Flashpoint Kashmir: a mountain territory takes center stage as India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons, move dangerously close to war.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: International

One night last month, a 28-year-old farmer answered a knock at the door of his mud house land was gunned down. Another evening, just after sunset, six members of a family, including a 6-month-old baby, were slaughtered. A teenager was set on fire. Many houses have been burned down.

Such is the day-to-day savagery in Kashmir, the Himalayan region where control is split between Pakistan and India. The violence is committed by both Islamic militants, who want the Muslim-majority territory to be independent or part of Pakistan, and opposing Indian security forces who are determined to keep control of it.

Kashmir has been the cause of two wars between India and Pakistan, and now threatens to cause another. The past two months have seen an enormous buildup of troops, tanks, guns, and landmines all along the 1,800-mile border between the two nations. In Kashmir itself, Indian and Pakistani troops exchange fire every day across a de facto border, called the Line of Control, that runs through the disputed territory.

Especially worrisome is that both sides have become nuclear powers in the years since their last war. Now India, by one estimate, has between 45 and 95 nuclear devices; Pakistan, between 30 and 52. Because the nations lie next to each other, missiles could reach their targets in a matter of minutes. Tensions run high, and leaders from all corners of the globe are watching apprehensively.

"The stakes were high long before they had nuclear weapons," says Marshall Bouton, a South Asia expert and president of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. "It's just that Americans got all hot and bothered about it when the nuclear weapons became evident."

TERRORIST ATTACK PROMPTS CRISIS

The current crisis began when a heavily armed five-man terrorist team tried to blast its way into India's Parliament building in the capital, New Delhi. The Dec. 13 attack killed nine people plus the gunmen. India immediately accused two Pakistan-based militant groups opposing India's presence in Kashmir, and demanded that Pakistan halt the flow of terrorists into India--or face military consequences.

"I think the Indians are willing to go over the edge and use the military option," says one Western diplomat in New Delhi. "But precisely what form it would take or how it will achieve their aims, I don't know. They're throwing everything they have into the front lines."

Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, outlawed the two militant groups blamed by India...