Rajasthan: A Pakistani national was caught trespassing into Jaisalmer Air Force station, also had Indian Aadhaar Card; Interrogation underway
LOC Flare up: Related news and Discussions
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A society which celebrates martyrdom is indeed an exploitative one!! From what I understand of the Pakistani society, it is a chaotic hell where every one's personal agenda is in conflict with others. Psychologically analyzing human subconscious drives, celebration by neighborhood of loss of someone is for sure deceptive.
Everyone who was a state subject as on 15th Aug 1947 will be allowed to vote irrespective of his present residence and so will be his children.
Not sure where to post this
I am 70: The shopkeeper who lived through Kashmir's wars
17 August 2017
As India and Pakistan celebrate 70 years since their creation as sovereign states, the BBC's M Ilyas Khan meets a Kashmiri shopkeeper who was born at the same time as Pakistan.
The story of Mohammad Younus Butt is the story of Neelum Valley - a narrow river valley in north-western Kashmir.
Mr Butt's father died three months before his birth, leaving a widow, three more sons, a daughter and a two-acre farm.
He was born in Athmuqam, then a tiny, obscure village. A that time the former princely state of Kashmir was threatened with division and a newly-created Pakistan was about to launch its first proxy invasion to annex it.
He has since lived through two more conflicts, and alternating spells of peace and confrontation.
"My mother told me that I was born in the month of Inqilab (revolution)," he says, using the term many Kashmiris use for partition.
"She told me it was just before the Hindu families in Keran and Tethwal started to flee across the (Neelum) river. The panic was caused by waves of armed Pathan tribal fighters who came up the river from Muzaffarabad."
These tribesmen were part of a larger tribal militia raised and armed by Pakistan that was to descend on Srinagar, the region's major city, from the north.
A year later, the fighting was over and Kashmir was effectively divided. Athmuqam, which fell on the Pakistani side, was left to carry on with its isolated pastoral existence.
Partition of India in August 1947
Mr Butt's earliest memories are of a place where there was not much else to do beyond tending cattle or playing hide and seek on terraced farmlands.
"There was no school in the village, and hardly a literate person. If someone received a letter, they would take it to Keran (12km away), where there was a post office and they could find a clerk to read it for them."
If someone wanted to send a telegram, they had to travel to Teethwal, 50km away, where the only tele-printer in the entire valley was installed.
There was no road in the region and no transport. People used to travel on foot or on mules.
Image captionMr Butt stayed in his house as conflict raged in the 1980s and 1990s
Image captionBetter transport links have changed life in the valley - but old ways remain
When he was about seven years old, his mother sent him to school. The primary school was 8km away and the middle school 4km beyond that.
"Life then was all about walking to school, walking back home, tending to cattle, helping on the farm, and finding time to play."
He left school when he failed grade seven. "But I had learned to read and write. I was among the first literate people in my village," he said.
Adulthood arrived with a bump in 1962, when several things happened.
That year, he got married to his cousin, then his mother gave him money to set up a grocery shop, only to die a few months later.
"She gave me 520 rupees to start the shop - it was the third shop in Athmuqam."
In those days the road from Muzaffarabad came only as far as Nauseri, about 65km away. It was the nearest wholesale market.
"I brought six pony-loads of groceries on my first trip. We would walk the entire day from dawn to dusk to reach Nauseri. And it would take us two days to get home because the ponies needed to be rested."
Kashmir: A quick history
He started to get involved in local politics, and was influenced by KH Khurshid, a respected politician appointed president of Pakistan-administered Kashmir in 1959 who was seen as a champion of Kashmiri rights.
But Mr Khurshid's career was short-lived, ending in 1964 when he fell out with the Pakistani establishment over the constitutional status of Kashmir, meaning the end of Mr Butt's political activism.
But 1964 was also the year Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru died, and preparations for the second "tribal invasion" of Kashmir came, this time with local Kashmiris instead of tribal Pathans leading the guard, recruited by Pakistan. Pakistan's military has never officially confirmed it ever commissioned such a force.
"The policemen went from village to village recruiting Kashmiri youth. People would fall in line, and the chief police officer would walk down the queue, sizing up each individual. He would touch those he chose on the shoulder and ask them to step into a separate line."
The chief policeman patted Mr Butt on the shoulder.
