Siachen: a step down

The Indian response welcoming Pakistan Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s unilateral offer of a ceasefire had a sub-text. India proposed a ceasefire along the “actual ground position line” in Siachen. Pakistan, in turn, has clarified that it had already regarded a ceasefire in Siachen as part of the general ceasefire.

If this new-found sense of reciprocity does indeed help wind down a wholly meaningless eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation in the high reaches of the Karokoram range — where soldiers of India and Pakistan have had to operate in snow-bound wastes at altitudes of 20,000 feet, where temperatures dip to 60 degrees centigrade, where winds are known to travel at 150 km per hour, and where the human metabolism is subject to almost unbearable stress — so much the better. The Siachen glacier may have made it to the record books as the world’s highest battlefield besides being the world’s largest non-polar glacier, but the military engagement that has been going on here for nearly 20 years has hardly served the strategic interests of either India or Pakistan. In fact, apart from claiming the lives of numerous soldiers — who have succumbed more to the inhospital conditions than to enemy fire — it has proved an enormous drain on the exchequer of both countries. According to one estimate, India spends Rs 1095 crore on its Siachen operations every year and Pakistan, surely, must also be incurring huge expenditures. Yet, ironically, this area — which can only be accessed by helicopter — is largely unchartered, with the demarcated line ending at a point termed NJ 9842. It is probably impossible to do better given the inchoate nature of these glacial environs.

Despite the fact that both nations have an immense stake in winding down military operations in this region, the process may not be an easy one precisely because Siachen, despite having reached something of a stalemate, has come to symbolise national honour. Two attempts to disengage have been made earlier — in 1989 and 1992 — but both initiatives ended in failure possibly because of a lack of political will. The present initiative will, hopefully, not be marked by such a denouement.