Armymen patrol near the LoC. (AFP file picture)

Athmaqaam (PoK), Jan. 18: Life is fast returning to normal along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir with the guns on both sides falling silent.

Reconstruction work is picking up with the resumption of public transport services along the roughly 100-km Neelam road connecting Athmaqaam with Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), which was closed for almost a decade because of the heavy exchange of fire between India and Pakistan.

However, residents of the area are cautious in their optimism. “We are bitten by history and broken promises…. It is difficult to say whether this phase of peace will lead to a permanent solution,” said Shakoor Ali, the owner of a makeshift grocery store at Chilhana in the Athmaqaam valley, which had been one of the hottest battlefields along the 750-km LoC.

The decrepit walls and shattered roofs of the government college and the only hospital in Athmaqaam are evidence of the havoc the India-Pakistan rivalry has played with the lives of Kashmiris.

The authorities had moved about 500 students of the college to nearby Kundal Shahi village in 1999, following incessant exchanges of fire that extensively damaged the college and hospital, as well as civilians’ homes.

“Hardly a day went by when there would be no firing from either side,” recalled professor Sultan Mehmood, who teaches Urdu at the college.

“As many as 423 civilians lost their lives and more than 1,600 suffered injuries in Indian artillery fire along the LoC since 1999, almost half of them in the Neelam valley,” said Brigadier Waqar Raja, the local brigade commander. A school teacher at Chilhana, a small village separated from Titial in India only by the Neelam river, said the direct victims of hostilities are often civilians on both sides.

However, since the November ceasefire, the college has been relocated to Athmaqaam and traffic on the Muzaffarabad-Athmaqaam road has quadrupled, according to Mehmood. The professor said the Pakistan Army has offered the college a few rooms to conduct classes and the work of repairing the college has already begun.

“Life is returning to the village. The people and the civil administration are all coming back,” asserted said Colonel Habib Shah, the officer incharge at Athmaqaam.

The majority of the people in the area welcomed the ceasefire and hoped it would be fully observed by the two countries. “We are feeling very well, very happy after the ceasefire,” said Gohar Rehman, a lawyer. Rehman said he has visited his relatives in Muzaffarabad several times since the ceasefire and the journey — which costs less than a dollar now — takes less than four hours.

“We used to travel on a very dangerous alternate road (Laswa bypass) for almost nine hours and paid almost Rs 120 (2 dollars) for the journey to and from Muzaffarabad,” claimed Shakoor Ali.