How India and Pakistan share one of the world’s most dangerous boundaries

To live along the line of control (LOC) – the fleeting de facto limit that India and Pakistan separates – must constantly exist on the edge of the razor between fragile peace and open conflict.

The recent escalation after the Pahalgam attack brought India and Pakistan to the edge again. Shells rained on both sides of the locomotive, which turned houses to rubble and lives in statistics. Allegedly at least 16 people were killed on the Indian side, while Pakistan claims 40 civilian deaths, although it remains unclear how much has been caused directly by the shelling.

“Families in the locomotive are subject to Indian and Pakistani grilling and are confronted with the victims of heated tensions,” Anam Zakaria, a Pakistani writer based in Canada, told the BBC.

“Every time firing is resumed, many are pushed into bunkers, cattle and living is lost, infrastructure – houses, hospitals, schools – is damaged. The experienced vulnerability and volatility has serious consequences for their daily lived reality,” Mrs. Zakaria, author of a book about Pakistan Kassmir, said.

India and Pakistan share a limit of 3,323 km (2,064 miles), including the 740 km long locomotive; and the international border (IB), which spans approximately 2,400 km. The loc Simla -agreement.

The locomotive that is finished by Kashmir – fully claimed and managed in parts by both India and Pakistan – remains one of the most militarized boundaries in the world. Conflict is never far behind and it stops -furen are only as sustainable as the next provocation.

Violations in the Vakkenhuis can vary from “Low-Level Shooting to Great Land Roof surgical strikes“, says Happymon Jacob, an expert in the field of foreign policy at the Jawaharlal Nehru University of Delhi (JNU) (a land grip can take up key positions such as hills, outdoor posts or violence.)

The locomotive, according to many experts, is a classic example of a “border drawn into blood, forged by conflict”. It is also a line, as Mrs. Zakaria says, “cut by India and Pakistan, and militarized and armed, without taking Kashmiris into account”.

Such wartime edges are not unique for South Asia. Sumantra Bose, a professor in international and comparative politics at the London School of Economics, says that the most famous the ‘Green line’ – The Stakes -Vuren line from 1949 – which is the generally recognized border between Israel and the West Bank.

It is not surprising that the preliminary calmness along the locomotive that had endured between the two nuclear armed neighbors since the Staken-fire-fires, easily crumbled after the latest hostilities.

“The current escalation at the locomotive and the international border (IB) is considerable because it follows a period of four years of relative peace on the border,” Surya Valliaappan Krishna of Carnegie India told the BBC.

Violence along the border between India -Pakistan is not new -prior to the ceasefires of 2003, India reported 4,134 violations in 2001 and 5,767 in 2002.

It initially held the cessation of 2003, with negligible violations from 2004 to 2007, but the tensions appeared in 2008 and escalated sharp in 2013.

Between 2013 and early 2021, the locomotive and the IB witnessed on persistent high levels of conflicts. A renewed cessation -the Fires in February 2021 led to an immediate and persistent decrease in the violations until March 2025.

“During periods of intense cross -border shooting, we have displaced border populations in the many thousands of months,” says Mr. Krishna. Between the end of September and the beginning of December 2016, more than 27,000 people were displaced from border areas due to cease-fire and cross-border shooting.

It now looks more and more hairy and uncertain.

Tensions flared out after the Pahalgam attack, in which India is the most important distribution of water exchange between India and Pakistan, known as the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). Pakistan reacted by threatening to leave the Simla agreement of 1972, which formalized the LOC – although it has not yet been followed.

“This is important because the Simla agreement is the basis of the current locomotive, which both parties agreed to change unilaterally despite their political differences,” says Mr Krishna.

Jacob says that for a “curious reason”, the -fires in the locomotive are absent in discussions and debates about escalation of conflicts between the two countries.

“It is self-enhancing how the regular use of high-calibre weapons such as 105 mm mortars, 130 and 155 mm artiller manuals and anti-tank led missiles by two nuclear compound countries, which led to civil and military victims, in the course of the civil and military development and in the event of the civiele and military and military development and policy results.

Mr Jacob identifies two main triggers for the violations: Pakistan often uses coverage to facilitate militant infiltration in Indian-managed Kashmir, which has witnessed an armed uprising against Indian rule for more than three decades. Pakistan, in turn, accuses India of non -lured shooting in civil areas.

He states that Straakt-Fires along the border between India-Pakistan less the product of a high level is political strategy and more the result of local military dynamics.

The hostilities are often initiated by field commanders – sometimes with, but often without, central approval. He also challenges the idea that only the Pakistani army floats the violations, instead points to a complex mix of local military imperatives and autonomy that granted border forces on both sides.

Some experts believe that it is time to see an idea that was suspended almost two decades ago: converting the locomotive into a formal, internationally recognized border. Others insist that the possibility was never realistic – and it is still not.

“The idea is completely unfeasible, a dead end. For decades, Indian cards have shown the entire territory of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir as part of India,” Sumantra Bose told the BBC.

“For Pakistan, making the locomotive part of the international border would mean that the Kashmir dispute controls – that the equivalent of Pakistan is of the Holy Grail – on the preferred conditions of India. Every Pakistani government and leader, citizen or army, has rejected this for the past seven decades.”

In his book from 2003, Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, Prof Bose writes: “A Kashmir settlement requires that the locomotive should be transformed – from an iron curtain of barbed wire, bunkers, trenches and hostile soldiers on a linen curtain. Must be permanent. ”

“I am emphasized, however, that such a transformation of the locomotive must be embedded in a broader Kashmir settlement, as a pillar of a multi-pillared settlement,” he told the BBC.

Between 2004 and 2007, changing the locomotive to a soft border was central to a young India -Pakistan peace process on Kashmir – a process that eventually fell apart.

Nowadays the border was created again, which reduces the cycle of violence and uncertainty for those who live in his shadow.

“You never know what will happen. Nobody wants to sleep tonight,” said an employee of a hotel in Pakistan who administered Kashmir during the recent hostility.

It was a calm memory of how fragile peace is when your window opens to a battlefield.