MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It was a relatively quiet weekend across the border between India and Pakistan. That's after the two nuclear powers agreed to a ceasefire on Saturday and after days of the most serious fighting between the two in decades. So what now? On the line with us to tell us more about this is NPR's Diaa Hadid. She covers Pakistan and India from Mumbai. Good morning, Diaa. Thanks for joining us.
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Thank you, Michel.
MARTIN: How would you describe the mood today?
HADID: Well, I would say celebratory, especially in Pakistan, which is a far smaller country than India. And so the fighting there felt a lot more existential.
(SOUNDBITE OF FIREWORKS)
HADID: Pakistanis celebrated in the streets.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Singing in non-English language).
HADID: And they're shouting, long live Pakistan there. But people are also mourning their dead. There were 26 people killed in an attack in late April in Indian controlled Kashmir, and India blamed Pakistan. And that triggered this whole escalation. More people were killed last week, and they include the twins, Zain and Zoya. They were in Indian-held Kashmir. We spoke to the children's cousin, a fellow called Sarfaraz Ahmad Mir (ph), and he says his uncle was also seriously wounded and doesn't know that his children have been killed.
SARFARAZ AHMAD MIR: (Non-English language spoken).
HADID: He says, "my uncle asks my aunt, where are the children? And she says they're at home. And then she leaves his hospital room and cries." Mir says his aunt feels that if the fighting had continued, more parents like her would have lost their children.
MARTIN: Oh, that's just devastating, Diaa. But what about the ceasefire? Is it holding?
HADID: Yeah, it's holding for now. There was tit-for-tat shelling of Indian and Pakistani border towns after the ceasefire was announced, but it died down. The ceasefire's holding. Both sides are claiming victory, saying they won, even though it appears that both sides had some big losses.
MARTIN: Would you say more about that? What do you mean by big losses? Like what?
HADID: India damaged multiple Pakistani air bases, including one near the capital, Islamabad. That's a fairly sizable breach. Pakistan claims it shot down five Indian aircraft, including at least one French-made fighter jet. India hasn't commented on that, and giving you a sense of how sensitive this is, it blocked one Indian website after it published a story about the aircraft being down. So I spoke Siddharth Varadarajan. He's the founding editor of that site. It's called The Wire.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN: Not only is this a military loss. The larger question that have you then created effective deterrence against Pakistan or have you, in a sense, made things worse? I think this action has opened up a whole can of worms.
HADID: A can of worms, he says. In the next few weeks and months, military and political analysts will be asking how robust India's defenses are.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Diaa Hadid in Mumbai. Diaa, thank you.
HADID: You're welcome, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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