When I last visited villages along the Boundary in late 2013, I wrote about the issues affecting these communities. It was clear then, as it is now, that the villagers are directly targeted by the BSF. Given their immediate proximity to the Boundary, they make an easy target. It is not a new phenomenon – it has been happening there for decades. As I have written previously, the deliberate targeting of these unarmed civilians by Indian military is a breach of International Humanitarian Law.

The big news that came out of the meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Ufa, Russia, in July, was that the Indian PM would visit Pakistan in 2016 for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting. On the surface, this seems to be a positive step forward but the joint statement issued after the meeting created scepticism among many analysts about the likelihood of real and lasting outcomes.

The action points from the joint statement include a dialogue to be held between the National Security Advisers of the two countries on terrorism, discussions on religious tourism, a decision to be made about freeing fishermen and their boats held in each other’s custody, expediting the Mumbai trial, and, early meetings between the Directors General of the Indian Border Security Force and Pakistan Rangers, and the Directors General of Military Operations of both countries, to reduce ceasefire violations along the LOC and Working Boundary where tensions have escalated in the past year.

Kashmir was not mentioned in the statement. Pakistan’s Adviser on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, has since tried to reassure everyone that the issue of Kashmir was raised at the meeting but this would be addressed through ‘Track-II diplomacy’ along with all other issues. He further clarified a day later saying that although he used the phrase ‘Track-II’, he was in fact referring to ‘back channel’ which is more official, and that this would run in tandem with ‘front channel’. There appeared to be some confusion as to the intent of both sides. The absence of a mention of Kashmir issues in the statement created a perception in the minds of many international observers that India is dictating the terms for these meetings. Also, whether India’s interference in Pakistan was mentioned in the Ufa meeting, or will be raised in front or back channel meetings also seemed unclear to the public. Regular scans of international media on Pakistan-India relations indicates that India is succeeding in controlling the narrative in its favour, focusing almost solely on terrorism and security issues rather than Kashmir, broader bilateral issues and opportunities. This was again apparent following the meeting in Ufa and the joint statement.

Since the election of the new Government in India in May 2014, despite positive steps by Nawaz Sharif to build a new and warmer relationship by attending the inauguration ceremony of Narendra Modi, and the initial ‘sari and shawl diplomacy’, India has taken an even more hawkish approach towards Pakistan. The anti-Pakistan rhetoric by Indian leaders both at home and abroad, has amplified considerably in the past year. Narendra Modi, while speaking in Dhaka in early June, has said that India has been troubled by the menace of terrorism for the last 40 years and blamed Pakistan for its spread. He said, “Pakistan constantly disturbs us, and has created a nuisance. It promotes terrorism and incidents keep recurring.” PM Modi has also made aggressive statements against Pakistan to the Chinese leaders and strongly voiced India’s disapproval of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

India promotes itself internationally as holding the high moral ground on terrorism issues in the region, and also on ceasefire breaches. However, in recent times, strong indications and evidences are coming to light that what has long been suspected in Pakistan – that India sponsors terrorism in and against Pakistan – is a reality.

The Indian National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, in a speech at SASTRA University in January, made extremely aggressive statements against Pakistan when speaking of his ‘defensive/offensive’ strategy. In the speech, captured on video, he lists some of the ways that India will attack Pakistan’s ‘vulnerabilities’ including the internal politics, economy, and internal security, as well as isolating Pakistan internationally and blocking Pakistan’s policies in Afghanistan. Many have observed that Indians are already doing this.

India’s Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar, speaking about Pakistan at a public forum in May 2015, said, "We have to neutralize terrorists through terrorists only. Why can't we do it? We should do it. Why does my soldier has to do it all the time?" Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif slammed his Indian counterpart’s statements saying, “it confirmed our assertions of Indian involvement in terrorist activities on Pakistani soil”. The Minister said, “This is the worst kind of declaration by a state functionary of cabinet level which confirms that India is sponsoring terrorism against its neighbours in the name of preventing terrorist activities.”

In yet another startling admission from India, Amarjit Singh Dulat, the former chief of India's premier intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), disclosed in a television interview, that Indian intelligence agencies over the years often paid militants and separatists along with mainstream politicians and political parties in Indian-held Kashmir. Dulat asked, "So what's wrong? What is there to be so shocked or scandalized by? It's done the world over.” He said, "corrupting someone with money is more ethical and smarter than killing him." Dulat went on to say that India's spies had been in touch with everyone — separatists and militants alike. Such statements should give pause for thought about who has really been behind many incidents.