"I told him I had a shop. He said all you need to do is accept the rifle and stay at home. I took the rifle. But weeks later they came and asked me to shut my shop and join training."
The secret troops who tried to start a rebellion
He and his fellow recruits spent three months training in Muzaffarabad's Nisar Camp. Most of them then infiltrated into Indian Kashmir, but some who could read and write were kept behind for clerical work at supply depots.
"I was posted at a camp in Athmuqam where I kept records of equipment and supplies. I was there until our forces were defeated in Kashmir, and India attacked Pakistan (on 6 September 1965)."
After the two countries signed a peace agreement in January 1966, the force was disbanded.
"Those who wanted to stay in the army stayed on, while the rest of us handed in our rifles and came home. I came home to my shop. It was still locked and there was merchandise in it."
"Until then, our shepherds had always considered those areas our land. The same thing happened in several places down the valley."
Image captionIndian troops took high ground in Neelum Valley, with a devastating effect for its residents
For a while, peace prevailed. The road was gradually extended from Nauseri to Athmuqam, and further on. It was little better than the mule tracks it replaced, but it did bring transport and lifestyle changes for the area's growing population.
Athmuqam emerged as the main town in Neelum Valley. A general hospital and several schools were built, bank branches opened and a telephone exchange was set up.
"We built a new house, and all of my children - a boy and two girls - went to university," Mr Butt said.
But more conflict was to come, with the 1989 insurgency in Srinagar. Fresh hordes of private militiamen started to descend on Neelum Valley. This time the proxies were Islamic militants, organized by the Pakistani military to infiltrate Indian Kashmir.
The Indians, having occupied the valley's high ground in 1965, had the settlements in their rifle sights. As the conflict intensified, so did retaliatory fire from the Indians.
"I can't recall a worse time for Athmuqam. Everything that was built in 20 years was turned to rubble in 15 years of hostilities," he said.
The hospital was destroyed, and so were schools and colleges. Farming activity became impossible. Nearly all the population moved to safer areas, such as Muzaffarabad, or to gullies higher up which were not exposed to direct fire.
Only a handful of people remained to look after their own properties. Mr Butt was one of them.
"Athmuqam was a lonely place then. You couldn't find a soul to talk to. My brothers went away with their families, leaving their belongings in my care.
"In this neighbourhood only three households stayed behind. Our houses were damaged. We would eat and sleep in bunkers we had dug. Our orchards were destroyed.
"No children went to schools in those years. A whole generation missed out on education."
Image captionMr Butt has seen Athmuqam grow in times of peace
Over the last 14 years, since the 2003 ceasefire, much of the infrastructure has been rebuilt. A generation of educated young people are now adults and the government is trying to promote the area as a tourist destination.
But peace is brittle. One incident of cross-border fire during the season scares the tourists away for months.
"Life has revived, but the danger is there all the time," he says.
Mr Butt says his "innings" is nearing its end. He has had three operations so far, two of them during the last three years.
But he is glad that business has grown, and Athmuqam has grown.
"I'm lucky to have been born in freedom, and I hope our future generations will guard this freedom as a precious gift of God."
The shopkeeper who lived through Kashmir's wars
I am 70: The shopkeeper who lived through Kashmir's wars
17 August 2017
As India and Pakistan celebrate 70 years since their creation as sovereign states, the BBC's M Ilyas Khan meets a Kashmiri shopkeeper who was born at the same time as Pakistan.
The story of Mohammad Younus Butt is the story of Neelum Valley - a narrow river valley in north-western Kashmir.
Mr Butt's father died three months before his birth, leaving a widow, three more sons, a daughter and a two-acre farm.
He was born in Athmuqam, then a tiny, obscure village. A that time the former princely state of Kashmir was threatened with division and a newly-created Pakistan was about to launch its first proxy invasion to annex it.
He has since lived through two more conflicts, and alternating spells of peace and confrontation.
"My mother told me that I was born in the month of Inqilab (revolution)," he says, using the term many Kashmiris use for partition.
"She told me it was just before the Hindu families in Keran and Tethwal started to flee across the (Neelum) river. The panic was caused by waves of armed Pathan tribal fighters who came up the river from Muzaffarabad."
