As India, Pakistan Hail Military Feats, Kashmiris Are Left to Grieve
The family of Nargis Begum, who died this month after being hit by shrapnel, gathers at her home in Rajarwani, Indian-administered Kashmir, on Thursday.
URI, Indian-administered Kashmir – The night of May 8 returns to Sanam Bashir as a jumble of disjointed images. Her family was packed into three cars. The road was so dark, she said, and the artillery fire deafening.
'It felt like the night of judgment,' said Bashir, 20, who was huddled in the back seat with her little cousin, 4-year-old Muheeb, her aunt and her mother, Nargis Begum.
Bashir doesn't remember the shrapnel striking the roof of the car, but she can't forget her aunt's sharp cry, or the hot blood that poured from her mother's neck. Begum was dead by the time they reached the hospital.
At least 27 people were killed, including 11-year old twins, and more than 50 injured in the Indian-administered territory of Jammu and Kashmir over four days of fighting between India and Pakistan. The sudden violence was the worst to hit the contested region in decades and, as in previous rounds of conflict, civilians bore the heaviest cost.
Days into a fragile ceasefire, The Washington Post visited villages less than 10 miles from the Line of Control – the de facto border that snakes over mountains and across rivers, carving Kashmir in two.
Years of relative calm were shattered last month when militants gunned down 26 civilians near the popular tourist town of Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir. New Delhi said the attack had links to Pakistan, which it has long accused of supporting violent separatists. Islamabad denied any involvement. The region held its breath.
India's retaliation came on May 7, when it launched its deepest strikes inside Pakistan in more than half a century, killing at least 26 people. For the next three nights, the nuclear-armed neighbors edged ever closer to war – trading strikes on military sites and sending waves of drones into each other's cities. After a U.S.-brokered truce on May 10, both countries trumpeted their military achievements and downplayed their losses.
Along the Line of Control, where families have long lived in the shadow of conflict, the Pakistani shelling was more intense and indiscriminate than anyone could remember. Reports were similar in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, where at least 16 people were killed by Indian fire.
More than 450 homes or shops were damaged in and around Uri, and at least a third of the population fled their homes. After the ceasefire, people were returning to sift through the wreckage of their lives.
Although the Indian army said last week that it had agreed with Pakistan to extend the ceasefire, residents remained on edge.
At Begum's house in the hamlet of Rajarwani, her loved ones were still in shock. 'If the government had built bunkers or told us in the morning to evacuate, she would have been with us today,' said her son, 27-year-old Saqib Bashir Khan.
The family of eight has always been poor. Begum earned $12 a month preparing meals at a school; her husband is a day laborer without steady work. Begum's relatives received $7,000 in compensation from the local government for her death, but they said they can never be made whole.
'The government ignores the poor when they are alive,' said Hafiza Begum, her sister-in-law. 'But now that she is dead, they are giving money. What use is any wealth now?'
In the nearby village of Bandi, Mohammed Anwar Sheikh is waiting for help to come.
'Firing used to happen, but it never rained down on our homes,' said Sheikh, 40, whose modest three-room house is near an Indian military camp. A shell tore through his main room, blasting the windows, splitting the television in two and leaving deep hollows on the brightly painted yellow wall. The notebook his son used for his English homework was in shreds.
Indian soldiers had visited three days earlier to collect shell fragments, he said, and assured him he would be reimbursed for the damage.
He sent his wife and six children to a relief camp an hour and a half away when the fighting began. Each night, he huddled with his few remaining neighbors in a makeshift bunker that afforded them only partial protection.
In the predawn hours on May 9, he recalled, the firing intensified. When the projectile hit his house, 'it felt like an earthquake,' Sheikh said. 'I just prayed to God.' Among the family's losses were a flock of pigeons and some chickens they had lovingly raised together.
Police and civil personnel have been deployed across the area to assess damage and compensate civilians. But locals said they were struggling to meet their basic needs and couldn't understand why they had been left so vulnerable.
A local government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of unwanted scrutiny, said that building bunkers should be a priority now but admitted that the bureaucratic process is slow. And nobody here knows how long the peace will hold.
Further on from Sheikh's home, tucked in the lush foothills beside a narrow stream, is the village of Lagama.
The walnut and pear trees are still standing on the property of Mohammed Shafi Pathan, 63, but his family's home is now unlivable. The retired soldier fled with his wife, son and three grandchildren on the night of May 9 as explosions thundered through the valley. Early the next morning, the police called to tell him his house had been hit.
He returned to a scene of devastation: Shrapnel had pierced through a tin roof, landing on the staircase and gouging out a large chunk of concrete. Plastic drums of rice were covered in gray ash. The stench of explosives was still sharp.
'Not a single item can be salvaged,' Pathan said, stepping over a scatter of blankets, toys, clothes, spoons.
Life along the border is never easy. Poverty is widespread and the specter of conflict is always near. Civilians contend daily with a heavy Indian military presence and frequent checkpoints. Armed convoys regularly roll through.
The latest fighting has established again that 'Kashmir is a flash point and has potential to force all of South Asia into a big war,' said Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a political analyst based in Srinagar, the seat of power in the Indian-administered part of the territory.
Kashmiris, trapped in a situation beyond their control, suffer the most, Hussain said. 'Now it is the job of big global powers to help defuse tensions permanently,' he said.
There are new coffee shops and hotels in Srinagar, part of a years-long effort by New Delhi to revive the local tourist industry. But the unprecedented drone attacks by Pakistan have cast a pall over the city.
On a recent evening, boatmen at Dal Lake – framed by imposing mountain peaks – sat gossiping or fishing. There was no one to tempt with a ride; the tourists had disappeared after the attack in Pahalgam.
In the central square of Lal Chowk, 21-year-old Muskan, who goes by one name, was taking photos with her brother. The militant attack had pained Kashmiris, she said, but they were distressed too by the ensuing Indian security crackdown and reports of attacks on Kashmiri students in India.
'There should be no fear,' she said. 'Neither for us, nor for the tourists.'
In Uri, a ghost town until a few days earlier, vendors were back on the streets, selling eggs, scarves and plastic goods. A bunker is being built at a government office. But some locations remain off-limits. At a checkpoint, Indian soldiers blocked Post reporters from traveling to the village of Salamabad, which is said to have sustained heavy damage.
'The latest conflict has changed everything,' said Pathan, the retired soldier. 'We can neither live nor die in peace.'
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