All Quiet On World's Coldest, Costliest Battlefield

by Ranjit Devraj

Everything about Siachen runs into superlatives, including the fact that the battle to gain control of the glacier -- called the world's Third Pole because of its minus 40 degrees Celsius temperatures -- is reckoned as the longest-running armed conflict between two regular armies in modern times.

Estimates of the costs to both South Asian rival countries in terms of human suffering and damage to their national economies are staggering.

They are also a measure of the cussedness with which the two countries, armed with nuclear weapons since 1998, have fought each other for well over half-a-century to gain full control over Kashmir which now stands divided between them.

Indian author Amitav Ghosh, well-known for his well-researched works, writes in the book 'Countdown': "If the money spent on the glacier were to be divided up and handed out to the people of India and Pakistan, every household in both countries would be able to go out and a new cooking stove or a bicycle."

Cooking stoves, bicycles and other items of ordinary daily use are coveted by the impoverished populations of both countries that together number 1.2 billion people --with at least 40 percent of them living below the poverty line and earning less than a dollar a day.

India alone spends a million dollars a day on Siachen -- a glaciated strip measuring 77 kilometres in length and three kilometres in width -- but can afford to keep the battle going longer because of its larger and more diversified economy.

Of the 3,500 Indian soldiers who have so far perished on the glacier, where the real killers are cold temperatures, rarefied air and avalanches, fewer than a hundred have actually have died from hostile fire. The figures for Pakistan would be lower, but not too far different.

Journalists visiting the glacier on regular tours conducted by the army invariably come away awed by the logistics of supplying the men on the glacier with food and ammunition. This has to be done using helicopters since no road can reach the area.

Adding to the long list of Siachen's superlatives is the helipad at Sonam, the world's highest at 21,000 feet.

The origins of what many have little difficulty in also recognising as the world's 'most absurd conflict' lies in the vague language used when the Line of Control, which runs through Kashmir, was first drawn up in 1949 following a brief but inconclusive war between India and Pakistan over what was until then the independent princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.

When Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India were created in 1947 following the decolonisation of a larger British India, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir or now Indian-controlled Kashmir, was not part of the deal. It was not long before the two new countries began fighting over it.

Pakistan took control over the Northern Areas and what it calls Azad Kashmir, while India retained two-thirds of the territory including Jammu, Ladakh and the Kashmir valley. No one thought of Siachen.

Because no Indian or Pakistani troops were present in the geographically inhospitable northeastern areas beyond point NJ9842 on the map, the ceasefire line was not demarcated on the ground but stated by the 1949 ceasefire agreement to run "thence north to the glaciers" until it reached the Chinese border.

"Since the Siachen glacier region falls within the undelineated territory beyond the last defined section of the Line of Control, map grid-point NJ 9842, Indian and Pakistani territorial claims are based on their respective interpretations of the vague language contained in the 1949 and 1972 agreements," says a joint study by the Pakistani scholar Samina Ahmed and Varun Sahni, who teaches International Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University here.

Released by the Cooperative Monitoring Centre, Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque in New Mexico, the 1998 study entitled 'Freezing the Fighting: Military Disengagement on the Siachen Glacier' is considered the most authoritative and neutral one available on the subject.

According to Ahmed and Sahni, for India, Siachen's geostrategic importance lies in the fact that "its control would support India's defense of Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir against Pakistani and/or Chinese threats."

In Pakistan's perceptions, say the joint researchers, "the Siachen dispute is relevant to the dispute with India over Kashmir, albeit indirectly."

The claim that Siachen is a part of Pakistan's Northern Areas is significant because Pakistan has since independence gradually incorporated this within the state while, maintaining that the Northern Areas were never under the jurisdiction of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in undivided India.

According to Ahmed and Sahni, the primary objective of Pakistan's strategy "has been to drive the cost of occupation high enough to force India to make concessions in any future settlement on Siachen."

Meanwhile, the ceasefire has encouraged proposals to use the glacier for saner purposes than as a battlefield, where no quarter has been given or taken since 1984. During that year, Indian troops were airlifted onto it, beating Pakistan in a race to gain the commanding heights of Siachen above 22,000 feet.

Environmentalists from both India and Pakistan would like to see the conversion of Siachen into a 'peace park' and undo the ecological damage caused by heavy troop deployments on it and the frequent firing of artillery shells.

Far from being a bleak and desolate glacier, Siachen is a biodiversity-rich area and home to snow leopards, brown bears and ibex that are threatened by the activities of the human species.

In June, the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) and World Conservation Union urged India and Pakistan to include in the normalization process the "establishment of a Siachen Peace Park to protect and restore the spectacular landscapes which are home to many endangered species, including the snow leopard."