These tribesmen were part of a larger tribal militia raised and armed by Pakistan that was to descend on Srinagar, the region's major city, from the north.
A year later, the fighting was over and Kashmir was effectively divided. Athmuqam, which fell on the Pakistani side, was left to carry on with its isolated pastoral existence.
Partition of India in August 1947
- Perhaps the biggest movement of people in history, outside war and famine.
- Two newly-independent states were created - India and Pakistan.
- About 12 million people became refugees. Between half a million and a million people were killed in religious violence.
- Tens of thousands of women were abducted.
Mr Butt's earliest memories are of a place where there was not much else to do beyond tending cattle or playing hide and seek on terraced farmlands.
"There was no school in the village, and hardly a literate person. If someone received a letter, they would take it to Keran (12km away), where there was a post office and they could find a clerk to read it for them."
If someone wanted to send a telegram, they had to travel to Teethwal, 50km away, where the only tele-printer in the entire valley was installed.
There was no road in the region and no transport. People used to travel on foot or on mules.
Image captionMr Butt stayed in his house as conflict raged in the 1980s and 1990s
Image captionBetter transport links have changed life in the valley - but old ways remain
When he was about seven years old, his mother sent him to school. The primary school was 8km away and the middle school 4km beyond that.
"Life then was all about walking to school, walking back home, tending to cattle, helping on the farm, and finding time to play."
He left school when he failed grade seven. "But I had learned to read and write. I was among the first literate people in my village," he said.
Adulthood arrived with a bump in 1962, when several things happened.
That year, he got married to his cousin, then his mother gave him money to set up a grocery shop, only to die a few months later.
"She gave me 520 rupees to start the shop - it was the third shop in Athmuqam."
In those days the road from Muzaffarabad came only as far as Nauseri, about 65km away. It was the nearest wholesale market.
"I brought six pony-loads of groceries on my first trip. We would walk the entire day from dawn to dusk to reach Nauseri. And it would take us two days to get home because the ponies needed to be rested."
Kashmir: A quick history
- 1947-8: Kashmir's Maharaja hesitates over whether to join India or Pakistan, prompting the two countries to go to war over the Muslim-majority territory
- 1949: Kashmir is partitioned between India and Pakistan, with a ceasefire line agreed
- 1965: Second Indo-Pakistan war over Kashmir ends in a ceasefire
- 1980-90s: Kashmir insurgency: Discontent over Indian rule leads to armed resistance, mass protests and a rise in Pakistan-backed militant groups; ten of thousands of people are killed
- 1999: India and Pakistan engage in a brief conflict after militants cross the Line of Control into the Indian-administered district of Kargil
- 2001: An attack on the Indian parliament is blamed on two militant groups considered close to Pakistan. The two nuclear-armed neighbours mobilise millions of troops in a confrontation that lasts 18 months.
- 2003: Two sides agree a ceasefire along the Line of Control
He started to get involved in local politics, and was influenced by KH Khurshid, a respected politician appointed president of Pakistan-administered Kashmir in 1959 who was seen as a champion of Kashmiri rights.
But Mr Khurshid's career was short-lived, ending in 1964 when he fell out with the Pakistani establishment over the constitutional status of Kashmir, meaning the end of Mr Butt's political activism.
But 1964 was also the year Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru died, and preparations for the second "tribal invasion" of Kashmir came, this time with local Kashmiris instead of tribal Pathans leading the guard, recruited by Pakistan. Pakistan's military has never officially confirmed it ever commissioned such a force.
"The policemen went from village to village recruiting Kashmiri youth. People would fall in line, and the chief police officer would walk down the queue, sizing up each individual. He would touch those he chose on the shoulder and ask them to step into a separate line."
The chief policeman patted Mr Butt on the shoulder.
"I told him I had a shop. He said all you need to do is accept the rifle and stay at home. I took the rifle. But weeks later they came and asked me to shut my shop and join training."
The secret troops who tried to start a rebellion
He and his fellow recruits spent three months training in Muzaffarabad's Nisar Camp. Most of them then infiltrated into Indian Kashmir, but some who could read and write were kept behind for clerical work at supply depots.
"I was posted at a camp in Athmuqam where I kept records of equipment and supplies. I was there until our forces were defeated in Kashmir, and India attacked Pakistan (on 6 September 1965)."
