Line of Control: How India and Pakistan Share One of the World’s Most Dangerous Borders

The Line of Control (LoC) – the volatile de facto border that separates India and Pakistan – is one of the most dangerous in the world. Living along this border means existing in a constant state of uncertainty, where peace is fragile and conflict can erupt at any moment.

Recent tensions, including the Pahalgam attack, have brought the two nations to the brink of renewed conflict. Shells have rained down on both sides of the LoC, destroying homes and lives. At least 16 people were reportedly killed on the Indian side, while Pakistan claims 40 civilian deaths, though the exact number remains unclear.

“Families on the LoC are subjected to Indian and Pakistani whims and face the brunt of heated tensions,” Anam Zakaria, a Pakistani writer based in Canada, told the BBC. “Each time firing resumes, many are thrust into bunkers, livestock and livelihood is lost, infrastructure – homes, hospitals, schools – is damaged. The vulnerability and volatility experienced has grave repercussions for their everyday lived reality,” Ms Zakaria, author of a book on Pakistan-administered Kashmir, said.

The LoC, which stretches 740km, is part of the 3,323km border between India and Pakistan, including the 2,400km International Border. The LoC began as the Ceasefire Line in 1949 after the first India-Pakistan war and was renamed under the 1972 Simla Agreement.

The LoC cutting through Kashmir – claimed in full by India and administered in parts by Pakistan – remains one of the most militarized borders in the world. Conflict is never far behind, and ceasefires are only as durable as the next provocation.

Ceasefire violations along the LoC can range from “low-level firing to major land grabbing to surgical strikes,” says Happymon Jacob, a foreign policy expert at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). (A land grab could involve seizing key positions such as hilltops, outposts, or buffer zones by force.)

The LoC, many experts say, is a classic example of a “border drawn in blood, forged through conflict.” It is also a line, as Ms Zakaria says, “carved by India and Pakistan, and militarized and weaponized, without taking Kashmiris into account.”

The LoC is not unique to South Asia. Sumantra Bose, professor of international and comparative politics at Krea University in India and author of Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, says the most well-known is the ‘Green Line’ – the ceasefire line of 1949 – which is the generally recognized boundary between Israel and the West Bank.

Not surprisingly, the tentative calm along the LoC that had endured since the 2021 ceasefire agreement between the two nuclear-armed neighbors crumbled easily after the latest hostilities.

“The current escalation on the LoC and International Border (IB) is significant as it follows a four-year period of relative peace on the border,” Surya Valliappan Krishna of Carnegie India told the BBC.

Mr Jacob says for some “curious reason,” ceasefire violations along the LoC have been absent from discussions and debates about escalation of conflict between the two countries.

“It is itself puzzling how the regular use of high-calibre weapons such as ity 105mm mortars, 130 and 155mm artillery guns and anti-tank guided missiles by two nuclear-capable countries, which has led to civilian and military casualties, has escaped scholarly scrutiny and policy attention,” Mr Jacob writes in his book, Line On Fire: Ceasefire Violations and India-Pakistan Escalation Dynamics.

Mr Jacob identifies two main triggers for the violations: Pakistan often uses cover fire to facilitate militant infiltration into Indian-administered Kashmir, which has witnessed an armed insurgency against Indian rule for over three decades. Pakistan, in turn, accuses India of unprovoked firing on civilian areas.

He argues that ceasefire violations along the India-Pakistan border are less the product of high-level political strategy and more the result of local military dynamics.

The hostilities are often initiated by field commanders – sometimes with, but often without, central approval. He also challenges the notion that the Pakistan Army alone drives the violations, pointing instead to a complex mix of local military imperatives and autonomy granted to border forces on both sides.

Some experts believe it’s time to revisit an idea shelved nearly two decades ago: turning the LoC into a formal, internationally recognized border. Others insist that possibility was never realistic – and still isn’t.

“The idea is completely infeasible, a dead end. For decades, Indian maps have shown the entire territory of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir as part of India,” Sumantra Bose told the BBC.

“For Pakistan, making the LoC part of the International Border would mean settling the Kashmir dispute – which is Pakistan’s equivalent of the Holy Grail – on India’s preferred terms. Every Pakistani government and leader, civilian or military, over the past seven decades has rejected this.”

In his 2003 book, Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, Prof Bose writes: “A Kashmir settlement necessitates that the LoC be transformed – from an iron curtain of barbed wire, bunkers, trenches and hostile militaries to a linen curtain. Realpolitik dictates that the border will be permanent (albeit probably under a different name), but it must be transcended without being abolished.”

“I stressed, though, that such a transformation of the LoC must be embedded in a broader Kashmir settlement, as one pillar of a multi-pillared settlement,” he told the BBC.

Between 2004 and 2007, turning the LoC into a soft border was central to a fledgling India-Pakistan peace process on Kashmir – a process that ultimately fell apart.

Today, the border has reignited, bringing back the cycle of violence and uncertainty for those who live in its shadow.

“You never know what will happen next. No one wants to sleep facing the Line of Control tonight,” an employee of a hotel in Pakistan-administered Kashmir told BBC Urdu during the recent hostilities.

It was a quiet reminder of how fragile peace is when your window opens to a battlefield.