Pakistan and India spend millions of dollars every year on their troops and to protect that no man’s land. Since the boundry line at that point has not been demarcated, it has given way to controversies and claims and counter claims by both states. India’s attempt to seize the glacier and Pakistan’s retaliation in 1984 broought this place into the limelight.
The question is would Pakistan and India be able to comeup with some proposal regarding the Siachen glacier.
What should be the policy of both the states with regard to this issue and what are the options we have if this issue is to be brought on the negotiating table??
Re: Siachen Glacier
I am attching an image of the area. Let’s view it and then give our opinions.
[thumb=H]siachen-Area24276_8816579.JPG[/thumb]
seen.Are you trying to say its already been delineated ??? If so than I know that.
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*Originally posted by Minerva: *
seen.Are you trying to say its already been delineated ??? If so than I know that.
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Pakistan's position has always been that it was delineated by the Simla Accord. India contested that, holding that the Simla Accord delineated the LOC up to, but not including, the mountain line of which the Siachen Glazier is a part of.
Very true, Mad. It was basically India's naked aggression and it really took advantage by seizing the no mans land.But does it serve any strategic purpose apart from the fact that so many soldiers on both sides of the border are guarding this glacier risking thier lives and becoming handicapped in the due course. I sincerily hope that they realize the futility of guarding that piece of ice and declare it a non-military zone.
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*Originally posted by Minerva: *
…....It was basically India's naked aggression and it really took advantage by seizing the no mans land.
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It is wrong to term Siachin as No-Man Land. NML is a declared zone between the borders. This is Pakistani area and by golly we will fight for it tooth and nail. I attached the map above and you all can see that it was clearly Pakistan's area. Nowhere along Pak-India border you see lines changing the way they now do on Siachin.
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*Originally posted by Minerva: *
....But does it serve any strategic purpose apart from the fact that so many soldiers on both sides of the border are guarding this glacier risking thier lives ...
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Soldiers (as opposed to bunch of Araabs on this forum) are trained to risk their lives to protect our motherland. They will continue doing so until their last drop of blood.
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*Originally posted by Minerva: *
...I sincerily hope that they realize the futility of guarding that piece of ice and declare it a non-military zone.
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I love nature and my heart cries to hear what Hindi-Bindi Hindustani Baha-Rat-i army is doing to the pristine glacier. They will never come down and we have to keep our soldiers to maintain status quo.
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*Originally posted by Minerva: *
But does it serve any strategic purpose apart from the fact that so many soldiers on both sides of the border are guarding this glacier risking thier lives and becoming handicapped in the due course.
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Controlling the Siachin glacier provides visibility over the trade route between Pakistan and Chine through the Karakorum Highway.
The northern route, being our only overland way to get supplies such as ammunition and fuel from our strongest military ally, is a lifeline in war to Pakistan.
If India holds the Siachin glacier, then in the next war (God forbid) they would be able to deny us the use of the Karakorum highway through being able to spot for accurate artillery bombardment of vehicles carrying supplies.
That's what makes it so important that when India troops were detected on Siachin, Pakistan rushed troops to Siachin so quickly they could not obtain cold-weather survival equipment. The first wave of defenders were deployed on Siachin knowing full that they would freeze to death within hours, but that they had to buy what time they could for a more comprehensive defense to be established.
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*Originally posted by mAd_ScIeNtIsT: *
.........
Controlling the Siachin glacier provides visibility over the trade route between Pakistan and Chine through the Karakorum Highway.
..........
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The argument is passionate but utterly wrong. Both Pak and Bharati writers ignore the terrain of the Siachin area while making far-fetched analysis. Just see the map I have already attached in a previous post.
Korakoram Highway is not in danger due to Siachin glacier. The highway is several hundred air miles from Siachin. I say air miles because it will be foolish to use Siachin for any long-range incursions in either Pakistan or Bharat.
