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The Rediff Special/ Chindu Sreedharan

When you wake up in the morning, surprised to find yourself still alive; when the crash and crackle of gunfire is less frightening than silence; when the enemy is within hailing distance and friends are nowhere in sight; then you know you have reached purgatory. On the line of control, the border between India and Pakistan. Chindu Sreedharan feels the heat, at first hand, and returns to tell the tale...

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On days when guns open up from across the border, there isn't anything the villagers of Urusa can do except pray. They shut themselves in their katcha houses and, with the patience born of long experience, prepare to wait it out.

Yeh border ki zindagi hai," sighs Bilquees, one of the few educated inhabitants of this little Indian village on the Indo-Pak border in Jammu and Kashmir, "You just can't understand the trouble we have because of this firing."

Spread out in naked isolation, eight kilometres downhill Chaukas, one of the most sensitive forward posts along the Line of Control, Urusa is the nearest village to the border on the Indian side. And, as such, the most vulnerable to cross border firings, an easy prey for even small arms.

"Firing roz hota hai. Sabse bada problem wohi hai. Na sone ko detha hai, na kheti karne ko deta hai (Firing goes on all the time. That's our major trouble. They don't let us sleep, nor farm)," says Mohammad Anwar, "They don't let us live in peace -- they fire when they feel like, without differentiating between day or night."

Anwar, who talks with the experience of one who has handled many media teams -- Time magazine correspondents were there only a couple of days before, and teams of CNN and The New York Times were to follow the next day -- is blissfully unaware of India and Pakistan's newfound nuclear status. He knows that something important happened on May 11 and 13, after which, he says, for the next couple of days, there was increased firing.

"We don't venture out of houses when the firing is on," Anwar continues, "Once we were returning with a body from Baramullah ( the nearest town after Uri) when they started heavy artillery. Shells were bursting all over the road - they were trying to get the bridge -- and we had to leave the corpse by the road side and take cover. It lay there for nearly two hours before we could retrieve it!"

Urusa is the only village along the LoC in the Kashmir valley which is yet to shift behind Indian lines. Cut off from the rest of the world -- there are no buses connecting it to Uri or Baramullah anymore -- it has around 250 inhabitants in 25 houses, and boasts of a primary school, a mosque, an anganwadi and nothing else. There has been no panchayat election here since the start of militancy, and the villagers are dependent on the army -- the men manning Chaukas and its base camp, to be precise -- for food as well as protection.

"Yeh dekho," says Bilquees, who doubles as the primary school teacher, inviting you into her bare two- room fiefdom, "There are 45 children here. There is no chair, the floor is a mess... When the firing starts, which is an everyday occurrence, the children run out to hide. In such circumstances, how much can they study?"

The nearest secondary school is three kilometres away, Bilquees continues, and has to be walked to. Not long ago, public buses used to ply till the Weak bridge, hardly a kilometre away -- but now, thanks to the increased artillery fire in the area, there are no buses.

"Hamare bacchon ko paidal school jaana padta hai, hamko bhi door jana padta hai ration laane (Our children have to walk to the school, we have to walk to get our rations)," she says, "If someone falls ill we can't even take him to the hospital if the firing is on..."

Up at Chaukas, on nights when things are quiet, when not even rifle shots punctuate the peace which surrounds it, Major Y starts worrying. Peace, especially absolute peace like what he was enjoying now, he knows, is in many cases a precursor to acts of war.

"Strange," he says as swirls of nippy wind envelops him, "There are no lights down there in the village... they generally try something whenever they switch out the lights."

Across the border, five-and-a-half kilometres down, Chakkothi, a little Pakistani village lies in peacefulisolation. Nearer, right opposite the Indian post is village Sugana. A little deeper, towards the left, is its sister Kopra Kuppi. All of them, unusually, are in darkness. The only light on the other side of the border is the headlamps of a military vehicle, making slow progress along the rough road that runs almost parallel to the LoC.

But what the major finds more unusual is the absence of small arms fire from the Pakistani post situated almost diagonally opposite. The fire, usually directed at Chinar, another Indian post, was something by which he could have set his watch on -- all the months he has been here, it would start at 2230 hours every night, when he reached his bunker after dinner, and go on into the night. But today, apart from an initial burst of light machine gun, there was total silence.

Major Y's post is considered to be one of the most sensitive along the LoC for strategic reasons. Situated over 1,500 metres above sea-level, Chaukas provides a good view of the Pakistani line: if the Pak forces wanted to advance, they would have to take out this post first. But even here, things have been quiet -- bar the small arms, of course -- for quite some time. The last exchange of fire Chaukas recorded was months ago. Though the post, like all others along the LoC, had been keeping an extra-tight vigil since India's nuclear tests on May 11 and 13, nothing "out of normal" had occurred.

"We have been hearing quite a lot about how 'tense' the situation is here and how both ours and the Pakistani troops have been preparing for war from the media," says Major Y, "Do you see any tension here? Nothing has changed. We are functioning the way we used to."

Adds Major L, the post commander: "It's nearly a month after the tests, but the nuclear status hasn't changed anything for us. It may have made a difference at the strategic level, but on the ground it has had no effect. What small arms fire we have had in this area is quiet normal. Woh tho hota hi rahta hai. Those are mostly speculative attempts. When you are standing guard in the night you tend to let loose a few rounds just on the chance that somebody mightbe coming your way. That's only natural."