After the two countries signed a peace agreement in January 1966, the force was disbanded.
"Those who wanted to stay in the army stayed on, while the rest of us handed in our rifles and came home. I came home to my shop. It was still locked and there was merchandise in it."
- I am 70: The woman as old as independent India
- The family who brought an Indian sweet to Pakistan
- The friendship that survived the division of a nation
- A Country Divided
"Until then, our shepherds had always considered those areas our land. The same thing happened in several places down the valley."
For a while, peace prevailed. The road was gradually extended from Nauseri to Athmuqam, and further on. It was little better than the mule tracks it replaced, but it did bring transport and lifestyle changes for the area's growing population.
Athmuqam emerged as the main town in Neelum Valley. A general hospital and several schools were built, bank branches opened and a telephone exchange was set up.
"We built a new house, and all of my children - a boy and two girls - went to university," Mr Butt said.
But more conflict was to come, with the 1989 insurgency in Srinagar. Fresh hordes of private militiamen started to descend on Neelum Valley. This time the proxies were Islamic militants, organized by the Pakistani military to infiltrate Indian Kashmir.
The Indians, having occupied the valley's high ground in 1965, had the settlements in their rifle sights. As the conflict intensified, so did retaliatory fire from the Indians.
"I can't recall a worse time for Athmuqam. Everything that was built in 20 years was turned to rubble in 15 years of hostilities," he said.
The hospital was destroyed, and so were schools and colleges. Farming activity became impossible. Nearly all the population moved to safer areas, such as Muzaffarabad, or to gullies higher up which were not exposed to direct fire.
Only a handful of people remained to look after their own properties. Mr Butt was one of them.
"Athmuqam was a lonely place then. You couldn't find a soul to talk to. My brothers went away with their families, leaving their belongings in my care.
"In this neighbourhood only three households stayed behind. Our houses were damaged. We would eat and sleep in bunkers we had dug. Our orchards were destroyed.
"No children went to schools in those years. A whole generation missed out on education."
Image captionMr Butt has seen Athmuqam grow in times of peace
Over the last 14 years, since the 2003 ceasefire, much of the infrastructure has been rebuilt. A generation of educated young people are now adults and the government is trying to promote the area as a tourist destination.
But peace is brittle. One incident of cross-border fire during the season scares the tourists away for months.
"Life has revived, but the danger is there all the time," he says.
Mr Butt says his "innings" is nearing its end. He has had three operations so far, two of them during the last three years.
But he is glad that business has grown, and Athmuqam has grown.
"I'm lucky to have been born in freedom, and I hope our future generations will guard this freedom as a precious gift of God."
The shopkeeper who lived through Kashmir's wars
However, the number of killed Pakistan Rangers have not been confirmed by BSF Jammu IG, “We have inflicted heavy damage to both infrastructure and life in Pakistan. At least four of their BoPs have been destroyed.”
More at: BSF Jawan Killed By Pak Sniper On His Birthday, India Avenges - DefenceLover
More at: BSF Jawan Killed By Pak Sniper On His Birthday, India Avenges - DefenceLover
I am from Kashmir and what you said is BS.
Anyone that is not from Gilgit Baltistan or Kashmir, cannot own any land in any of these territories. Even though my grandparents are from Jammu (they were forced out), we still could not buy any land in Azad Kashmir or Gilgit Baltistan.
Pakistan has no need to "change demographics" as the population is already overwhelmingly in favor of Pakistan, any state-sponsored demographic change would lead to unrest in the region.
We still haven't given half of the refugees that fled IoK during 1990, any citizenship, who number around 35,000-50,000 (not including illegal immigrants or unrecorded refugees), that's how sensitive we are on this topic.
The only demographic change in the region has been in Indian Occupied Kashmir. Half of the non-Muslim population of J&K are not even natives, they came from Punjab following partition violence. The Dogra regime which occupied Kashmir were also foreigners and slaughtered around 100,000-200,000 Muslims and forced another 200,000-300,000 to flee to make room for these foreigners in Jammu alone. Jammu's status as a Muslim-majority province changed overnight and then you wonder why Kashmiris and people of Gilgit Baltistan revolted against Dogra rule and called on neighboring tribesmen, minority militias and princely states to aid them.
