New Delhi, India – Mukeet Shah had not slept for days, doomscrolling on his mobile phone as he remained hooked to news updates on the spiralling India-Pakistan conflict.
A phone call from his mother, Tanveera Bano, on Saturday made it worse. “Please, come back [home]. Why be apart when we can at least die together?” she urged her younger son, who studies at a university in New Delhi, the national capital.
Shah, 23, said her appeal shattered him. An hour or so later, another news flash popped up on his phone: “US President Donald Trump says India and Pakistan have agreed to a ‘full and immediate’ ceasefire.” Moments later, the South Asian rivals confirmed the ceasefire, mediated by dozens of countries besides the United States.
“It was such a relief,” Shah recalled. Happily, he called home. “Both countries have agreed to peace. We will spend more time soon, don’t be afraid, mother,” he told 48-year-old Bano, who asked him to focus on his studies and return home only after his annual exams.
However, barely three hours after that phone call, the sense of relief was blown away. A barrage of drones had hit Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir, forcing another electricity blackout. Similar reports of firings and drone sightings came from other cities in the region, including Jammu, Anantnag, as well as the border districts of Rajasthan and Gujarat states.
On the Pakistan side as well, several villages along the Line of Control (LoC) – the de facto border that divides Kashmir – reported alleged ceasefire violations by the Indian forces. As Pakistan and India denied each other’s allegations and reaffirmed their commitment to the ceasefire, questions were raised on whether the fragile agreement between the nuclear-powered neighbours would hold.
Bano called her son again, crying.
“In her intermittent pauses, I could hear sounds of blasts behind her as she broke down. The jets were loud as well,” Shah told Al Jazeera on Saturday night, sitting in a huddle with his Kashmiri friends in a New Delhi neighbourhood, 800km (about 500 miles) away from home.
Eighteen days after gunmen killed 26 civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir’s resort town of Pahalgam, nearly 1.6 billion people on either side of the border reeled under the fears of another India-Pakistan war over Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region claimed in full by both the nations that rule over parts of it.
An armed rebellion against New Delhi’s rule erupted on the Indian side in 1989. Since then, tens of thousands of people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of backing the rebellion, but Pakistan denies the allegation and claims to provide only diplomatic support to the Kashmiris’ struggle for an independent state or a likely merger with Pakistan.
‘Kashmiris stuck in the middle’
Abbas, a Srinagar resident who requested to be identified by his last name only, told Al Jazeera the loud explosions his family heard on Saturday night were terrifying.
“Each blast came out of nowhere and left us scared and confused. As a Kashmiri, I have lived through tough times before, but this [current conflict] feels different,” he said.
Abbas said he had been waking up to toddlers crying amid explosions at night.
“It feels like a psychological war has been waged on us. The fear isn’t just from the blasts; it is from the uncertainty and a lack of transparency,” he said. “Kashmiris are once again stuck in the middle, with no refuge, no escape.”
Yet, the ceasefire announcement on Saturday evening was met with jubilation in several frontier districts on the Indian side, especially among thousands of displaced residents since the cross-border tensions mounted earlier this month.
Deepak Singh, a 40-year-old resident of Poonch, one of the most affected border districts in Indian-administered Kashmir, said in a brief phone interview that his family of four looked forward to leaving their shelter and being home.
“We have known a life that gets disturbed by the border clashes, but I am hopeful to return to my home soon,” Singh told Al Jazeera.
But that was before the explosions were reported from Srinagar. As both sides accused each other of breaching the truce, Singh said he felt devastated.
“Not again,” he later said. “Till how long are we supposed to sleep in this shelter? Will this ceasefire hold at all?”
More than 1,000km (620 miles) away, Pradyot Verma was having similar feelings.
A resident of Jodhpur, a border town in India’s western state of Rajasthan, Verma said their joy and relief were short-lived as they witnessed another round of blackouts and siren alerts on Saturday night, keeping the residents in an anxious loop.
“The ceasefire announcement was met with cheers here,” said the 26-year-old law student as he sat in darkness in his rented room. “Indian defence system keeps on intercepting [Pakistan-origin missiles] and we are hoping that they keep doing it.”
‘Back from the brink of war’
After four days of military escalation, during which Indian and Pakistani forces attacked each other’s military installations, they agreed on a ceasefire, which Trump said was reached after “a long night of talks” mediated by the US and other countries. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the two nations have also agreed to “start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site”.
However, geopolitical and military experts argue the ceasefire is fragile and does not promise much.
“The Indian government has already signalled rebutting Rubio’s assertion that India and Pakistan have agreed to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site,” Sumantra Bose, a political scientist, told Al Jazeera. “It is something [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi’s government just can’t do, given its commitment to unilateralism on Kashmir and rejection of diplomatic engagement with Pakistan.”
Bose said the ceasefire was merely a “band-aid slapped on a profusely bleeding wound that was threatening to turn gangrenous if not fatal”.
While the escalation might have stopped due to intervention by foreign governments, “the problem is all the other parameters and vectors of the India-Pakistan relationship and the Kashmir conflict remain as before”, Bose said, adding, “in an even more bitter and toxic form than was the case earlier”.
However, Michael Kugelman, an expert on South Asia politics, stressed that the subcontinent was “back from the brink of war”.
“This ceasefire, so long as it holds, even with some violations, does bring an end to what had been the biggest regional security threat by far in decades,” he told Al Jazeera.
“This is going to be a very difficult ceasefire to uphold. It was very quickly put together at a moment when India-Pakistan tensions were soaring [and] this is also a ceasefire that appears to have been interpreted differently by India,” added Kugelman, referring to India’s historic position on Kashmir, which has been a consistent rejection of any attempt by Pakistan at internationalising the issue.
But for the people living along the tense borders between the South Asian rivals, a cautious optimism is their only recourse.
“We are holding this ceasefire very dear to us,” said a Kashmiri political analyst, who requested anonymity, fearing reprisal from the Indian authorities.
“Be it anyone’s war, India or Pakistan, people on the border, Kashmiris and Punjabis, have been losing their lives for generations. I hope this madness stops here.”
