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Siachen: No white flags yet on the highest battlefield on Earth
Oct 6, 2004 19: 52 EST
Previously published Aug 26, 2004
Much has been said about the absurdity of war. Even though some wars make more sense than other. But a 20 year battle for an isolated piece of a 6300 meter lifeless glacier is one of the hard ones to grasp. Pakistan and India have been fighting for the borderline Siachen Glacier since 1984.
They keep holding their positions and losing thousands of soldiers - most of them due to AMS and hypothermia rather than enemy fire. Thus the Siachen glacier holds the dubious honor to be dubbed "the highest killing field on Earth".
Climbers to blame for point NJ9842
No we didn't start it, but Himalayan climbers have had their role in the Siachen conflict. When India and Pakistan established the line in 1949 under UN supervision and tweaked it some in the 1971 Simla agreement (it divides Jammu and Kashmir between the two countries) they stopped the Line of Control at a point known as NJ9842. This is the base of the glacier. The belief was that the glacier and mountains were so high and so inhospitable, that it was pointless to define the border. Who would be interested in a sea of ice surrounded by rugged peaks anyway? Climbers would, of course.
Ignited by a climbing permit
In the 1980s, some mountaineers asked for permission to climb in the Siachen area, according to rediff.com. Pakistan invited the climbers to ascend the glacier, implying that it was part of its territory. India noticed, and dropped a unit of parachute troopers atop the glacier in April 1984, taking possession of the place ever since that day.
Pakistan responded, and that's how the first high altitude battle began. Since then many have died, but the positions haven't changed much. Ice pinnacles are harder than villages to take or lose, and there is no information on the subject from any of the combatants anyway.
1989 marked the outburst of the Islamic insurgent movement, and it didn't help to ease the conflict. Neither did the nuclear race started by both India and Pakistan.
Siachen and Kashmere
The real value of the territory lies in Kashmere. Not for the wooly sweaters, but because that's where the Karakorum (Pakistan-China) highway can be overlooked and controlled.
Once considered a hippie paradise in the center of Srinagar, and one of the most beautiful valleys in the Himalayas, Kashmere now barely survives in the middle of the crossfire. Impoverished and ignored by both contenders and the rest of he world, Kashmere is the collateral victim between Indian troops and Muslim extremists. "Kashmiris have been given little say in determining their future, or even the present course of their daily lives.
More than 60,000 civilians have been murdered and raped during two decades of Islamist insurgency and paramilitary counterattacks" states in Herald Tribune Mansoor Ijaz, a joint author of the blueprint for the July 2000 cease-fire by Muslim militants in Indian-governed Kashmir.
Well wishes and polite suggestions to each other to retreat
Good news is a cease fire since November, and some weeks ago the India and Pakistan governments finally agreed to hold peace talks. Indian Defense Secretary Vikram Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Lieutenant-General Hamid Nawaz Khan met in Islamabad in the fist week of August.
But after a month of conversations, statements of good wishes, stubbornness in their own positions and kind suggestions toward the other to be the first to retreat, they have both returned home with nothing close to a solution or even a real measure of improvement.
Official reports assures that "India and Pakistan agreed on Aug 6, to continue discussions to work out modalities for disengagement and redeployment of troops on the Siachen Glacier and resolve the issue in a peaceful manner". No mention about when or how.
We'll meet again
"As a matter of fact military experts of both countries would discuss redeployment of troops but they have not agreed on a time frame so far," according to international media.
In other words, much talk and no action. Well, alright then - they've agreed for their respective foreign secretaries to meet again and review the entire process in New Delhi on Sept 4. Also Senior military officials of India and Pakistan will meet soon to work out the details of the Siachen Glacier conflict.
But don't be surprised if none of them will choose to surrender the place. Meanwhile, soldiers will freeze to death on the forgotten Glacier of Siachen.
Siachen is high up in the Karakoram Range, (actually between Saltoro Ridge and Karakoram Range), which stretches across Ladakh and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.The biggest glacier outside the polar regions, Siachen is 78 kilometers long. At 6,300 meters (20,700 feet), Siachen has become the world's highest battlefield, where the bigger enemy is the bitter cold. Temperatures hover at -30° Celsius and often touch -60° C. Kashmere is in the northern part of the Indian Subcontinent. Borders: Afghanistan and China to the North, China to the East, and Pakistan to the West. Major part of the region is in Indian control, organized as the State of Jammu and Kashmere. NE-section Azad Kashmere (free Kashmere) belongs to Pakistan. Population professes mostly Muslim religion.
Image of Indian soldier in Siachen, courtesy of CNN Asia
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