WORLD, Page 26THE HIMALAYASWar at the Top Of the WorldFighting at breathtaking altitudes, Indians and Pakistanis arelocked in an icy stalemateBy 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.
After investing heavily in lives and money to take and hold
the Saltoro, it would be politically difficult for Gandhi to yield
even part of the territory to Pakistan, especially with national
elections only months away. Bhutto is in an even more sensitive
position. Having once taunted late President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq,
her predecessor, for losing the territory in the first place, she
now faces poisonous criticism from opposition leaders who accuse
her of "submission" to India. In the end, both Gandhi and Bhutto
will have to stare down their political antagonists in order to
agree on a boundary line across the north's icy fastness. Otherwise