As I said, Bha-rat sent military in a Pakistani zone. A section of Pakistani planners are happy to keep Rati army frozen in the area.
I on the other hand disagree with this policy and strongly advocate military / political solution to this problem.
A journalist once wrote in NYT wrt Siachin, “Two bald men fighting for a comb” India wants to withdraw but need a face saver! the cost in $$s and lives lost is huge. An Indian General once said, we will be happy to withdraw only if Pak promises to put 17,000 of its soldiers on the peak.
This is a war of attrition and Pak has played well not agreeing to what ever India proposes and there is a very good reason for that.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/buylink/oldlink/0,11397,1101890731-152315,00.html
July 31, 1989
The Himalayas War at the Top Of the World
Fighting at breathtaking altitudes, Indians and Pakistanis are locked in an icy stalemate
BY EDWARD W. DESMOND KASHMIR
The blast is startling, and so is the reverberation that echoes like a landslide. But the sound of artillery fire – the sound of war – fades quickly in the gigantic stillness of mountain and glacier. Soldiers clad in dirty white snowsuits, their faces burned black by the sun, scramble to put another shell in the 105-mm howitzer and fire again. They are Pakistanis, serving at an outpost 17,200 ft. up on the Baltoro Glacier, just short of a sweeping ridgeline called the Conway Saddle. Their fire is aimed over the ridge at similar positions manned by Indian troops seven miles away on the Siachen Glacier, the longest in the Karakoram mountains. When the weather is clear, the big guns sometimes boom round the clock.
On this day, the other side is not shooting back, so only a handful of Pakistanis man machine guns, to ensure that no Indian reconnaissance helicopter passes unchallenged. Blue sky forms a stunning canvas for the cathedrals of snow-laden mountains topping 20,000 ft., including K2, the world’s second highest peak. The Pakistani brigadier who commands the northern sector of the area looks around and says, “This place is beautiful. It was not meant for fighting.”
But fighting there is – and has been for more than five years. The Karakoram fastness of northern Kashmir is an area no men ever inhabited, and only a few had traversed, before Pakistani and Indian troops moved in to wage a bitter conflict, largely out of sight of their own people and the rest of the world. Pakistan and India each deploy several thousand troops in the region. Neither side releases casualty figures, yet hundreds of men have died from combat, weather, altitude and accidents, and thousands have been injured. Says the general commanding the Indian sector: “This is an actual war in every sense of the word. There is no quarter asked and no quarter given.”
The paradox is that India and Pakistan are supposedly at peace and that Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto are trying to move from a chilly standoff into a friendlier era. Both say they want to erase what Bhutto calls the “irritant” of the Siachen Glacier problem, and both instructed their negotiators to do so in the most recent round of talks that began last month in Pakistan. When Gandhi and Bhutto met face to face in Islamabad last week, however, they failed to come close to devising a practical solution. Progress has been as thin as the atmosphere in the Karakorams, as the negotiators struggle to settle the central issue: how to divide the disputed mountain area between Pakistan and India.
At stake is national prestige as well as control of Kashmir’s northern reaches. Since gaining their independence from Britain in 1947, both countries have wanted the 85,805 sq. mi. of the state of Jammu and Kashmir as their own. In 1949 Pakistan and India signed the so-called Karachi Agreement, which drew a cease-fire line that ended at map coordinate NJ 9842, at the southern foot of the Saltoro Range. The negotiators did not extend the line because there had been no fighting in Kashmir’s northernmost reaches, but merely mentioned that the line should continue “thence north to the glaciers.” Despite minor adjustments after the 1965 and 1971 India-Pakistan wars, the official boundary still ends at NJ 9842, leaving the Siachen ownership question unresolved.