From 1990 alone, around 40,000-50,000 civilians have been killed and countless others displaced in IoK; many tens of thousands fleeing into Pakistan.
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Why are Indians under the false impression that only Pakistanis are suffering damage? India is suffering same, if not more damage from cross-border firing.
Also do you really believe that the Rangers randomly lost 10 men? Were Indian Special Forces dropped 50 miles across LoC, trekked to the border and counted the bodies? Killing 500 Pakistani soldiers in the process?
I am startled how many Indians believe these fabrications created for domestic consumption to fool a gullible and egoistic people.
Around 400 Hindu Pandits were killed in Kashmir - those who were displaced were mostly resettled in the same state, compared to around 50,000 Kashmiri civilians dead and countless displaced since 1990 and around 100,000-250,000 Muslims kill4r from Jammu with 200,000-300,000 forced to flee in 1947.
We have been celebrating martyrdom before creation of Pakistan and for many baradaris/tribes; even before the introduction of Islam into the region. How is that exploitative and deceptive?
There is no way in hell that Pakistan will even give away one inch of it's integral territory nor will the people of Gilgit Baltistan or Azad Kashmir allow themselves and their land to be handed to any other country, least of all to India which they hold great enmity with.
Every terrorist and every terrorist supporterwill die a death in India, of which Kashmir is also a integral part of. And anyone who picks up arms against the republic of India is a terrorist in India. Now deal with that.
Planet Earth is a classroom. We all take birth here to learn and evolve. And of all the life forms, only humans have the ability to "learn and evolve" rapidly in multiple aspects from physical to psychological to emotional, spiritual, and several others. Other life forms also do evolve, but only at the survival level by adopting to the environment, which is also a form of learning, but at the basest level.
Hence, human life is supremely precious and can at no cost be allowed to go waste. It needs to be preserved at every cost. Every time one succeeds in learning, one celebrates - from KG, to primary school, middle and secondary school, Bachelors, Masters, Ph. D.; getting a job, getting married, having children, buying your own house, getting a car, getting promoted in social rank and getting privileges, traveling around the world and knowing diversity of cultures, celebrating time with family and friends, and nurturing your children based on the qualities they have in them and guiding them through the same cycle as you went through - all these are celebrated by humans.
The "martyrdom" you are talking about biradaris and tribes is out of their act of "Shourya" or "Valor" demonstrated in a battlefield fought with rules. You speak of its existence even before introduction of Islam; in that case if you know of Porus or Chanakya or Chandragupt Maurya or even Mahabharata, all of which happened in the bigger state of Punjab now split, there was always a "shokh sabha" (mourning and grief gathering) after the loss of a "Yoddha" (warrior) - the one who fought the "Yuddha" (war). There was never ever any celebration. Grief stricken families (ageing parents, wife, sisters, children) were taken care-of by the society and the state.
Fast forward to 21st century in the same part of land, now in Pakistan, none of such virtuous thinking and lifestyle is left any more.
First, instead of learning and evolving, people have adopted a foreign and inhuman way of life - which is to Hate, Pillage, Destroy and Kill all those who oppose the adopted foreign cult philosophy of Islam, do not agree with it or do not convert to it. For people in Islam, their minds are closed. Once within Islam, they are not allowed to question their way of life (religion) or to pursue an inner quest of life (something different than Islam). The terror from the keepers of the Islamic faith stops humans to pursue their inner search for supreme.
Second, celebration of life is forgotten; it is replaced by the new norm of death and destruction, of self and others.
Third, the celebration of death and destruction is "pretentious" to hide the pain and misery of the suffering family members as well it serves the purpose to hire future volunteers of death and destruction by demonstrating to them the celebration the tribe will do on their so called "martyrdom". It is an incentive, a "joining bonus" which the terrorists will receive when they are gone.
Fourth, it is the PA and the ISI who wields supreme power over the state as well as maintains its primacy and validity by keeping the Kashmir pot boiling by using these so called low cost "martyrs" (aka terrorists) thereby successfully creating the fear mongering, in turn getting a major chunk of Pakistan's budget, siphoning it off to foreign banks and for buying assets in foreign lands; as well as creating multi-million dollar properties within Pakistan.
This is why it is "exploitative and deceptive"!!
You don't know or at least pretend to not know anything about kashmiri pandits.
