Ceasing Fire: India, Pakistan, and Elusive Peace in South Asia

On the balcony of his rustic wooden house, which faces a mountain dotted with huts, bunkers, and mud houses, 65-year-old Ghulam Qadir Chalkoo points his frail finger toward the mountain top. Then his finger trails down, as if drawing a trajectory down the slope, cutting through the ridges, crossing waters, and ascending another mountain before it stops just below a deserted bunker near his home.

“There, right above this bunker, they fired a burst of bullets at my wife. It ripped apart her belly. She died there,” Chalkoo reminisces, his eyes blankly fixed at the spot.

This is Silikote, one of the last villages located at the Line of Control (LoC), the precarious line that runs through Jammu and Kashmir, dividing it between India and Pakistan. The two countries share a 3,252-kilometer border, 767 kilometers of which form the LoC that runs through Jammu and Kashmir.

The mountain Chalkoo that pointed at, within walking distance of his home, is the local site of the LoC, the de facto border. For several decades, the armies of India and Pakistan have been engaging in routine and constant violence along this dividing line: firing bullets, mortar shells, and at times missiles. In this day-to-day war, the villages sandwiched between the two armies have always paid a heavy price.

Chalkoo’s wife was killed in August 2003 when she was feeding the cattle. “Suddenly, there was a burst of fire. When I rushed to look for my wife, she was lying there, dead,” he tells The Diplomat. Chalkoo points toward a bunker atop the mountain facing his two-story house and says the bullets were fired from “there,” from the Pakistani side of the LoC.