Word: khans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Like thousands of Kashmiris, Khan found himself living on the front line of what would become Asia's most bitter conflict when the U.N. drew a Line of Control through Kashmir in 1949, dividing the disputed Himalayan region into Indian and Pakistani parts. Because the Line of Control also split the area around Khan's village of Uroosa, he was cut off from all but his most immediate family. The divide deepened in 1989, when separatist rebels, incensed at India's heavy-handed rule of its only Muslim-majority state, began an uprising in the meadows of the Kashmir valley...
...part, Khan hasn't seen or spoken to his Pakistani relatives since he was eight. But a cease-fire announced in November, and an agreement last week by India and Pakistan to begin peace talks in February, have set him dreaming of a reunion. "It will be a new beginning," says Khan. "My family will meet once more, and life will start in our valley again." In his isolation, cut off in a war zone that until last month the Indian army kept off-limits to all but a few farmers, Khan cannot know that his relatives, whom TIME...
...enduring anguish, distrust and rancor among thousands of Kashmiri families such as Khan's should temper the optimism inspired by last week's agreement between India and Pakistan to seek peace. Still, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf struck a conciliatory pose, and both sides made significant concessions. India gave up its insistence that all jihadi incursions from Pakistan into Indian-administered Kashmir end before any talks could start, and Pakistan vowed its territory would no longer serve as a terrorist base. For some, the portents have never been so good. "You could not have...
...There are other signs of potential trouble ahead. Former Prime Minister of Pakistani-held Kashmir, Sardar Muhammad Abdul Qayyum Khan, is concerned that Kashmiris have been excluded from upcoming negotiations, undermining the legitimacy of the talks. "They agreed that Kashmir was a central issue," he says, "but they did not mention the centrality of the Kashmiris in making any decision." And there are questions, too, about Musharraf's reasons for seeking peace. Some observers say that although he had been considering rapprochement with India for some time, his decision to drop support for Kashmiri militancy was cemented by the Christmas...
...Watching the jade waters of the Jhelum flowing into Pakistan below, Uroosa villager Khan says his anger wore out long ago. What remains is a debilitating sense of a life gone by, unused and unexplored, as if, he imagines, he had spent all his years in jail. "All my life," he says, "I've thought to myself 'Why did this happen to me; why was I born to see this tragedy?'" Khan now wonders if he will be able to adapt to a wider world should peace come. Will he get along with a family he won't recognize? Will...