India and Pakistan to cease Kashmir border hostilities

INDIA and Pakistan have agreed to reinforce their 15-year-old ceasefire in an effort to end daily exchanges of artillery, missile and small arms fire across their disputed border in the northern Jammu and Kashmir region.

Senior army personnel agreed to maintain the 2003 ceasefire along the 482-mile long line of control that divides the Himalayan principality between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Speaking on a dedicated hotline, Pakistan’s Major General Shamshad Mirza and Lieutenant General Anil Chauhan, his Indian counterpart, agreed to “fully implement” the 2003 ceasefire understanding in “letter and spirit”.

Earlier this month, India accused Pakistan of committing 881 ceasefire violations across Kashmir’s de facto border between January and the third week of May, the highest recorded since 2003.

It also claimed that 36 civilians living in border villages had died in these firings and thousands of others had been forced to flee their homes to escape the bombardment. In turn, Pakistan accused India of similarly infringing the ceasefire on countless occasions and of killing at least 28 of its civilians.

The area is one of the world’s most militarised frontiers, dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, both of whom claim the disputed principality in its entirety.

More than 300,000 heavily armed Indian and Pakistani soldiers confront each other, often a few feet apart, along a border that snakes across inhospitable mountains, forests and rivers.

Artillery battles were a regular feature across the line until 2003, but the truce began unravelling in 2013 after ties between the neighbours deteriorated. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir.

In 1999, soon after both became nuclear weapon states, their armies clashed in Kashmir’s Himalayan Kargil region for 11 weeks, resulting in 1,200 deaths. The conflict threatened to escalate into a nuclear exchange, but was defused by US intervention.