resentment to gather for years, and when politics failed to hear the citizens, the citizens found another platform.

That much must be admitted.

But legitimacy earned through protest can also be wasted through stubbornness. A movement that begins by demanding relief can lose its moral weight if it starts treating every forum for settlement as a trap and every cons...