Recently in Tutmarigali on the Line of Control: Limits of tolerance for the Indian Army on this border in Kashmir are not always defined by a fence of concertina coil with pickets every 100 metres.

Intermittent firing on Indian forward posts between the Line of Control and the counter-infiltration fence means that the soldiers in the bunkers have to keep their heads down and calibrate their response.

“Our orders are clear,” says Major General Syed Ata Hasnain, the divisional commander in Baramulla. “We do not want the ceasefire to go up in smoke and we cannot allow militants to breach the Line of Control; we have to keep balancing our tasks.”

That kind of a policy puts Indian troops at great risk, meaning that the general has to ensure casualty rates are kept low even when his men are under fire. The troops are at risk — and put others at risk — not only on the border but also in the hinterland.

As the commander of the Baramulla division, Major General Hasnain oversees the best and the worst about the border, indeed about Kashmir for India, today. His Dagger (19 Infantry) Division with the motto “Hold fast, Thrust deep” includes the sectors in Nowgam — where Tutmarigali is — and Uri, through which the peace symbol, the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus, passes over a friendship bridge named Kaman Setu.

The general insists that his name — Syed Ata Hasnain — should be “exploited” to illustrate to Muslims in Kashmir what they can aspire to achieve in the Indian Army. He pulled the plug on news channels after his forces shot protesters who were on a mission to breach the LoC and march to Muzaffarabad on August 11.

“The concept of ‘soft borders’ is fine,” he says. “But you cannot go to Muzaffarabad with apples and come back to Srinagar with AK-47s.”

Major General Hasnain’s hands are full now because the ceasefire is being tested on the border under his command, and in Baramulla in the rear, where his headquarters is located in the colonial-style Alfensteen Hotel, the current unrest in the Valley has escalated.

“We have had to man the Line of Control and counter insurgency and terrorism but we have not had a law-and-order problem so far, but that is changing. Why do we have rubber bullets and water cannons in Delhi but not in Kashmir?” he wonders.

And answers himself: “We have never been prepared for it.”

Hasnain and his officers now go to Old Baramulla to meet Muslim elders in an effort to win public confidence with ‘soft power’. Last week, he bought for a Muslim elder’s daughter a full trousseau for her wedding after the violence that took a toll on the family’s finances.

But further up from Baramulla, through Nowgam and the Mawad Valley and through the Shamshabari Range to the LoC, such gestures of kind-heartedness are far from the minds of the soldiers despite the ceasefire that has held true till this year.

“There was no ceasefire violation in the 15 Corps’ area of responsibility for four-and-a-half years but now there is a threat,” admits Hasnain.

At Tutmarigali, the army’s response to the threat is illustrated by Brigadier Jagbir Singh Cheema. The army has concluded that by firing on Indian forward posts, Pakistani forces or militants are seeking to weaken the counter-infiltration grid around the fence.

An Indian soldier patrols near the Line of Control. File picture

“If our posts are under fire, we will have to strengthen them,” says Cheema. The army is under pressure to re-deploy soldiers from the counter-infiltration grid to the forward posts. But it is loath to do that.

“It is the counter-infiltration system that is driving the Pakistani army and the militants desperate,” says Cheema. “That, and the pressure on its western border with Afghanistan.”

Across Indian positions on the LoC, Indian Army officers desperately seek information on what is happening along that other line — the Durand Line — between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since the ceasefire in November 2003 and the US pressure on Islamabad, some units of the Pakistani army in Kashmir have been redeployed to its western border to take on the Taliban in battles that are raging within the soul of Islamabad’s military.

Indian Army officers reason that so long as the Pakistan army is engaged in Swat and the North West Frontier Province, it will not want to reopen its front in Kashmir. That lowers the threat to the ceasefire. At the same time, it will not favour the Pakistan army in its contest with the civilian government if it was all quiet on the Kashmir frontier.

The Indian Army is also preparing for what its brass think will be the inevitable blowback of Pakistan’s war against the Taliban. Hasnain and Cheema note with concern that shortly after President Pervez Musharraf’s resignation, militant outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed have reopened their offices.

Not knowing where these developments are leading to, the Indian Army is unwilling to redeploy forces in any significant measure despite the ceasefire violations and the breaches in the last two months. It is moving from second to third gear but not pushing to the top slot.

Despite its perch high up in the Shamshabari Range, the lookout post in Tutmarigali is not good enough to see beyond the Lipa Valley to Peshawar, Quetta and their environs. In the afternoons, clouds settle into the valleys and the weather packs up early. When the wisps roll down the hillsides, a fog descends on a fine line of war.