NEW DELHI — Indian officials are advising residents of strife-torn Kashmir to prepare for a possible nuclear war by building bombproof basements and stockpiling food and water, adding to tensions between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, after deadly cross-border skirmishes in recent weeks.
“People should construct basements where the whole family can stay for a fortnight,” read the advisory, which was published Monday in the newspaper Greater Kashmir. It comes in the midst of the worst fighting in Kashmir between India and Pakistan since a cease-fire was signed in 2003. Three Pakistani and two Indian soldiers have been killed, and one of the Indian soldiers was found without his head.
News of the mutilation infuriated Indians, with Sushma Swaraj, the leader of the opposition in the lower house of Parliament, calling for India “to get at least 10 heads from their side” if the Pakistanis did not return the soldier’s head. After criticism that he was not doing enough, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India said he was reviewing ties with Pakistan. A special visa program between the two countries has been suspended, and Pakistani players in a new Indian field hockey league have been sent home.
Officials insisted that the advisory published Monday was unrelated to these developments. Yoginder Kaul, the inspector general of the Civil Defense and State Disaster Response Force, said the advisory was meant to commemorate the first anniversary of the creation of his unit.
“It has nothing to do with anything else,” Mr. Kaul said in a telephone interview. “It was a routine advisory issued on our raising day to create awareness among people.”Continue reading the main story
If so, it was remarkably ill timed. The advisory suggested that people build shelters in open spaces in front of their houses if they did not have basements because “some protection was better than no protection,” according to an article about the advisory in Greater Kashmir. Food and water should be restocked regularly, and ample candles and battery-operated lights should be included, it said.
If in the open during a nuclear attack, a person should “immediately drop to ground and remain in lying position,” the advisory said.
“Stay down after the initial shock wave, wait for the winds to die down and debris to stop falling. If blast wave does not arrive within five seconds of the flash, you were far enough from the ground zero.”
“Expect some initial disorientation,” the advisory added, “as the blast wave may blow down and carry away many prominent and familiar features.”
Abdul Qaiuum of Silikote, a village close to the dividing line on the Indian side, said in a telephone interview that neither he nor his neighbors were constructing new bunkers. “No firing is taking place,” he said. Besides, he added, “we are under two to three feet of snow in the village.”
Even after both governments embarked on efforts to improve ties after decades of war and recriminations, Kashmir remains a troubled region. India, heavily Hindu, controls the bulk of the predominantly Muslim region of Kashmir, which has been at the heart of disputes between the two nations since they won independence from Britain in 1947. The land along the cease-fire Line of Control is one of the most heavily militarized areas in the world.
The latest clashes started when an elderly woman on the Indian side decided to use a secret entrance into Pakistani territory so that she could see her children living on the other side, according to a report in The Hindu, an Indian newspaper. After the Indian military discovered the tunnel, it built emplacements to prevent its use.
But those emplacements violated the terms of the cease-fire with Pakistan, and Pakistani soldiers repeatedly warned their Indian counterparts to desist, which the Indians ignored.
Firing weapons across the cease-fire line is not unusual, but the beheading, which the Pakistan government denies responsibility for, added a volatile mix to the politically charged debate. Previous mutilations of soldiers’ bodies have generally been kept secret to avoid just the sort of news media firestorm that has erupted. National elections are scheduled to be held in Pakistan by May and in India by sometime in 2014.Continue reading the main story