Further evidence of what military and others in Pakistan have suspected – that RAW has for a long time been sponsoring terrorism and disruptive activities in Pakistan – came to light in a recent story by the respected BBC journalist, Owen Bennett-Jones. The story provided evidence that RAW had been providing funding and training for the MQM in Karachi.

With such a hawkish stance towards Pakistan in the past year, it is difficult to see how things will suddenly change. One indicator of the ‘state of play’ is what happens on the LOC and the lesser-known Working Boundary, the disputed border between Pakistan and Jammu & Kashmir. For some time, I have been researching the humanitarian impact related to the ceasefire breaches by the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) by firing on villages and the inhabitants along the Pakistan side of the Working Boundary. Their plight is mostly forgotten in the bigger geo-political picture, but it is these villagers who are among those who suffer most in the ceasefire breaches and are permanently at risk. The villagers receive little assistance with their problems apart from the Chenab Rangers who do much to help these communities.

The Indian National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, in a speech at SASTRA University in January, made extremely aggressive statements against Pakistan when speaking of his ‘defensive/offensive’ strategy. In the speech, captured on video, he lists some of the ways that India will attack Pakistan’s ‘vulnerabilities’ including the internal politics, economy, and internal security, as well as isolating Pakistan internationally and blocking Pakistan’s policies in Afghanistan. Many have observed that Indians are already doing this.

When I last visited villages along the Boundary in late 2013, I wrote about the issues affecting these communities. It was clear then, as it is now, that the villagers are directly targeted by the BSF. Given their immediate proximity to the Boundary, they make an easy target. It is not a new phenomenon – it has been happening there for decades. As I have written previously, the deliberate targeting of these unarmed civilians by Indian military is a breach of International Humanitarian Law. To learn more about what has happened in the past year and the impact the change of Government in India has had on the local communities, I travelled again to the Working Boundary to talk to the villagers in the Shakargarh Sector, located right on the Boundary. These small villages are reached by a bone-shaking drive along rough roads through farmlands and are located in an area where the Boundary almost surrounds them. They are regularly targeted in cross-border shelling by the BSF. As the villagers go to sleep at night they can never be sure that a mortar shell won’t come flying through their roof.

According to statistics provided by the Chenab Rangers at their Headquarters in Sialkot, the level of unprovoked attacks by the BSF has escalated in the past year resulting in a number of deaths and injuries of both the Rangers and civilians. On December 31, two Rangers who were part of a flag party heading to a meeting with the BSF at their invitation, were martyred. Although the incident occurred at 11.30 a.m., their bodies were unable to be safely retrieved until 6 p.m. because the BSF continued to fire on the retrieving party. This incident highlighted the disrespect for the neutrality of the flag and rules of engagement by the BSF. There is also a tendency for them to disrupt religious holidays, with firing attacks over three days during Eid in October last year. Such attacks seem to be designed for nuisance value and at other times to try to provoke an escalation, or perhaps to draw attention away from other areas.

The toll on defenceless civilians has continued to be devastating. Manzoor Ahmed’s daughter Sumera was just 14 years old when a fragment from a mortar fired on her home by the BSF struck her in the neck killing her instantly. The pain of Sumera’s death in January 2015, was still visible on Manzoor’s face several months later as he talked about the awful moment the mortar hit their home and took his daughter’s life. Muhammad Farooq’s 19 year-old son, Azeem, was also killed in a mortar shelling earlier last year. The compensation both fathers received from the government for the loss of their children has done nothing to ease their grief. Other families whose homes have been shelled, or whose livestock has been killed, have received no compensation making their lives even harder. Sitting with these two grieving fathers and other men from the village was a sad experience. Some shared tales of lucky escapes, and of family members who sustained injuries. They also shared their helplessness about protecting themselves and their families, and their precious livestock. However, they won’t move, as their families have mostly been there for generations and it is their ‘home’. There is nowhere else to go. When the firing starts, all they can do is try to flee to villages or towns out of the range of fire. The women of the villages of Shakargarh are even more vocal about the attacks. Visiting the women and children in one village, they showed me where mortars and artillery fire had hit their homes, and the splinters of the shells. The villagers, although poor and mostly illiterate, placed emphasis on education seeing this as the opportunity for a better life for their children, perhaps away from this dangerous area. The children shared their fears about going to sleep at night and their dislike at missing school when they have to flee the village. Many had hopes of attending university and getting good jobs in the cities one day.