Almost from the beginning, New Delhi has argued that India is entitled to control all of Kashmir. Islamabad’s claim is more complex: besides supporting a 1949 U.N. call for a plebiscite on Kashmir’s future, Pakistan has marshaled what it considers proof that it has all along controlled the area from NJ 9842 to the Karakoram Pass on the Chinese border. Islamabad cites circumstantial evidence, like the fact that mountaineering expeditions for years sought Pakistan’s permission to enter the region, and its agreement to cede some of the territory to China in 1963.
India was the first to deploy troops on the Siachen Glacier. In April 1984 the Indian army launched Operation Meghdoot (Cloud Messenger), placing forces at two key passes of the Saltoro Range, which runs along the Siachen Glacier’s western edge toward the Chinese border. India says it was pre-empting a planned Pakistani move – a contention Islamabad denies. The Indian advance captured nearly 1,000 sq. mi. of territory claimed by Pakistan; ever since then New Delhi has wanted to establish a formal boundary along that natural divide. The conflict escalated slowly as each side deployed more men, established more outposts, introduced more artillery and rockets. In September 1987 the action peaked, but neither side has been willing to take the next steps, which might involve introducing air power or expanding the conflict to the south.
The only benefit for both sides has been improvement in their capability for high-altitude warfare. Both forces have built all-weather roads that twist up between towering peaks to base camps on the glaciers. Soldiers spend six weeks acclimatizing to the torturous conditions, learning ice climbing and winter survival. From the camps, men fan out to front-line positions in snow-choked mountain passes. They take turns watching for movement on the other side – and the opportunity to call in artillery.
The rules of engagement are clear-cut on both sides: if there is a target, fire. Thus the battle is largely indirect, as howitzers and mortars lob shells – mostly inaccurately – over the ridges. Infantry assaults are rare, mainly because it is so hard for men to move, let alone charge, at such heights and over crevasse-riddled glaciers. At 18,000 ft. and higher, even a fully acclimatized soldier carrying rifle and combat pack can jog only a few yards without losing his breath. “The terrain does not allow much movement,” says a Pakistani officer at an outpost on the Baltoro Glacier. “There is a natural limit to this conflict.”
The principal causes of casualties are terrain and weather. Never before have men fought for any length of time at such altitudes, breathing air that contains less than half the oxygen at sea level, at temperatures that drop below -43 degrees F, in blinding blizzards that can last days. Both sides admit that 8 out of 10 casualties are caused by the harsh conditions – including soldiers being swept away in cascades of snow or tumbling into crevasses. Says a Pakistani officer at the northern end of the Saltoro sector: “We are brave. They are brave. And we both face the same enemies: the weather and the altitude.”
** On those occasions when the antagonists do fight at close range, the results can be fearsome. In a month-long clash ending last May, soldiers battled intensely on a mountain and ridges near the Chumic Glacier. Both sides dispatched men in a furious race to an icy 21,300-ft.-high peak that commanded the area. “The secret in this terrain,” says an Indian officer, “is to be the first on top.” Seeing that the Indians would in fact get there first, the Pakistanis took a gamble: in howling winds they tied two soldiers to the runners of a helicopter for a seven-minute ride to the peak, not certain whether wind speed and icy temperatures would cause them to freeze to death before they reached their destination. The soldiers survived, landed on the summit and held off about a dozen Indians climbing toward the same spot.
During a month of fighting, the Pakistanis claim six of their men died, while at least 34 Indians were killed; India refuses to release its casualty figures. Though accounts of the struggle differ, it appears that the Indians eventually requested a meeting between the two opposing brigade commanders. After three sessions, both sides pledged to pull back their men, and the Indians agreed to accept two enemy posts that the Pakistanis said had been there all along. It was the first time local commanders had met face to face to sort out a disengagement. **
By sitting down with each other, the two commanders were clearly acting in the spirit their Prime Ministers want to establish. But who will compromise?
Pakistan wants India to pull back from the glacier, after which the two sides could discuss a new boundary line. The key requirement: it must begin at NJ 9842 and end at the Karakoram Pass. But Pakistan would be willing to draw a demarcation between those points that would fall somewhere between its earlier claims and India’s current position on the Saltoro Range.