I have sympathy for kashmiri's specially to whom I interact with daily. They seems simple ,sober,well manneed folks. Who want to live life normally like everyone else.Not sure where to post this
I am 70: The shopkeeper who lived through Kashmir's wars
17 August 2017
As India and Pakistan celebrate 70 years since their creation as sovereign states, the BBC's M Ilyas Khan meets a Kashmiri shopkeeper who was born at the same time as Pakistan.
The story of Mohammad Younus Butt is the story of Neelum Valley - a narrow river valley in north-western Kashmir.
Mr Butt's father died three months before his birth, leaving a widow, three more sons, a daughter and a two-acre farm.
He was born in Athmuqam, then a tiny, obscure village. A that time the former princely state of Kashmir was threatened with division and a newly-created Pakistan was about to launch its first proxy invasion to annex it.
He has since lived through two more conflicts, and alternating spells of peace and confrontation.
"My mother told me that I was born in the month of Inqilab (revolution)," he says, using the term many Kashmiris use for partition.
"She told me it was just before the Hindu families in Keran and Tethwal started to flee across the (Neelum) river. The panic was caused by waves of armed Pathan tribal fighters who came up the river from Muzaffarabad."
These tribesmen were part of a larger tribal militia raised and armed by Pakistan that was to descend on Srinagar, the region's major city, from the north.
A year later, the fighting was over and Kashmir was effectively divided. Athmuqam, which fell on the Pakistani side, was left to carry on with its isolated pastoral existence.
Partition of India in August 1947
Read more:
- Perhaps the biggest movement of people in history, outside war and famine.
- Two newly-independent states were created - India and Pakistan.
- About 12 million people became refugees. Between half a million and a million people were killed in religious violence.
- Tens of thousands of women were abducted.
Mr Butt's earliest memories are of a place where there was not much else to do beyond tending cattle or playing hide and seek on terraced farmlands.
"There was no school in the village, and hardly a literate person. If someone received a letter, they would take it to Keran (12km away), where there was a post office and they could find a clerk to read it for them."
If someone wanted to send a telegram, they had to travel to Teethwal, 50km away, where the only tele-printer in the entire valley was installed.
There was no road in the region and no transport. People used to travel on foot or on mules.
Image captionMr Butt stayed in his house as conflict raged in the 1980s and 1990s
Image captionBetter transport links have changed life in the valley - but old ways remain
When he was about seven years old, his mother sent him to school. The primary school was 8km away and the middle school 4km beyond that.
"Life then was all about walking to school, walking back home, tending to cattle, helping on the farm, and finding time to play."
He left school when he failed grade seven. "But I had learned to read and write. I was among the first literate people in my village," he said.
Adulthood arrived with a bump in 1962, when several things happened.
That year, he got married to his cousin, then his mother gave him money to set up a grocery shop, only to die a few months later.
"She gave me 520 rupees to start the shop - it was the third shop in Athmuqam."
In those days the road from Muzaffarabad came only as far as Nauseri, about 65km away. It was the nearest wholesale market.
"I brought six pony-loads of groceries on my first trip. We would walk the entire day from dawn to dusk to reach Nauseri. And it would take us two days to get home because the ponies needed to be rested."
Kashmir: A quick history
Read more: Kashmir territories profile
- 1947-8: Kashmir's Maharaja hesitates over whether to join India or Pakistan, prompting the two countries to go to war over the Muslim-majority territory
- 1949: Kashmir is partitioned between India and Pakistan, with a ceasefire line agreed
- 1965: Second Indo-Pakistan war over Kashmir ends in a ceasefire
- 1980-90s: Kashmir insurgency: Discontent over Indian rule leads to armed resistance, mass protests and a rise in Pakistan-backed militant groups; ten of thousands of people are killed
- 1999: India and Pakistan engage in a brief conflict after militants cross the Line of Control into the Indian-administered district of Kargil
- 2001: An attack on the Indian parliament is blamed on two militant groups considered close to Pakistan. The two nuclear-armed neighbours mobilise millions of troops in a confrontation that lasts 18 months.
- 2003: Two sides agree a ceasefire along the Line of Control
He started to get involved in local politics, and was influenced by KH Khurshid, a respected politician appointed president of Pakistan-administered Kashmir in 1959 who was seen as a champion of Kashmiri rights.