The media had also reported massive build-up of forces by both India and Pakistan. Which fact, again, Indian officials are at pain to counter. Right after the tests, they point out, there were some movements on the other side, but not of the magnitude that could be termed as build-ups.

"There was a sort of knee-jerk reaction, what I would call a 'reactionary panic', on their part," says an official in Uri, under which sector Chaukas falls, "They mobilised their additional forces and moved their artillery into deployment areas. We countered this with movements of our own, but in a much lesser magnitude than theirs."

The three divisions of India's strike forces have not been moved out of their permanent areas so far. And, officials in the operational logistics department at army headquarters in Delhi say, no additional troops have been sent to the border -- the situation had returned to normal within a couple of days and was continuing to be so. As proof they point to two things: The commandant of Uri is on leave, and officers at the station have just brought in their families (families are allowed to stay at the station only in the summer) -- two things they would not be doing if there was a threat of war.

"There were no build-ups, the media has blown it out of proportion," says Lieutenant General Krishna Pal of the 15 Armed Corps, in Srinagar. "Such magnitude of movements ( as has been reported) were not there. A certain amount of artillery and troop movements were noticed. I wouldn't even call it knee-jerk reaction, just precautionary measures. They do move after the snow melts and passes open, to support infiltration. This time the artillery movement was a little bit extra -- but nothing more than what can be covered under normal."

"During April, May, they do engage us in artillery fire to give cover for infiltrators," he continues, "That has been the ongoing pattern. This year also they tried it, that was all. I would say the amount of fire we took this time has been less than normal."

Statistics at the 15 Armed Corps show that the LoC in the valley received around 720 rounds of mortar and artillery fire, in 57 incidents. Last year, the month had registered nil incidents; it was extremely peaceful after the heavy firing in Kargil in April. The incidents recorded in April this year, too, is much lesser than last year's: while the Indian side received over 2,100 rounds of heavy shells in 1997, this year it was only 700 rounds.

Army officials countered a recent report in the Washington Post which alleged that Indian troops were raining fire on Chakkothi, dismissing it as Pakistani propaganda. The report claimed that the Indian forces, immediately after the nuclear tests, unleashed plentiful fire on the village and were even shouting at the villagers to move out as their "time has come."

"Bull, all bull," says Major L, "We don't even get orders to return fire when we are fired upon; here you are talking about firing at them without any provocation -- and that too at civilians!"

Chaukas, he went on, is the only post from where Chakkothi is visible. But it is five-and-a-half kilometres away -- too far for small arms to reach.

"If we were using heavy guns, those buildings wouldn't be standing," he says, pointing at the peaceful village, spread in a straight-line almost perpendicular to the LoC, along the sides of its only road, "The only other post which is nearer to it is Chabuk, but you can't fire on Chakkothi from there because of the lay of the land. See, if we had been firing on them so often do you think these people would be strolling along so peacefully? And wouldn't there have been signs of it? If we want to take out Chakkothi we can do it with no trouble."

Home Minister L K Advani's statement that the Indian army would adopt a 'pro-active' policy in Kashmir and would undertake 'Hot Pursuit' -- the army would cross borders after infiltrators, and go into the enemy territory to smash militant training camps if necessary -- is another claim which attracts comment from army officers. Many, though they feel that the strategy is quite possible, say that it is more rhetoric than anything.

"These are only words. Till now no orders have been passed officially. There is nothing new about Hot Pursuit -- it involves pursuing the fleeing enemy even across the border, without breaking contact," says an official, "Armies the world over have been doing it with great success. Even we have been fingering them a little bit here and there, though not on the scale that Advani has said. What he has done is use those two words openly, nothing more."

But what are the chances of Hot Pursuit being used without triggering a full-fledged war?

"Good, very good," he says. "Only it has to be very fine- tuned. Hot Pursuit can have different manifestations. It can be at the tactical or strategic levels. In whichever case, it has to be taken step by step, from tactical to strategic... For example, till last year there were no heavy artillery fire at the LoC. Now it is commonplace. Same way, Hot Pursuit should be deployed stage by stage."

"It is a good military strategy," agrees another officer at the 15 Armed Corps, Srinagar, "And quite possible. Israel has been doing it quite successfully, so why can't we? We have boys who are quite capable, who have trained with the best commando forces in the world. The army is ready to carry out the orders whenever it comes through."

Military intelligence, he reveals, has identified 86 permanent militant training camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Many of them are between 8 to 10 kilometres inside, spread along the entire LoC. The launching camps -- places where the newly-trained militants are grouped before they infiltrate -- are closer, maybe 2 to 3 kilometres from the LoC, and keep shifting.

"We can take out the camps, quite safely without triggering of another Indo-Pak war," he says, "But the home minister's statement appears to be more a warning to Pakistan than anything else."

"Rhetoric, just rhetoric," is how another officer puts it, "If he really wanted to deploy Hot Pursuit effectively, would he be shouting it from the roof-tops? Wouldn't he have just gone ahead and passed the orders quietly? What he is planning now is not hot pursuit, it is vote pursuit!"

Photographs: Jewella C Miranda

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