By Molly Moore and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 3, 1998; Page A01

CHOKOTHI, Pakistan, June 2—When Indian troops on the hill above this Pakistani village start shooting, science teacher Abdul Ghafoor and his students know the routine. A teacher blows the warning whistle, and everyone instantly hits the ground.

Farther down the mountain, tailors and food vendors sprint to shutter their shops and, in a matter of seconds, Chokothi, a one-street village in the disputed region of Kashmir, is a ghost town.

"We get so scared we cannot sleep at night," said shopkeeper Ghulam Rassul, who sometimes can spot the Indian troops on the green hillside above this town, about 80 miles northeast of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. "You can't believe the shooting. Life has become miserable."

Chokothi's main street ends a few hundred yards from the "line of control," the barbed-wire barricade that marks the border between Pakistan and India in the former princely state of Kashmir.

Kashmir at a Glance Kashmir, about twice the size of Virginia, has been a flash point between India and Pakistan since the two nations became independent. Sovereignty over Kashmir was left unresolved when the Indian subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan. Countless battles and skirmishes later, the area remains a flash point. Pakistan-controlled area Administrative areas: Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas. Land: about one-third of Kashmir. Population: 2 million, almost all Muslims. Claims: Pakistan refuses to recognize a 1947 treaty of accession with India made by Maharaja Hari Singh -- who ran the princely state of Kashmir prior to independence -- following the division of the Indian subcontinent. This led to the Indo-Pakistani war of 1949, which resulted in a cease-fire line of separation. Renewed fighting in 1965 and 1971 produced little change. Paramilitary Muslim groups frequently skirmish with Indian military forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan denies giving money or arms to these forces. India-controlled area Administrative areas: State of Jammu and Kashmir. Land: Almost two-thirds of Kashmir. Population: 8 million, two-thirds of whom are Muslims and live in the western area, while one-third are Hindus and live mostly in the east. Jammu and Kashmir is India's only Muslim-dominated state. Claims: India regards the entire Kashmir region as its territory. China has occupied an area of northern Kashmir since 1962. A Muslim separatist movement that seeks accession of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan or independence has been a major problem for New Delhi and a cause of friction with Pakistan. SOURCE: Staff reports, Encyclopedia Americana

Today, in the aftermath of a series of nuclear test explosions set off by the bitter rivals, there is no place on Earth with greater potential for triggering a nuclear war. Incidents that a month ago would have been considered routine in a region where cross-border artillery barrages are commonplace have taken on exaggerated proportions.

It was here that Pakistan's top military leaders rushed in the days following India's May 11 and 13 nuclear tests -- its first in 24 years.

On May 25, after two days of consultations with commanders at Chokothi and other outposts, Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Jehangir Karamat, held an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the Pakistani leader's residence. He told Sharif that if Pakistan did not respond quickly with a nuclear test of its own, he believed India could attempt a military solution of the Kashmir standoff, according to civilian and military leaders familiar with the meeting. While the general was at the border, Indian officials lent substance to his fears by making provocative comments about attacking Pakistan or engaging in "hot pursuit" of Muslim insurgents fleeing from the Indian side of the border into Pakistani territory.

By the end of the meeting, Karamat had persuaded Sharif to order Pakistani nuclear scientists to conduct underground tests, and the order was issued before dawn the next morning, sources said. Three days later, Pakistan announced that it had exploded five nuclear devices and, two days after that, a sixth bomb.

Kashmir, long considered a potential flash point for nuclear war in South Asia, has become the key to any international effort to maintain stability between two newly nuclear-armed nations with deeply entrenched religious and political animosities.

"If we want to save not only South Asia from nuclear war, but the world as a whole, Kashmir is the root," said Mian Ghulam Rasool, who represents Chokothi and surrounding villages in the legislative assembly of the Pakistani portion of Kashmir.

In the view of many political and military analysts, such statements by Rasool and others like him are not mere hyperbole. The emotionally charged and militarily volatile conditions along the Kashmir border, they say, pose problems that could escalate out of control and end in a nuclear war. The possibilities are particularly dangerous in two nations with what analysts describe as poor communications both internally and between capitals, inadequate command and control of military operations and insufficient satellite surveillance of rival military operations.

