A Glimmer of Hope

Mohammad Sarfarz Khan strides up a short mud path to a tunnel dug into the hillside, enters and disappears. The 61-year-old Kashmiri villager is sure-footed in the gloom, feeling his way around the shelter with practiced confidence. When he reaches the inner bunker, Khan pulls a blanket around his shoulders and peers out of a small window. It is from here that, since 1989, he has watched thousands of Indian and Pakistani artillery shells describe golden arcs as they split the air of the valley below. "I suppose we were lucky," he says, of surviving 14 years of incoming Pakistani fire....