The book describes the author's personal experiences in the wake of the
insurgency in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in the 1990s. Despite his family's pleas,
Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front militants attack an
Indian military convoy close to their village. The Indian forces' reprisal is expected to be swift, and the family quickly grab their possessions and leave. In the end, they return home to find only a few bullets stuck in the walls, which Peer's grandfather pulls out with pliers. A few years later, Peer's father is targeted in an attack by Kashmiri militants due to the fact that he is an officer in the
Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service, under a government seen to be run by
Delhi. He was, according to rumour, betrayed by a jealous rival at work. After becoming a journalist for an Indian newspaper, Peer reports on other wars far away from home but is inevitably drawn back to Kashmir. The second half of his book records his interviews with the victims of the army occupation. Another sinister development is the increasing prominence in the conflict of Pakistani-funded militant groups such as
Lashkar-e-Taiba and
Jaish-e-Mohammed, which carry out suicide attacks in Kashmir, India and even in Pakistan itself against Sufi and Shia mosques. These groups also often have links with the
Taliban. The book ends in April 2005, with the hopeful resumption of a bus route between
Srinagar and
Muzaffarabad, the capitals of the Indian- and Pakistani-administered regions of Kashmir. But five years on, despite occasional gestures from both the governments, freedom is still a distant prospect for the people of Kashmir. ==Reviews==