Experts: All Eyes on Kashmir as Tensions Between India and Pakistan Escalate

• Experts: All Eyes on Kashmir as Tensions Between India and Pakistan Escalate
  by https://sputniknews.com/
  As tensions escalate between India and Pakistan along the border of disputed Kashmir, international concern has grown over whether a fourth war will break out between the two countries.
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  Hu Bofeng, Ding Xuezhen, Gu Di — Over 70 years ago, British colonizers turned Kashmir into a powder keg that created decades of turmoil, hostility and conflicts between India and Pakistan.
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  Today, at least 250,000 Indian and over 100,000 Pakistani soldiers are stationed along the 1,000 kilometre Line of Control which divides Kashmir into Indian and Pakistani controlled parts. Despite this standoff, there is still hope for peace between the two countries in the future.
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  Angry Land
  Melanie, an Indian history teacher and retired principal of a primary school, told the Global Times that the word Kashmir comes from Sanskrit, and literally means “dry land”. “Now this ‘dry land’ has almost turned into ‘angry land,'” her husband Ram, a retired engineer, told the Global Times.
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  Melanie said Kashmir’s history can be traced back to ancient times, and the earliest written records of the region go back as far as 900 years when about 8,000 Sanskrit verses were found to chronicle the history of Kashmir from mythical times until the 12th century. Melanie picked two books off the shelf on Kashmir at random. One was A History of Kashmir by Indian administrator and author Parvez Dewan, born in Srinagar, Kashmir, and the other was Our Moon Has Blood Clots, a memoir by Indian journalist Rahul Pandita.
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  In Pakistani capital Islamabad, many books about Kashmir can also be found in bookstores. Open a random map of Pakistan in a local bookstore, and the Kashmir territory now administered by India is labelled an “annexed land.”
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  Decades of territorial disputes have resulted in a lack of authoritative statistics on the demographic and geological conditions of Kashmir. Most documents show that the region, with a size of 190,000 square kilometres, has a population of 10 million, with Muslims being the majority. Due to its breathtaking landscape, Kashmir has been dubbed “heaven on Earth” and is home to K2, or Chhogori, the second highest mountain in the world.
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