But Mr Khurshid's career was short-lived, ending in 1964 when he fell out with the Pakistani establishment over the constitutional status of Kashmir, meaning the end of Mr Butt's political activism.
But 1964 was also the year Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru died, and preparations for the second "tribal invasion" of Kashmir came, this time with local Kashmiris instead of tribal Pathans leading the guard, recruited by Pakistan. Pakistan's military has never officially confirmed it ever commissioned such a force.
"The policemen went from village to village recruiting Kashmiri youth. People would fall in line, and the chief police officer would walk down the queue, sizing up each individual. He would touch those he chose on the shoulder and ask them to step into a separate line."
The chief policeman patted Mr Butt on the shoulder.
"I told him I had a shop. He said all you need to do is accept the rifle and stay at home. I took the rifle. But weeks later they came and asked me to shut my shop and join training."
The secret troops who tried to start a rebellion
He and his fellow recruits spent three months training in Muzaffarabad's Nisar Camp. Most of them then infiltrated into Indian Kashmir, but some who could read and write were kept behind for clerical work at supply depots.
"I was posted at a camp in Athmuqam where I kept records of equipment and supplies. I was there until our forces were defeated in Kashmir, and India attacked Pakistan (on 6 September 1965)."
After the two countries signed a peace agreement in January 1966, the force was disbanded.
"Those who wanted to stay in the army stayed on, while the rest of us handed in our rifles and came home. I came home to my shop. It was still locked and there was merchandise in it."
After the war, people in Athmuqam discovered that Indian forces had moved closer and set up permanent posts on high ground opposite their village.
- I am 70: The woman as old as independent India
- The family who brought an Indian sweet to Pakistan
- The friendship that survived the division of a nation
- A Country Divided
"Until then, our shepherds had always considered those areas our land. The same thing happened in several places down the valley."
Image captionIndian troops took high ground in Neelum Valley, with a devastating effect for its residents
For a while, peace prevailed. The road was gradually extended from Nauseri to Athmuqam, and further on. It was little better than the mule tracks it replaced, but it did bring transport and lifestyle changes for the area's growing population.
Athmuqam emerged as the main town in Neelum Valley. A general hospital and several schools were built, bank branches opened and a telephone exchange was set up.
"We built a new house, and all of my children - a boy and two girls - went to university," Mr Butt said.
But more conflict was to come, with the 1989 insurgency in Srinagar. Fresh hordes of private militiamen started to descend on Neelum Valley. This time the proxies were Islamic militants, organized by the Pakistani military to infiltrate Indian Kashmir.
The Indians, having occupied the valley's high ground in 1965, had the settlements in their rifle sights. As the conflict intensified, so did retaliatory fire from the Indians.
"I can't recall a worse time for Athmuqam. Everything that was built in 20 years was turned to rubble in 15 years of hostilities," he said.
The hospital was destroyed, and so were schools and colleges. Farming activity became impossible. Nearly all the population moved to safer areas, such as Muzaffarabad, or to gullies higher up which were not exposed to direct fire.
Only a handful of people remained to look after their own properties. Mr Butt was one of them.
"Athmuqam was a lonely place then. You couldn't find a soul to talk to. My brothers went away with their families, leaving their belongings in my care.
"In this neighbourhood only three households stayed behind. Our houses were damaged. We would eat and sleep in bunkers we had dug. Our orchards were destroyed.
"No children went to schools in those years. A whole generation missed out on education."
Image captionMr Butt has seen Athmuqam grow in times of peace
Over the last 14 years, since the 2003 ceasefire, much of the infrastructure has been rebuilt. A generation of educated young people are now adults and the government is trying to promote the area as a tourist destination.
But peace is brittle. One incident of cross-border fire during the season scares the tourists away for months.
"Life has revived, but the danger is there all the time," he says.
Mr Butt says his "innings" is nearing its end. He has had three operations so far, two of them during the last three years.
But he is glad that business has grown, and Athmuqam has grown.
"I'm lucky to have been born in freedom, and I hope our future generations will guard this freedom as a precious gift of God."
The shopkeeper who lived through Kashmir's wars
Although they're a bit more religious than normal Indian Muslims and have some sense of unfairness and oppression by center.