Abhar Syeed can’t eat, barely sleeps and is completely focused on the terror she fears is unfolding thousands of miles away in a place many Pennsylvanians have never heard of – Kashmir.

Its official name is actually Jammu and Kashmir, which until Aug. 5 was a semi-autonomous state in India that the United Nations considered disputed territory. Pakistan and India – both nuclear powers -- have gone to war over Kashmir, and Syeed fears they may be headed there again.

The Downingtown, Chester County, resident was born in Kashmir. Her mother and father are there. Her aunts and uncles are there. And now people are talking about fears of genocide there.

She and other terrified residents of central Pennsylvania with families in Kashmir will be raising the alarm and protesting what they say is India’s illegal takeover of the region at 11 a.m. Sunday on the steps of the state Capitol.

“We want people to know what’s going on. We can’t believe the world will let this happen,” Syeed said. “We said never again; never again.”

Syeed hasn’t spoken to her mother and father or any of her relatives in Kashmir since Aug. 5 when the Indian government unilaterally upset the world order, revoked the region’s decades-long autonomous status, sent in thousands of troops and began arresting elected officials.

“I used to talk to my family almost every day,” Syeed said, “and I keep trying to call and to email, but there’s nothing. The lines are dead.”

Kashmir has gone black to the outside world. Syeed says India has put Kashmir “under an iron curtain.”

The Internet is down, there’s no phone service and intrepid reporters from the BBC, the New York Times, Voice of America speak of razor wire dividing neighborhoods to restrict movement, protests and street fights, and of people living in terror.

Syeed understands why. She fears India Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a staunch Hindu nationalist, will plunge Southeast Asia into a nuclear war that will inevitably draw in the United States as well. She says Modi believes that Kashmir, a Muslim-majority area, should belong to India. Period. She says he’ll do whatever it takes to make it so.

People all over the world, and right here in Pennsylvania, are glued to social media sites and closely monitoring international news stations for any news that would shed some light on the fate of their own families, which include Christians and people of other faiths.

“Some people are trying to turn this into a religious issue,” said Syeed, because Hindus are the majority in India and Kashmir is majority Muslim. “But this isn’t a religious struggle, it’s a political struggle,” she said. “It’s really about human rights.”

This is just the latest eruption is a long history of conflict in the region since Pakistan and India won independence from Great Britain in 1947. Then, they both went to war over Kashmir – several times. As a condition of ceasefire, The United Nations passed a resolution calling for a Kashmiris to hold a plebiscite to determine their own status, whether as a part of India, a union with Muslim-majority Pakistan or as an independent nation. That never happened.

And now, Syeed fears, Modi is determined it never will.

She and those protesting on Sunday are calling on Pennsylvania’s congressmen and their neighbors to stand with them and help save their families in Kashmir. It also might save the world from another nuclear disaster.

Joyce M. Davis is Opinion Editor for PennLive.