** India proposes a cease-fire in place, followed by a thinning out of forces in the Saltoro area; the suggestion has been rejected by Pakistan. In the talks last month, New Delhi broached a new formula slightly closer to Pakistan’s: pull back all troops and establish a demilitarized zone, then negotiate on establishing a line from NJ 9842 to the Chinese border. So far, there has been no agreement. **
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*Originally posted by Abdali: *
A journalist once wrote in NYT wrt Siachin, "Two bald men fighting for a comb" India wants to withdraw but need a face saver! the cost in $$s and lives lost is huge. An Indian General once said, we will be happy to withdraw only if Pak promises to put 17,000 of its soldiers on the peak.
This is a war of attrition and Pak has played well not agreeing to what ever India proposes and there is a very good reason for that.
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I am not sure about NYT's article. Europeans have fought many more battles for much smaller piece of pie. This attitude is condescending and patronizing.
Time article is really old. There have been newer articles since then. Baha-Rat-i army has been able to support this operation and they will continue doing so. The only way to kick the Rat-i army is to cut the supply lines off.
Kargil operation tried to achieve that. Unfortunately Pak planners failed on two counts.
- Not preparing for Rat-i Air Force
- Not keeping a political bargain as a backup.
I have not seen a single document where Pakistan tried to exchange Kargil with Siachin. From Musharraf to Sharif no one talked about Baha-Rat leaving Siachin for possible withdrawal of Pak supported militia from Kargil forward posts.
My biggest concern is that Rat-i army is polluting a pristine glacier with mountains of human waste. We all need to raise hell against the ecological disaster in the making. Pakistani river system is much more vulnerable to pollution on Siachin.
I just read this and found it to be in line with my argument. Anyhow, as I see it, apart from bleeding India ( which can be considered as one tactic in this low intenstity conflict at such a height) and getting bruised at the same time, the occupation of the glacier by both sides, moreso by the Indians doesn’t serve any strategic purpose.
Resolving Siachen issue
http://www.dawn.com/2004/08/19/op.htm#3
By Ghulam Umar
The Siachen affair that has been lingering on for the last 20 years or so has taken a heavy toll in terms of life and public money. Barring only the Kashmir dispute and the nuclear question, it has been the greatest source of discord in relations between India and Pakistan.
At some point in late 1984 an outbreak of war was feared. Conflicting positions were adopted on hard, verifiable facts, depending on the political situation after the June 1989 accord and the aborted accord of 1992.
As regards Siachen, India had veered to the view taken by Pakistan towards the end of 1992. But domestic compulsions stood in the way of acceptance. Thus, the decision on this crucial issue was allowed to be influenced by narrow domestic considerations.
On November 16, 1989, Rajiv Gandhi said, “we have recovered about 5,000 square kilometres of the area in Siachen. We will not forgo one square kilometre of that.” Little did he realize that such recovery violated the Shimla pact.
On his return to New Delhi from Pakistan he felt that photographs of Indian troops withdrawing from Siachen would not look too good for the government in an election year.
It was in January 1978 that a mountaineer Colonel Narindra Kumar showed a map of the region to director-general military operations, India, printed in the United States, which he obtained from a German, who had been climbing various peaks in the Karakoram.
The Line of Control in Kashmir which was demarcated in 1972 ended at the map grid-point NJ 9842. The map showed a straight line extending to the northeast right up to the Karakoram Pass.
The entire area to the west of the Line, comprising almost 4,000 sq km, was thus shown as part of Azad Kashmir. Kumar sought and received the support of the GHQ, India for an expedition into the same area in the form of operational patrols. Pakistan noted Indian activities in 1978, which were led by army personnel.
