The general officer commanding the 16 Corps, Lt General Konsam Himalay Singh (extreme right); Villagers at Jammu’s Arnia display a mortar shell fired from the Pakistani side. (AFP)

Nagrota, Oct. 10: A strange quietude has descended suddenly since last night on the Line of Control and the International Boundary in Jammu where Indian and Pakistani forces exchanged small arms and mortar fire for nearly nine days.

“It is quieter, yes,” says Lt General Konsam Himalay Singh, the general officer commanding the 16 Corps, responsible for the defence of Jammu.

“But I cannot vouch for his behaviour,” the general tells The Telegraph in an interview this morning.

Singh is referring to his counterpart, the chief of the Pakistan Army’s X Corps opposite his troops, Lt General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

It is close to 48 hours since fire was exchanged on the LoC. On the IB in Jammu, nearly all of which was red hot, there were isolated instances of ceasefire violations in Hiranagar and Samba since last night.

In trying to figure out if it is the lull before a storm or a peace that may endure, Indian troops are not losing time in preparing for worse. On both sides, in India and in Pakistan, political leaders have escalated the war of words.

Surprisingly, the armies are both talking and shooting at each other.

Despite the rhetoric and the fireworks, despite the absence of flag meetings, the armies are still maintaining a channel of communication. The hotlines between the directorates-general of military operations (DGMOs) have not gone dead.

More importantly, the link on the LoC — a hotline between Poonch and Rawalkot through which the opposing forces talk — has not been drowned by the cacophony of whistling and exploding mortar shells. Even this morning, the two sides exchanged messages.

“I am intelligent enough to know my responsibility and India’s interest,” says Lt Gen. Singh. “Our interest lies in maintaining peace and tranquillity on the border so that we are not distracted from our priorities. Through the recent flare-up, Pakistan has been trying to show that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, not just the Valley, is disputed. In Jammu, we have an International Boundary — that they call a “working boundary” — but there are well established norms on the IB, unlike the dynamic nature on the LoC,” he explains.

Singh has served nine tenures in the region, even commanded the 25th division before he was appointed chief of the 16 Corps. (Singh, a Manipuri, is also the first officer from the Northeast to command a corps).

Most of the ceasefire violations were in areas under the 25th division, in Rajouri, Mendhar and Poonch. Nearly every day, he flies in a helicopter to operational areas to take personal briefings.

The nine-day exchange of fire this month, which Congress leader from Jammu and Kashmir Ghulam Nabi Azad today called one of the longest, has probably been the biggest threat to the ceasefire that was agreed upon in November 2003.

Indian forces still wonder if Pakistan is trying to set the clock back. By first holding fire, and then by retaliating, Indian troops have tried to be restrained, says Singh.

“It will be our endeavour to ensure that the clock is not set back. But Pakistan has the advantage of deniability,” he explains. This is because the Pakistani forces actively support militants in Kashmir and aid in infiltrating irregulars into India. That army-militant nexus is rearing its head again.

Singh says that as a military professional, he found it confusing why the Pakistan Army repeatedly violated ceasefire and provoked an Indian retaliation now.

“The floods last month and their own operations (particularly the Zarb-e-Azb against militants in North Waziristan and FATA) should have compelled them to keep quiet,” he says. “However, their obsession and proxy war against us have possibly compelled them to keep violating the ceasefire. Professionally, there is no reason why they should have initiated such action.”

The Indian response through fire-assaults is said to have taken a toll on preparations by the Pakistani Army for the winter, according to reports in Pakistani newspapers. The Indian retaliation from Poonch, Mendhar and Rajouri was particularly heavy in the Pakistani sectors of Nikial-Kotli and Jandrot.

This area is a “bulge” of Pakistani controlled territory in PoK arced by Indian posts.