Sarjiwar, Pakistan Edriation Kashmir
CNN
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Malik Kadim’s lips tremble, his voice suffocating, his head falls as he raises his hands to his sadness-stricken face. It’s a useless effort to stop the tears gushing through his gantt and weathered cheeks.
Kadim is a farmer who lives on the Pakistani side of the Depact border of the conflict Kashmir region known as the Control Line between India and Pakistan, or LOC. He is now grieving the loss of his loved one, as did so many civilians on both sides of this conflict. In this case, his brother.
Two weeks ago, gunmen raided mountain resorts on the dominant part of India where Kashmir kills 26 people, mostly Indian tourists. The killings sparked widespread public dislike throughout India, and this already massive, militarized remote border area has been at the edge ever since.
The day after the April 22nd massacre, Indian officials announced that two Pakistanis were planning a terrorist attack near the village of Kadim on the Indian side of the LOC. When Kadim’s brother Malik Farouk didn’t show up that day after he took the cows away, the family reported him missing and identified him from images of the two men who were later released by Indian authorities, a Pakistani security source told CNN.
Khadim and Farouk’s son both deny the allegations, saying he is a poor farmer and chasing a lost cow towards the unmarked unsubstantiated Loc in the nearby forest.
In response to the massacre of tourists, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to chase “terrorists” on the “end of the earth.” India blames Pakistan, Pakistan denied involvement, and tensions have been rising ever since.
Both sides have expelled each other’s diplomats and civilians, closing airspace to each other’s airlines. India also withdrew from the 1960 Indus Water Treaty, which has mitigated fierce relations here for decades.
Officials on the Pakistani side of the border say they hope that India will attack and swear to respond as a matter of “military doctrine.”
Islamabad’s current language is more stringent than this reporter remembers when covering the 1999 Kargil War. It was one of a highland, a few months of battles over Kashmir, killing more than thousands of troops over Kashmir, killing more than 100 troops, according to the most conservative calculations of the year after Pakistan registered as a nuclear force.
In the words of senior Pakistani security guards, political relations with New Delhi have improved from time to time, but as military attitudes have been strengthened over the last few decades, it is a “moment” that will change the dynamics of relations with India.
In addition to skirmishes with India, Pakistani troops have fought fierce Islamic extremist rebellions along the country’s western border. And CNN’s candid conversations with both senior and lower security authorities suggested that Pakistani military is more spiritually and militarily strengthened than before.
The militarily promoted trip that CNN took over remote areas and sturdy Himalayas to Sarjiwar village in Kadim was beautiful and terrifying.
A rocky track at over 10,000 feet of altitude that passes through snowy fields, around fresh rock waterfalls, and through towering native deodalcedar trees forests. Sometimes their huge trunks appeared to plunge into a river below a terribly steep river, offering only potential relief from one wrong move.
It’s only a few hours of this bone jarred journey, enough to understand why neither Pakistan nor India have claimed a decisive victory here. It’s too sturdy for a simple victory.
But both countries want the region and control all the water that will rapidly flow from the snow-capped summit. And despite its challenging terrain, millions call this conflicted land home.
Life here is difficult: elderly women and children have huge bundles of sticks from vertical slopes. Authentic Farm Elbow for the room between strong deodal. And a few villages cling to the hillside where the revered procession here, Skinny Water Buffalo, is cleaning up the grass.
In comparison, there is a lasting sense in the village of Sarjiwar, lying beneath the mountains and homes of Rafhuff trees and rocky houses. However, living at LOC put residents at a sharp end to growing tensions. Khadim told CNN that Indian troops filmed them in frontline posts hundreds of metres where villagers’ homes were shot in the night.
Another villager said his large family lives in one house, adding:
Although no shots were fired over the two hours this CNN team was in Sarjiwar, both India and Pakistan have reported that they are close to daily fire exchanges across the LOC since the attack on tourists last month.
Born in Sarjiwar at the age of 55, Kadim added that the entire village is increasingly at the edges and that residents want to take several cattle to summer pastures just like they did at this time of year, but that they cannot be afraid to be shot by Indian troops.
But his greatest fear is that the death of his brother is a precursor to a worse fate to come, and he loses not only his beloved family, but his lifelong home and living. “India has given us a great deal of cruelty,” he told CNN. “If they want me to leave, put a bullet in my head, that’s the only way I can go.”
India has long accused Pakistan of attacking within its territory and having extremist groups that have not done enough to crack down on them. And there is great pressure on Prime Minister Modi to respond to the latest powerful massacre.
After a massive rebel attack on paramilitary personnel in India-controlled Kashmir in 2019, Modi was running an airstrike in Pakistan for the first time in decades, with both sides fighting a short dogfight in the sky above Kashmir. After desperate international diplomacy, a full-scale war was eventually averted.
Civilians here fear that today’s war of words between Islamabad and New Delhi will soon erupt into a real conflict. On both sides of the Kashmir control line, people feel helpless as politicians can rehash old debates and rekindle decades of smoldering resentment.
