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December." Air raid sirens wail almost continuously. During one 15-hour period in the Punjab, there were eleven airraid alerts. One all-clear was sounded by the jittery control room before the warning blast was given. The nervousness, though, was justified: two towns in the area had been bombed with a large loss of life as Pakistani air force planes zipped repeatedly across the border. Included in their attacks was the city of Amritsar, whose Golden Temple is the holiest of holies to all Sikhs. At Agra, which was bombed in the Pakistanis' first blitz, the Taj Mahal was camouflaged with a forest of twigs and leaves and draped with burlap because its marble glowed like a white beacon in the moonlight.
The fact that India is not launching any major offensives in the western sector suggests that New Delhi wants to keep the war there as uncomplicated as possible. Though the two nations have tangled twice before in what is officially called the state of Jammu and Kashmir, neither country has gained any territory since the original cease fire line was drawn in 1949. There are several reasons why New Delhi is not likely to try to press now for control of the disputed area.
The first is a doubt that the people of Azad Kashmir, as the Pakistani portion is called, would welcome control by India; in that case, India could be confronted with an embarrassing uprising.
The second reason is that in 1963, shortly after India's brief but bloody war with China, Pakistan worked out a provisional border agreement with Peking ceding some 1,300 sq. mi. of Kashmir to China. Peking has since linked up the old "silk route" highway from Sinkiang province to the city of Gilgit in Pakistani Kashmir with an all-weather macadam motor highway running down to the northern region of Ladakh near the cease-fire line. Should Indian troops get anywhere near China's highway or try to grasp its portion of Kashmir, New Delhi could expect to have a has sle with Peking on its hands.
Constant Harassment Pakistan, on the other hand, has much to gain if it can wrest the disputed province, particularly the lush and fabled Vale, from Indian control. Strategically, the region is extremely important, bor dering on both China and Afghanistan as well as India and Pakistan. More over, Kashmir's population is predominantly Moslem.
Still, the war was also beginning to take its toll on the people of West Pakistan. " The almost constant air raids over Islamabad, Karachi and other cities have brought deep apprehension, even panic," TIME'S Louis Kraar cabled from Rawalpindi. "It is not massive bombing, just constant harassment — though there have been several hundred civilian casualties. Thus when the planes roar overhead, life completely halts in the capital and people scurry into trenches or stand in doorways with woolen shawls over their heads, ostrichlike. Be cause of the Kashmir mountains, the radar in the area does not pick up Indian planes until they are about 15 miles away.