A pro-independence Kashmiri demonstrator prepares to throw a piece of brick at Indian police during protests in October.
The two-lane highway between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, lined with slim, pale poplar trees and winding past spectacular Himalayan mountains, has witnessed every chapter of the decades-old conflict between India and Pakistan over the divided territory of Kashmir. It was built for commerce: trucks carried apples from the surrounding orchards and handicrafts to markets in undivided India and beyond. Then in the 1990s, it became a highway of hatred, with buses transporting angry young men from Srinagar, capital of the Indian portion of Kashmir, to border towns, where they crossed to militant training camps, many of them in Muzaffarabad, capital of the...
