TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/073189/07318900.019

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 9.8 KB | 191 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 26

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.

    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 it will continue to be drawn in
men's blood.