Posted on 05/04/2002 7:21:56 PM PDT by dighton
ON the world's highest and most hostile battlefield where daily shelling continues, India and Pakistan have fought for 16 years over a glacier.
At 20,000 feet, it is so hard to breathe that simply walking requires a rest after every four paces, and so cold that the merest touch of metal on skin produces instantaneous frostbite. Speaking makes the head spin and the lack of oxygen can cause the lungs to fill with blood and fluid, suffocating the victim.
Yet up here, amid the soaring peaks where the Karakoram and Himalayas meet, elite forces of the Indian and Pakistani armies are waging war. It is the world's highest battlefield; it is costing both sides millions of dollars and thousands of lives. All to control an uninhabitable stretch of frozen wasteland.
"This is no place for man," admits Col Faisal Burki, the swashbuckling deputy commander of Pakistan's Siachen Brigade. "Here we are pushing human endurance to the limits." Figures provided to The Telegraph by the Pakistani army show that the conflict is costing the impoverished country a staggering £7.5 million a day, although they claim that India is spending many times that.
That the two poverty-stricken nations will go to such lengths to control a 40-mile long glacier of no strategic value does not augur well. They have fought three wars since Partition in 1947, and tensions between India's Hindu-nationalist-led government and Pakistan's military regime are running so high that many diplomats predict a fourth. Only this time it could be deadlier - in the past two years both countries have test-fired nuclear devices.
The battle for Siachen began in 1984 when Indian troops were airlifted on to the glacier and seized control of about two thirds. As one of the most northerly points of the disputed state of Kashmir, Siachen's high altitude meant that the ceasefire line demarcated in 1949 between the two nations had not reached this far. But Pakistan had always asserted control over the area and sent troops to the glacier.
Sixteen years on, after six failed rounds of talks, some 20,000 men are engaged in battle and there is daily shelling between the two sides. The war remains almost unknown outside India and Pakistan due to the difficulties in getting to Siachen. Accessible only by high-altitude helicopter, much of the time the region is completely cut off, and the weather can change so quickly that many helicopters - and men - are lost in blinding snow.
Blessed with the first clear day for weeks, the photographer Karen Davies and I boarded a Russian Mi17 helicopter at Rawalpindi air base for the long journey. Four hours later, on the ice at 14,000ft, it was not just the thin air that caught our breath. Used to the muted greens, browns and greys of the plains, we were confronted by a world of dazzling white and blue. The glacier's northern mountains include K2, the world's second highest mountain, and a crown of jagged peaks surrounded us.
But the world's most spectacular theatre of war is also the most hazardous. One Pakistani soldier is killed, on average, every four days on the glacier. But this is a battle with the elements rather than the enemy, where eight out of ten casualties are due to extreme weather conditions and avalanches.
At the forward positions, which range from 19,000 to 21,000ft, gale-force winds sweeping down from central Asia can bring temperatures down to -50C. Frostbite is a constant problem, men losing fingers which stick to their guns in the cold, and the high level of ultra violet rays mean that even with the strongest sun cream, the soldiers' faces are all burnt black.
Maj Gen Rashid Qureshi, Siachen Brigade Commander in 1993, recalls his own battle for survival. "I was rope-climbing up to 19,000 feet to inspect a post when a blizzard struck. There was so much wind and snow that there was no space between the snowflakes. "My glasses froze up and I couldn't see. I was short of breath, but when I inhaled my nose filled with snow. I was being suffocated by snow and it was all I could do to hang on to that rope. I thought: 'This is it' ."
Over the years, Pakistan has reduced weather casualties by a special acclimatisation programme. Soldiers are given three to four days to get used to every 1,000ft above 15,000ft - the point at which doctors say the ability to think diminishes.
Col Sabir Zaidi, the brigade's senior medic, says: "We are becoming world experts at high-altitude medicine." Having tested equipment from all over the world, they have reduced frostbite with special boots and socks, and they combat mountain sickness and pulmonary oedemas using sleeping bags fitted with pumps to increase barometric pressure.
The army has also created a surprising amount of infrastructure on the glacier's edge. Apart from a 50-bed hospital, its Goma transit camp boasts a sun-lounge, billiards hall, television room, mosque and two hot showers, as well as the world's highest cricket pitch. Solar panels and satellite dishes dot the landscape, along with an enormous pile of spent ammunition.
One reason for the enormous cost of the conflict is the difficulty of getting men and supplies to a region that can only be accessed by helicopters or, painfully slowly, by mules and on foot. Men can only endure 20 days at the high points and take a month to get there. It is even harder for the Indians, who have no roads to the region. Some soldiers find the isolation, coupled with the sense of operating in slow motion, drives them mad. "It's a terrible place. Nothing but snow, blood, and more snow," said one major.
But taking us up to a forward position where only hours earlier an Indian shell had exploded, Col Burki insisted that he relished the challenge. "We are determined to check the Indians," he said, twisting his moustache. "Every day they shell our posts - they always start it. But if they give me one blow, I give them 10."
That the two sides cannot agree to end this senseless conflict gives scant hope for bringing peace to the wider border dispute in Kashmir. Washington frets about the potential for it to escalate into all-out war. President Clinton is to visit Delhi next month in an effort to initiate talks, but with Pakistan off the itinerary because of last year's military coup, the attempt may backfire.
Not only has warmongering increased in recent weeks, but it has become highly personalised. India has not forgiven Pakistan's military leader, Gen Musharraf, for directing last spring's Kargil operation in which Pakistan seized positions that India had left unmanned during winter. Last week, Gen Musharraf told The Telegraph: "We don't want war and I don't think the Indians want war, but they are creating such hatred and hysteria that it is becoming increasingly difficult to negotiate."
As the winter snows melt and the two armies press forward, artillery exchanges at Siachen will become heavier. "I am a soldier not a politician, but I can say if the Indians don't leave there is a danger of full-scale war," said Col Burki. "This place may not look very useful but when you own something and someone takes it away, you fight for it."
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000.
Christina Lamb wrote this in February of 2000, so it's eighteen years now. I'm not remotely qualified to comment on this article. Some of you are: have at it.
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