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‘A ghost that haunts’: Living with landmines in Kashmir
January 30, 2021 By Hassan
A Kashmiri boy with a bicycle walks past a crater caused by a landmine blast, in a photo from December 2004 [File: Reuters]
For those living along Kashmir’s Line of Control, landmines destroy lives and livelihoods
One night in December 2000, Mohammad Yaqoob says he was selected by the Indian army for patrol duty along the Line of Control (LoC), the border dividing the Indian and Pakistani-administered regions of Kashmir.
Twenty years ago it was standard but informal practice in parts of Indian-administered Kashmir for the army to select young men from nearby villages for night patrol along the 734km LoC, to keep watch for “infiltrators” from the other side of the border. For this, Yaqoob says he and other men from his village did not receive any training, pay or compensation.