The continuing dispute over Kashmir is the biggest thorn in Indo-Pakistani relations, and the deep personal rancor between their citizens underscores why it has been so difficult to resolve. A fundamental stumbling block is religion -- India is 82 percent Hindu, Pakistan 95 percent Muslim.

When British India won independence in 1947, it was partitioned along religious lines, and Pakistan was created as a Muslim homeland. As 12 million Hindus and Muslims fled from one area to the other, as many as 500,000 were slaughtered in horrific outbreaks of violence.

Indian and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, whose final status was not resolved at independence. Today, apart from a portion that China seized in 1962, Pakistan controls about one-third of Kashmir and India controls the rest.

The line of control slices through some of the most dramatic landscape of South Asia. On the Indian side, in Jammu and Kashmir state, the summer capital of Srinagar was once India's most famed tourist resort, with tranquil lakes nestled beneath the snow-capped Himalayan Mountains. In the Pakistani-controlled region, terraces of lime-green rice march up the sides of steep foothills, and the white rapids of the Neelum River cut through deep, rugged mountain gorges. Combined, the two parts of Kashmir are about twice the size of Virginia.

Kashmiris themselves say the reunification of their region is one of their prime objectives, and many say they would like to see Kashmir become an independent country. But for India and Pakistan, each has made reuniting Kashmir under its banner a national priority.

Nine years ago, militant Muslim separatists advocating a reunited Kashmir launched a guerrilla war against Indian troops in Jammu and Kashmir. India poured tens of thousands of troops into the state, while Pakistan, seeing an opportunity to tie up a large part of India's military in an expensive insurgency, began supplying various militant groups in the region with large amounts of arms and money.

Now, several hundred thousand Indian security forces are stationed there, trying to suppress between 2,000 and 3,000 militants aligned with about a half-dozen different armed groups. There are Indian army bunkers at every major intersection in Srinagar, night curfews, frequent bombings and shootings.

Human rights organizations say that Indian troops have brutalized the people of Kashmir through rapes, torture and summary executions. At the same time, the separatist groups have attacked and killed Hindus living in the Kashmir Valley, forcing many from their homes, and they routinely threaten and extort money from the residents who remain. According to human rights organizations, more than 25,000 people have been killed in the state since 1989.

Low-intensity gun battles erupt almost daily in the mountainous areas along the border -- such as that surrounding the hamlet of Chokothi, now overrun with Pakistani troops and mule trains that carry supplies and ammunition up steep mountain trails to bunkers.

For years, the residents of Chokothi and other nearby villages have endured frequent machine gun fire, artillery barrages and occasional mortar rounds. Rasool, Chokothi's state legislator, estimated that 1,400 families have been forced to leave their homes and farms in his small district alone because of the shooting from the hilltops. In addition, he said, 300 constituents have been killed and 1,900 injured, including 200 who have lost limbs.

Villagers describe a hellish life in their deceptively bucolic valley. Science teacher Ghafoor said his school has been lucky: No students have been hit. But at a neighboring elementary school, two girls were fatally shot last year.

A farm laborer with darting, birdlike eyes said that all 60 houses in his village have been abandoned. Farmers complained that they have been unable to cultivate their fields for fear of Indian sniper fire from the hills above them. Shopkeepers bemoaned their lack of business, noting that since many farmers could not plant crops, families have no money to spend in the tiny stalls along the main street that sell brightly colored fabrics, boxes of cookies and light bulbs.

"Every day there is shooting," said Mohammad Ayub, 36, who owns a small tailor shop. "The day after India exploded the bomb, soldiers were shouting into megaphones at us, saying, 'Leave this area. Your time has come.' Afterward, the shooting was so bad we had to shut down our businesses."

This week, Pakistani soldiers were blaring Muslim prayers from the Chokothi mosque's loudspeakers at the Indian troops across the border.

Correspondents John Ward Anderson in Islamabad and Kenneth J. Cooper in New Delhi contributed to this report.