Umar Mehraj Najar was only eight when a Pakistani mortar shell hit his one-story home, piercing its tin roof and terrifying his brother, parents, and grandparents. But he vividly recalls that winter day in 2018, showing off the shrapnel holes to his friends, as they wait for their Sunday cricket game to start.
He points to a cluster of houses, much like his own, above the tree line on a mountain a few hundred yards away, in Pakistani-held territory. “A shell was fired from there, but we survived. If it happens again we are prepared. We built our own bunker.”
Tension is rising between India and Pakistan after militants opened fire on a group of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir two weeks ago, killing 26 people, all but one of them Indian. The Indian government has blamed Pakistan for the attack. Pakistan denies any responsibility.
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Tensions are rising again between India and Pakistan in the contested Kashmir valley, where a recent attack killed 26 Indian tourists. Local residents are hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst, cleaning out their old bunkers.
Both sides have taken punitive diplomatic steps, and here in the contested Kashmir valley, the cockpit of the dispute, small-arms fire crackles from both sides of the de facto border every night. The unrest has prompted Umar’s parents to prepare their bunker.
Tilawari village, in north Kashmir, is one of many along the 450-mile Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Residents here have faced the brunt of mortar shelling and small-arms fire for decades. Many have died. Since the recent attack, both countries have strengthened their military presence along the LoC.
A ceasefire signed by both countries nearly 20 years ago has been more honored in the breach than the observance, and violated every few years. In 2018, border residents had to take shelter from mortar shelling, which killed several civilians. In February 2021, a renewed military agreement established a fragile calm. That now seems to have ended.
“The goal must be a full ceasefire, for which these armed groups in Kashmir have to be part of the process where they disband,” says Radha Kumar, formerly an Indian government negotiator with Kashmiri politicians and civil society groups.
Ms. Kumar suggests that without disarmament, demobilization, and the reintegration of militant groups in Kashmir, such as those responsible for the attack two weeks ago, there will never be a full ceasefire.
Brink of war?
Warlike rhetoric is one the rise: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed revenge and Pakistan has threatened to go nuclear if India starts a war. Indian and Pakistani TV news channels are full of talk about war, and how each country might attack the other. They have sensationalized the situation and scared local people.
This sort of language reminds cattle herder Ghulam Qadir Parray, who lives close to the LoC in Balkote village, of past wars. Taking his cows to pasture, Mr. Parray walks down the narrow road that leads to India’s last checkpoint – barely 500 yards away.
“We have witnessed the wrath of shelling and now there is gunfire at night,” he says. “I am worried for my family and our children about artillery fire. We are scared, but God is there to protect us.”
Fearful but prepared
Sitting on the porch of her house, Fateh Begum, in Tilawari village, looks at the houses on the mountaintop across the LoC and sighs. “We have to protect ourselves from shrapnel,” she says. “If there was a big shell, we couldn’t survive.”
Ms. Begum has lived through previous ceasefire violations and recalls how people would huddle into concrete shelters or move from border villages to safer towns. “We don’t watch TV, nor do we know much about social media. We only know whatever happens here,” she says, getting up to tend to her cattle.
A few miles away, in the village of Garkote, construction contractor Shabir Ahmad Naik recalls previous years of violence.
“In the past we witnessed hell,” he says. “My brother was killed in the 1999 Kargil war when he was hit by shrapnel from a shell. Shelling affects children very badly – we are fearful that such times might return.”
Since the last ceasefire had held since 2021 and peace had returned to the Kashmir valley, people had ignored their bunkers. But now everyone with a bunker has cleaned it up and prepared it for any eventuality, says Mr. Naik.
“Nobody wins a war”
Mr. Naik, who has three daughters and a son, says he tries to keep his children far from war, but they ask questions. “War is destruction and nobody wins a war,” he says he tells them. “Every country in the world that is at war is facing losses.”
Elsewhere on the Line of Control, in the district of Jammu, Haji Mohammad Jamsheed, a contractor, says that even though people have prepared for the worst, nobody wants a war.
Following the news so as to stay updated about the situation, Mr. Jamsheed says his neighbors are afraid because both countries are nuclear powers. “If they hit each other with anything, we will be caught in the middle,” he worries.
With his four children in school, Mr. Jamsheed hopes that India and Pakistan will step back from the brink. And the TV footage he has seen only strengthens that sentiment. “Everyone has watched the war in Gaza on social media and the news,” he says. “You can see how much worse it could get and we don’t want that.”
