STOP KILLING US IN THE SHADOW OF PROTECTION: KASHMIRI MUSLIM

I am also a Kashmiri Muslim. I was born in the shadow of the Line of Control, where every sunrise is uncertain and every loud sound makes children duck for cover. My home is not a battlefield. It is a place of memories, prayers, laughter and now, graves. For years, Pakistan has claimed it fights for us, that it bleeds for Kashmir, that it is our voice. But what kind of brotherly hand carries fire instead of food? What kind of protector rains down death on the very people it claims to defend?

They say their attacks are “targeted.” That only “culprits” are in their crosshairs. But the ten bodies we buried recently were not terrorists. They were not militants. They were my neighbors. My friends. My people. They were Muslims, just like me,caught in a war they never asked for. In Rajouri, a father was torn apart while walking his daughter to school. In Tangdhar, a boy lost both his legs trying to protect his little sister from a mortar shell. In Bhimber Gali, an old woman burned alive in her kitchen when a rocket hit her house. In Karnah, we carried the charred body of a madrasa student on our shoulders, wrapped not in a flag, but in the sobs of his grieving mother.

Tell me, Pakistan—where were your “precise strikes” when our children were blown to pieces? Where was your “strategic restraint” when you shelled our mosques and homes during prayer? You speak in the name of Islam, but your fire does not discriminate between Hindu and Muslim—it just kills. Every time the world hears your speeches about Kashmir, another child here forgets how to laugh. Another mother clutches the bloodstained clothes of her son. Another family is left to rebuild from rubble, with empty chairs at the dinner table.

We, Kashmiri Muslims on this side of the LoC, have been used as pawns in your political theatre. You raise slogans of "freedom" while we are the ones shackled by fear. You talk of “solidarity” while your shells rip through our homes. You blame India for every wound, but it’s your bullets that reach our doorsteps. We are not blind. We are not voiceless. And we are not fooled. If this is your love, we want none of it. If this is your support, we beg you, leave us alone. Stop using our pain to justify your wars. Stop turning our villages into battlefields.

We don’t want your weapons, your war cries, your headlines. We want peace. We want safety. We want to wake up without counting the living and mourning the dead. We, the Kashmiri Muslims you pretend to fight for, are tired of dying for your lies. Let us live and live happily with our beloved India, where humanity is paramount than anything else.