(The US viewpoint,always for India to bow to Paki pressure.)
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/201 ... e-glacier/
By MARK MCDONALD
| April 8, 2012, 3:19 am 6
A Pakistani military unit camped on the Siachen Glacier in 1999.Barry Bearak/The New York Times (Courtesy of the Pakistan Military)A Pakistani military unit camped on the Siachen Glacier in 1999.
The scale of the avalanche disaster in Pakistan could well renew a debate about the costly deployments of Indian and Pakistani military units on the Siachen Glacier, a place so high, cold and forbidding that it is sometimes called “the third pole.” Leaders from both countries met Sunday in New Delhi, with the glacier as a possible talking point.
HONG KONG — The search for 135 people buried under an avalanche in Pakistan resumed at first light on Sunday.
The avalanche struck a Pakistani military camp early Saturday morning, trapping 124 soldiers and 11 civilians under 70 feet of snow. Despite 18 hours of searching on Saturday, no survivors were found, as my colleagues Declan Walsh and Salman Masood reported.
The scale of the looming disaster is likely to renew the debate about the costly deployments of Indian and Pakistani military units on the Siachen Glacier, a place so high, cold and forbidding that it is sometimes called “the third pole.”
Political and military analysts say there’s nothing much up there — besides rock and ice — to fight over.
Stephen P. Cohen, a South Asia expert and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has famously compared the Siachen standoff to “a struggle of two bald men over a comb,” calling it “the epitome of the worst aspects of the relationship” between Indian and Pakistan.
The avalanche, for all the worries over its possible outcome, could offer the chance for a small diplomatic breakthrough on Sunday: President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan was due to meet over lunch in New Delhi with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India.
With units deployed on the Siachen Glacier at elevations as high as 22,000 feet, it’s hard to breathe, let alone fight. In 2000, in Kashmir, I interviewed an Indian Army commander who had served on Siachen, and he said that about a third of his men suffered from altitude sickness, frostbite or other environmental ailments. Units were in nearly constant rotation, he said, due to the hardships.
Pakistan has promised to give most-favored-nation trading status to India, and in a Brookings commentary in December, Mr. Cohen said “it is now up to India to respond, perhaps on some issue such as Siachen or Sir Creek.”
Sir Creek is a disputed boundary waterway between the two countries that a Dawn newspaper editorial called “easily the most negotiable lingering disconnect between Pakistan and India.”
“This may not happen,” Mr. Cohen said, “but if it does, then will Pakistan in turn reciprocate, leading to a genuine peace process? I’m both hopeful and skeptical at the same time.”
“The Siachen glacier and the mountain ranges surrounding it have very little strategic significance,” said a retired Indian Army brigadier, Gurmeet Kanwal, in a commentary for the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi. “Therefore, the continued military occupation of the area by both India and Pakistan is counterproductive and is a retrograde step for pursuing a genuine rapprochement process.”
Declan and Salman, in reporting about the Pakistani military’s frantic search for survivors, offered this background:
Troops from both countries have been stationed at Siachen since April 1984, when the Indian Army occupied the heights around the glacier. Pakistan responded within weeks by sending in its troops, and both sides exchanged artillery barrages.
Despite occasional skirmishes, the area has been relatively quiet since a cease-fire in 2003, with Indian forces dominating many of the higher positions. Critics in both countries say their militaries are wasting millions of dollars a year on a futile standoff that has more to do with national ego than military value.
The Siachen dispute is part of the broader conflict over Kashmir, which is at the core of the strains between India and Pakistan that have led to three major wars since 1947.
Brigadier Kanwal has long favored a withdrawal of both armies:
“The demilitarization of the Siachen conflict zone will act as a confidence-building measure of immense importance.
“For India, it is a low-risk option to test Pakistan’s long-term intentions for peace,” he said. “It is, therefore, an idea whose time has come. Indian and Pakistani leaders need to find the political will necessary to accept ground realities. Trust begets trust and it will be well worth taking a political and military risk to give peace a chance.”