Escalation at LoC: Kashmiris want underground bunkers to survive regular crossfire

As guns continue to roar across the Line of Control in J&K with fresh ceasefire violations reported on Monday, residents living in the line of fire by Pakistani army want a permanent solution to their agonies: Underground Bunkers. Balakote village in Poonch sector, which has seen a surge in violence after Pakistan’s Independence Day celebrations on August 14, is a scene of terrifying devastation. The air in the village is laden with sorrow and uncertainty. The recent firing, allegedly by Pakistani Army, left six people dead and more than two dozen injured in this sector, located some 250 kilometers from the winter capital, Jammu. Residents say more than hundred shells have landed inside the village since August 14, many of them boring through the rooftops of their homes, giving them little time to escape. The only hope of survival for the traumatised people is to abandon their homes and migrate to “safer places”, which can mean anything from the cover of a fir tree to the wall of an abandoned bunker. A proposal was sent by Jammu and Kashmir government on February 23 this year to the Centre for setting up 20,125 bunkers in the villages close to the LoC in Kashmir and International Border. Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, had told the state assembly that the proposal would cover a population of 4,02,455 souls at an estimated cost of Rs 1006.25 crores. About 448 border villages were identified to be covered in the proposals. [caption id=“attachment_2303910” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Image courtesy- Reuters[/caption] Divisional Commissioner, Jammu, Pawan Kotwal, who has been monitoring the situation since the beginning of the recent ceasefire violation, told Firstpost on Monday that the Centre government has mooted a pilot project for the construction of underground bunkers. “The Centre has already approved a project of Rs 60 lakhs as a pilot project to set up underground bunkers in Jammu. Presently there are no bunkers in Poonch region and I am sure if more bunkers are constructed, they would save lives,” Kotwal said. While people living in these border villages have been dying due to cross-border firing for over two decades, neither the government nor any NGO has constructed a single bunker in this area, unlike the International Border, where residents were given financial assistance by various organisations to construct such bunkers. “We sometimes sit under the shade of the wall or behind the the hillock to escape bullets and bombs but it doesn’t prevent deaths. Many people have died even after taking cover,” Ajmal Shah, a resident of Balakote, told FirstPost. On Monday morning, the armies of Pakistan and India resorted to firing and shelling across the LoC in Saujiyan sector of Poonch district, leaving four civilians injured. This was the eighth straight day of firing, which has already claimed the life of six people and dozens more have been injured. “Fifteen houses have been damaged in fresh firing, apart from injuries to some civilian,” a resident of Sabzian area said over phone. At many places across the LoC in Jammu, residents had constructed underground bunkers on their own, using them whenever the firing would occur. The affected families would often slink into these narrow openings with men, women and children all squeezing into a small space; few could afford to spread out on the ground for sleeping. However, these bunkers became defunct as they were left unused for nearly 10 years during which a fragile peace prevailed in the region and got slowly filled up on their own. Irfan Khan, son of the slain sarparach, Karamatullah Khan, of Balakote village, who was killed in Saturday’s shelling, regrets that although there are many areas along the IB in Jammu where underground bunkers were constructed, not even a single such bunker was built by government or any NGO. “If they would have helped us in constructing underground bunkers, many lives would have been saved. These bunkers are life savers in times of shelling,” he told FirstPost. Although a ceasefire agreement reached between India and Pakistan in 2003 had provided the much-needed relief to the residents of these villages along the LoC, the calm was broken in January 2013 which was followed by killings of India soldiers in Poonch. The fragile nature of the peace has always taken a toll on the people living along this troubled region by either displacing them internally or making them paranoid and sick, denying them even the right to perform last rites of those who become prey of violence. “We could not perform the last rites of my father for five hours," Irfan, the slain sarpanch’s father said, “We were not able to even mourn for him because of the continuous exchange of gunfire”.