It is rare for a Kashmiri leader to be included in Pakistan’s federal cabinet.

Mushaal Malik (also spelt Mullick) will not be a full minister under Kakar but work as a special assistant to the prime minister for human rights.

A full or deputy minister has to be a Pakistani national while special assistants can be dual nationals.

Mashaal is from Azad Jammu and Kashmir and has campaigned against the Indian occupation of Kashmir for years.

She Married Yasin Malik in Rawalpindi on 22 February 2009. The two met while Yasin was on a tour of Pakistan in 2005, according to a Wikipedia entry.

Mushaal is a graduate of the London School of Economics.

Her mother Rehana Hussein Mullick was the secretary general of PML-N Women’s Wing, while her father MA Hussein Mullick was an international economist who headed the University of Bonn’s economics department and was the first Pakistani member of a Nobel Prize jury.

Her brother Haider Ali Hussein Mullick is a foreign policy analyst based in Washington, D.C., and is currently a lecturer at the Naval Post Graduate School. Her sister, Sabien Hussein Mullick, is a social worker.

Mashaal lives with her daughter Raziyah Sultana, 12, in Islamabad.