The toll on defenceless civilians has continued to be devastating. Manzoor Ahmed’s daughter Sumera was just 14 years old when a fragment from a mortar fired on her home by the BSF struck her in the neck killing her instantly. The pain of Sumera’s death in January 2015, was still visible on Manzoor’s face several months later as he talked about the awful moment the mortar hit their home and took his daughter’s life.

In another village, many of the women had sons and (or) husbands who work in the Gulf so they do much of the farming work themselves. They were a lively and hardy group who became quite enraged when discussing how they’ve survived attacks, and their uncertainty as to when it will happen next. One woman had lost almost all her livestock in a recent mortar attack and wondered how she would manage, as she was head of the household and her animals the only source of income. An elderly woman in the village who the others all seemed to look up to, spoke for them when she said that no matter what the BSF tried to do to them, they would not leave their land. She also offered a few feisty words on what should be done about this. I enjoyed my time talking with them and was sad when the time came to leave these hard-working, humorous and friendly women. Before leaving the villages, I visited a viewing point where I could see the impenetrable Indian-built fence with all its hi-tech wizardry, watchtowers, lights, and other BSF buildings just across the fields. In the golden light of late afternoon, the landscape around Shakargarh is reminiscent of a painting by the famous English painter of peaceful rural landscapes, John Constable. Women in colourful clothes working together making hay bales, men walking their cattle home to their compounds, it is a vision of apparent peace and serenity. Except, it’s not. It is an extremely dangerous place for civilians.

Across the other side of the Boundary in Jammu & Kashmir, civilians also suffer at the hands of the BSF. India has long denied its abuses of human rights in Kashmir yet evidence does not support this position. Amnesty International released a report on July 1, 2015, revealing the massive abuses and failures in accountability for human rights violations by Indian Army and BSF in Jammu & Kashmir. The report, “Denied”, was scathing in its findings on the conduct of the Indian Army and BSF and their disregard for the human rights of the local people. As I had raised a point in an earlier article, “Living on the Line”, the BSF and Indian Army have been guilty of ‘fake encounters’, using the pretext of ‘infiltrators’ to conspire to kill local Muslim villagers in Jammu & Kashmir and create incidents which have left many dead and for which India has placed unwarranted blame on Pakistan. The searing Amnesty Report highlights several such incidents and follows the stories of families who tried to get justice. The report also states these are not the only cases but proving ‘fake encounters’ isn’t easy for a population that lives in fear of deadly reprisals should they try to take legal action against the security forces. While action has been taken against just a few officers, most cases go untried. With a few exceptions, the outcome of trials has rarely been communicated publicly or to the families. Although the Amnesty Report focuses only on the abuses in Jammu & Kashmir, it is clear that this disregard shown for human rights extends to the Pakistani villagers along the Working Boundary. It cannot be stated often enough – firing on unarmed civilians is a complete breach of international humanitarian laws and this applies to directly targeting these villagers.

So, will peace ever come to the Working Boundary? It would be nice to think that the initiatives proposed in the joint statement from Ufa, Track II, back channel or other diplomacy initiatives, and the visit of Narendra Modi to Pakistan in 2016, will somehow eventually lead to a more peaceful environment for the region and for these villagers on the Working Boundary. Perhaps one day they will finally be able to go to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that mortar shells won’t come crashing through their roof. We should at least be hopeful, but with the belligerent stance against Pakistan that we’ve seen in the past year, the failure of similar talks over many decades, and without peace in Kashmir, I fear that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

As I was finishing writing this article, the news broke that, as I expected, nothing has changed. The ceasefire was again broken by the BSF when they fired on villages along the Working Boundary in the Sialkot Sector, killing five people, injuring others, and damaging homes. The spirit of the Ufa meeting did not last long.

Jennifer McKay is a Disaster Management and Civil-Military Relations Consultant based in Islamabad. [email protected]