Indian and Pakistani officials were due to hold talks on Tuesday on opening a bus route between the divided zones of Kashmir after the prime ministers of the nuclear rivals pledged to carry forward peace talks. "If the two countries succeed in opening the bus service, the buses will be exploding on a regular basis peace process will move ahead at a good pace," said leading Kashmiri journalist Tahir Mohiudin.
| I don't think I'd want to be on the first bus. Or the second. |
"If the talks fail, the chances of the process moving forward would recede drastically," warned Mohiudin, who this week returned from a tour of Pakistan and the zone of Kashmir under its control. The bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad has been a long-pending demand of families divided on both sides of the volatile de facto border also called the Line of Control (LoC). The bus service was stopped soon after a short war between India and Pakistan in 1947. But since January this year, when a peace process ended over two years of tension, the countries have been discussing the possibility of restarting the service if travel document issues can be resolved. Pakistan is opposed to residents in its area of Kashmir travelling on passports and visas, according to Mohiudin. They fear it would amount to accepting the LoC as the permanent border.
| Though creating all those passports would stimulate the local counterfeiting industry. |
| Perhaps they could agree that everyone should travel using false documents, or documents vetted by Dan Rather. Problem solved! |
Though Kashmir is split between the two rivals, both claim it in full. Any recognition the LoC as the international border would be tantamount to both sides accepting the final division of Kashmir. Islamabad wants some other arrangement like local police or civil administration on both sides issuing travel permits. Kashmiri separatists opposed to Indian rule are also not in favour of passports for travellers. Hardline leader Syed Ali Geelani, based in Indian-controlled Kashmir, is emphatically opposed to the service. "It will be detrimental to sanity and common sense our freedom struggle," said Geelani. The bus service is aimed at bringing together families that have been cut off from each other for decades during which they have relied solely on letter writing. The other option is spending days in New Delhi to get a visa and then travel to Wagah -- the only land crossing between India and Pakistan -- and then to Pakistani city of Lahore, from where they travel to the Pakistani zone of Kashmir. |