Iraq News Now

One Friday morning before dawn, a half-empty Volvo coach

slipped out of New Delhi’s Ambedkar bus terminal under armed guard, the sirens

of a police convoy wailing.

Carrying a mixture of Indian and Pakistani tourists, the

bus, emblazoned with the flags of both countries and the phrase ‘Sada-e-Sarhad’

(Call of the Frontier), is one of the few remaining transport links between the

nuclear-armed neighbors, who clashed last month over the disputed Kashmir

region in a conflict that alarmed world powers.

But as Reuters found on a return trip on what is also known

as the ‘dosti (friendship) bus’, that runs daily except Sundays between Delhi

and the Pakistani city of Lahore, it is a powerful symbol of hope for better

relations between the rivals, who despite their political differences share

strong linguistic, cultural and family ties.

After breakfast at a government-run restaurant on the

highway where police seal off the grounds, passengers from both countries watch

a Bollywood film on board, starring one of India’s many Muslim actors.

“Salman Khan is a Muslim, he is one of us,” said Hilal Ahmad

Mir, 36, a Kashmiri apple farmer and father of four.

The journey from his home in the south Kashmir valley to

Pakistan’s capital Islamabad to visit his brother Hamid, should be less than

300 km (200 miles) by the most direct route, across the contested border known

as the Line of Control.

But with the ongoing conflict making that route effectively

impossible, he is forced to take a lengthy detour via Delhi and Lahore, before

eventually reaching Islamabad two days later.

Still, he is upbeat.

“Pakistan makes it easy for Kashmiris to get a visa,” he

said. “In some ways, Pakistan and India have a very good relationship. We have

had a lot of damage. We want friendship, not guns.”

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

India and Pakistan have thousands of years of shared

history. Delhi and Lahore’s sandstone forts and grand mosques were all

constructed by the Mughal Empire, and both countries were later part of British

colonial India.

When Britain gave up control of the Indian subcontinent in

1947, it hastily partitioned it into Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan.

Hundreds of thousands died in ethnic bloodshed and millions more became

refugees.

Relations between the two countries have been strained ever

since. They have fought three wars, two of them over the Muslim-majority

Kashmir region that both claim in full but rule in part. Last month, they clashed

over a suicide attack on an Indian paramilitary convoy in Kashmir by Pakistani

militants.

In an attempt to maintain close links to Indian-administered

Kashmir, Pakistan often approves visas for the Muslim-majority population on

the same day.

For the vast majority of people in both countries, however,

arranging a visa to visit to the other side is a bureaucratic process that

often takes as long as three months, according to half a dozen of the bus’s

passengers.

“My family is divided: my wife’s side is in India, my side

in Pakistan,” said Shoaib Mohammed, a banker from Karachi returning after a

month in Delhi. “The visa process takes at least 45 days and is often

extended.”

Though the bus, inaugurated in 1999 by India’s then-prime

minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has been briefly suspended over the years, it

ran uninterrupted through the last major clash between the two countries that

erupted weeks after the launch.

Neither has it been canceled over the tensions of the last

month, although passenger numbers dropped into the single digits, officials

said, a testimony to the huge police operation to protect it.

Several armed police are always on board – one of whom on

this trip snores on the back seat, rifle on his lap. Dozens more block off

roads in Delhi and other major towns, while a convoy ahead clears traffic.

But even without policing costs, the bus loses money,

according to a senior Pakistani diplomat based in New Delhi familiar with the

bus’s operations.

“Commercially, the bus is a failure,” he said. “But

relations between the two countries are so bad at the moment neither side can

afford to cancel it.”

INTO THE SUNSET

After lunch in another deserted and heavily guarded highway

restaurant, the bus passes through Wagah-Attari, one of the few active border

crossings between India and Pakistan. It is best known for an elaborate dusk

ceremony where high-kicking guards from both countries perform a choreographed

routine at a purpose-built stadium that straddles the border.

Most days, just 100 people cross in either direction, Indian

and Pakistani border officials said. Both times Reuters crossed the border, the

process took close to three hours, and the terminal was deserted with no other

travelers in sight apart from those on the bus.

Mir, from Kashmir, is held by Indian border officials for 40

minutes for questioning.

“Kashmiris are dangerous,” he laughed, as he returned to the

bus.

Shortly before the dusk ceremony begins, the bus drives

across the border through the stadium, where hundreds of spectators from both

countries roar their approval.

Passengers then pass through near-identical Pakistani

immigration checks.

On board, spirits are high as the bus begins its last lap to

the center of Lahore, about 20 km (12 miles) away.

“We have been visiting for the last 40 years and this time

there were no problems for me as a normal visitor,” Mohammed said, of his visit

to Delhi when tensions were at their peak. “I didn’t feel any anger against

Pakistanis. Nothing.”