India and Pakistan have been squaring up to each other along the disputed frontier in Kashmir. Rahul Bedi visited the area and reports from Akhnoor, northern India.
The fragile peace between India and Pakistan, shattered daily by exchanges of artillery, machine-gun and mortar fire along their northern Jammu and Kashmir frontier for nearly 13 years, has worsened after more than one million soldiers from the two armies were deployed following last month's attack on the parliament in New Delhi.
India blames Pakistan's military Inter Services Intelligence for the December 13th assault on its parliament after which it deployed its troops, backed by armour and artillery formations. along the entire 3,310 km frontier with Pakistan. Islamabad responded similarly. Both sides also mobilised their navies, placed their air forces on high alert, imposed reciprocal diplomatic sanctions and closed down rail, road and air links.
Thereafter, the frontier was heavily mined and freshly-dug trenches filled with water as a deterrent to enemy tanks on either side. Bunkers have been strengthened against artillery and mortar fire and highways in the Jammu region closed at night to move vast quantities of ordnance to bolster India's three-tier military deployment.
Veterans of the 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan claim the present deployment is "unprecedented" and any small incident is likely to ignite a war along the tense frontier.
"We will lose face if we withdraw without a fight after such a build-up," an Indian officer posted along the "hot" 961km Jammu and Kashmir border said. It would merely give Pakistan and the world the message that India only postured, but did not follow up with action.
But other officers admitted that a war, as in the past, would serve little purpose other than beggar the two impoverished nations. "We need a peace offensive, not war," a senior military officer declared, despite the entire force presently operating in accordance with the Union War book.
"It [the firing] has never been so bad," a soldier said at Nikowal post, 20 miles east of the state's winter capital, Jammu, where he has daily faced over 8,000 rounds of heavy-calibre Pakistani machinegun "grazing" or ground-level fire from 500 yards away for over four weeks. He has retaliated with equal vehemence. "They are no better than us. We have been hitting back with more than they possibly can," he said. But India must not "waste" the military build-up and "sort out" Pakistan once and for all, he added.
Tension lessened during the visit by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to India and Pakistan, with both sides adopting a somewhat conciliatory tone and veering towards dialogue. The US is anxious to prevent a fourth war, possibly nuclear, between the rivals. Powell said the question of Kashmir needed resolution through "direct dialogue". "The US is always ready to bring about a dialogue. It is always ready to assist two friends."
India blames Pakistan for supporting Muslim insurgent groups fighting the civil war raging in Kashmir since 1989 in which over 35,000 people, including 3,000 security forces personnel, have died.
By banning two Kashmiri militant groups that India blames for the attack on its parliament, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan last week obliquely admitted, for the first time, his country's support for the insurgency.
"We are locked in a battle of wits with Pakistan, where one false step can be the last," said a senior officer at Akhnoor's "chicken's neck" area, 25 miles from Jammu that is militarily vital for India, surrounded as it is by Pakistan on three sides.
A determined Pakistani thrust, as in the 1965 and 1971 wars, would sever a vital road link between Jammu and crucial forward posts to the north-west. Both sides have taken an undisclosed number of casualties in the exchanges over the past four weeks, officers admitted.
The slightest carelessness along the frontier is certain death for thousands of border security force paramilitary and army personnel guarding the world's "hottest" border that meanders through tall elephant grass, thick jungle and across steep mountains and rivers.
The US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, has called the region one of the world's most dangerous spots where two nuclear powers daily glare, shout and shoot at each other.
Bullet-riddled bunkers, some less than 100 metres apart, are repaired surreptitiously under cover of darkness. Stealth determines survival here as Indian and Pakistani snipers lie in wait for their victims.
At New Kanachak thick, protective steel sheets lie shattered by machine-gun fire and the eucalyptus grove surrounding the post are badly scarred with bullet marks.
Once assigned to a three-year duty tenure on the Pakistani border, soldiers and officers get a break from the firing only when they go on leave. In the intervening period they rarely venture out of their bunkers, but scurry through a network of trenches and protective mud walls through which supplies and ammunition are passed.
All communication with anyone outside the post is by radio. Even going to the lavatory is a hazardous business.
Indian officers said Pakistani fire was a cover to infiltrate into the state to bolster their movement for independence. "We are tied down all the time by the influx of militants," an officer said. "We are constantly bleeding and want this to end. Only a definitive war can stop that."
For thousands of villagers living along the border life is equally hazardous, and without the protection the soldiers enjoy.
"We want to leave, but have nowhere to go," said Shankari, whose 30-year-old son died after being hit by a stray bullet as he slept in Gakhrial village, fired from a Pakistani post 200 yards away. "We live in constant dread and want this tension to be sorted out one way or another," she said.
Kashmiri insurgents, along with Islamabad, want to unite the erstwhile princely state of Kashmir, which was ruled by the Hindu maharaja Hari Singh before Pathan "irregulars" from Pakistan's North West Frontier attacked and occupied a third of it in October 1947.
The Pathan raiders were violating the six-month "standstill" period agreed by India and Pakistan at independence three months earlier, to give the maharaja time to merge his state with either country or remain independent.
Once the raiders reached the outskirts of Srinagar, Hari Singh acceded to India, after which Indian troops halted the raiders' advance. The United Nations brokered a ceasefire in January 1948, whereupon India pledged to hold a plebiscite to decide Kashmir's future.
The UN resolution that both countries agreed to had three parts: the first called for a ceasefire; the second mandated that Pakistan withdraw its troops and the Pathan tribesmen, after which India would retain all but a "minimum level of force" needed to maintain law and order for the plebiscite. Thereafter, the future of the state would be decided by a plebiscite.
Pakistan did not withdraw its troops in 1948 to facilitate a plebiscite, and over the years UN resolutions were passed to bring about progress, but to little effect. Pakistan, meanwhile, transferred a third of the part of Kashmir it occupied to China in 1963 subject to a settlement of the issue between the two claimants.
China has built a military highway on this territory and is unlikely to vacate the region.After the 1971 war, which led to the breakaway of East Pakistan to become Bangladesh, the two adversaries signed the Shimla Agreement, which committed both sides to working towards a bilateral settlement of Kashmir.
Meanwhile, the UN plebiscite option was buried and all outside mediation in the Kashmir dispute foreclosed. The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, conceded as much last year.
But successive corrupt governments in Kashmir increased federal interference in the state's affairs, despite it being guaranteed special status under the constitution. This led to widespread dissatisfaction among locals and the outbreak of the ongoing insurgency in 1989.