On New Year’s Day, 1949, the armies of India and Pakistan ended hostilities in Kashmir and declared a ceasefire. On July 27, 1949, military representatives of both countries signed an agreement in Karachi, under the auspices of the UN Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), defining the ceasefire line that began in southern Kashmir from the border with Pakistan and, proceeding north, turned east in an arc only to proceed further north.
The northern extremity was left vague in the vain hope that the glaciers would keep the peace. A new line of control was drawn up after prolonged negotiations and signed in the presence of senior army commanders of India and Pakistan, and conformed to the description accompanying the maps of 1949. It did not extend to the glaciers.
Clearly, there was no Line of Control in the area of the Siachen Glacier which lay beyond NJ 9842. But, the Shimla commitment that “neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation” in regard to “any of the problems between the two countries” did apply.
There is ample evidence that Indian armed forces were the first to establish permanent posts on the glacier and that they had prepared themselves long and well for the task. Operation Meghdoot carried out by India leaves little room for doubt, in fact, that the Pakistanis were caught napping.
Hostilities in the vicinity of the Siachen Glacier started in the winter of 1983-84. Earlier, Pakistan had protested to India about these activities on March 29, 1982. An extremely costly, futile, and wholly avoidable war had begun in one of the most glaciated areas of the world. The Indian troops started operations and created an emergency where there wasn’t any.
Indian commander Lt. Gen. P.N. Hoon, who led the operation in 1984 as corps commander, holds that without India’s control of the glacier and the Saltoro Range, Pakistan might have “soon been able to threaten the Nubra valley and even Leh”.
The glacier itself has no obvious military value. The Indian fears of threat by the Sino-Pakistan Karakoram Highway to the west of the glacier were completely unfounded. The Pakistani fear was that India sought to cut off Pakistan from direct link with China by blocking the passes.
The reaction to Operation Meghdoot was only natural. Siachen represents a glaring example of political expediency in the sacrifice of human lives. Strategically, Siachen is of little importance. Contrary to Indian wisdom, the Pakistanis cannot get into Ladakh along the Siachen Glacier route, and neither can the Chinese. Nowhere has a road been built on a glacier.
At the Rajiv Gandhi-Ziaul Haq summit in New Delhi on December 17, 1985, it was agreed to hold talks on the Siachen dispute at the level of defence secretaries. Six such rounds of talks were held from 1986 to 1992. At the fifth round in June 1989, a breakthrough was achieved. The joint statement issued in Islamabad on June 17, 1989 recorded the “agreement”.
It said "there was agreement by both sides to work towards a comprehensive settlement, based on the redeployment of forces to reduce the chances of conflict, avoidance of the use of force and the determination of future positions on the ground so as to conform to the Shimla agreement and to ensure durable peace in the Siachen area.
The army authorities of both sides determine these positions". The use of the word “agreement” in the joint statement, at the end of the fifth round, on June 17, 1989, is highly significant: “There was agreement by both sides to work towards a comprehensive settlement based on the redeployment of forces.” The sixth round was held three years later in New Delhi from November 2-4, 1992.
In Pakistan’s perception, the task was simply to implement the agreement of June 1989. Some elements in the disengagement required detailed wrapping up. For instance, how far the troops would be pulled back, and where the observation posts would be located to monitor the demilitarized zone to ensure that neither side rushed back in. Observation posts, were to be civilian and not military.
On November 11, 1992, Pakistan confirmed progress on the positions to which the forces would withdraw. Unfortunately, India imposed “certain preconditions”. There should be no difficulty in the redeployment of troops on both sides to agreed positions.
It should also be possible to define a zone of disengagement which would come into being consequent on redeployment. Both sides should agree not to reoccupy vacated positions; or occupy new positions “across the alignment determined by the vacated positions”. They should not undertake any military or mountaineering activity in the zone.
The present India-Pakistan talks on Siachen must succeed and the domestic political environment must not come in the way. Pending the final settlement of problems between the two countries, neither side should unilaterally alter the understanding already reached.
The writer is retired major-general of Pakistan army.