India and Pakistan break ice over
Siachen By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - One result of past hostilities
between India and Pakistan is the world's highest
battlefield on the Siachen glacier, where
thousands of soldiers have died due to the cold
rather than gunshots.
In the most
significant push to the peace process since the
initiation of the bus service between Indian and
Pakistan Kashmir in April, the two countries have
agreed to deploy troops from the glacier.
Although the modalities of the withdrawal
are yet to be worked out, the commitment is
important as there were doubts about the peace
process reaching the next level due to fresh
misgivings and
doubts that have crept in
the recent past between New Delhi and Islamabad.
While New Delhi continues to hold firm on
the need for Pakistan to dismantle its militant
infrastructure, and Islamabad sees no immediate
solution to the "core" issue of Kashmir, the
dynamics of India-Pakistan relations have been
further complicated by India and the US striking a
new friendship.
Pakistan, for so long used
to being the favored one, has been unable to
digest Washington's affinities toward New Delhi
that have taken the form of renewal of arms
supplies and an expansive nuclear deal. In the
recent past, Pakistan president General Pervez
Musharraf has made it apparent that Pakistan is
not very happy about Washington's pro-India slant.
Despite the embarrassing revelations about a
tainted Pakistani nuclear scientist engaging in
proliferation, Musharraf has re-iterated that
Islamabad wants a similar civilian nuclear energy
deal to India's.
There is, however, no
reason for New Delhi to be happy about its
neighbor's discomfiture. In the high of being
treated at par with the powerful nations of the
world, India has to ensure that its relations with
all its immediate neighbors, including Nepal and
Bangladesh, are good and the peace process
initiated in January last year by former prime
minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Musharraf does
not lose steam. Several analysis have pointed that
India cannot be counted as an economic power until
the drain on possible resources due to its
differences with Pakistan are ironed out.
It is in this context that a commitment to
reach an agreement on Siachen before January next
year becomes important. Until 1984, neither India
nor Pakistan had troops stationed at Siachen as
nobody thought it was worth thinking about. In
1947, when the Line of Control (LoC) was drawn
between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, the Siachen
terrain was considered to be too inhospitable to
bother about extending the border.
However, as relations between the two
countries deteriorated, Siachen gained strategic
importance, with troops eyeballing each other, but
dying more due to frostbite. At 6,300 meters
(20,700 feet) Indian troops continue to try and
defend the 75-kilometer glacier at an estimated
cost of up to $1 million a day. There has been no
fighting on the glacier since November 2003, when
a ceasefire came into effect between India and
Pakistan. There may be more respite now, the least
for the soldiers who have to operate in the worst
conditions.
Last week, Defense Minister
Pranab Mukherjee said that both countries had
agreed on the need to withdraw troops, but there
were problems over verifying positions before a
pullback could be sorted out. "We have agreed.
They [Pakistan] have agreed to withdraw troops
from the present positions. There is no two
opinions about it, both sides have agreed,"
Mukherjee said. "The disagreement is where we are
demanding that we must identify the places,
delineate the places we were before withdrawal, so
that there is a record that the respective
country's troops occupied these places," he added.
"The Pakistani point of view is that when we have
agreed to withdraw from the respective positions,
what is the relevance after the withdrawal
agreement is signed."
This week, India's
External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh traveled to
Pakistan and met his counterpart Khursheed Mehmood
Kasuri, as well as Musharraf. The two sides signed
agreements on advance warning of ballistic missile
tests, a hotline between their coast guards,
conducting a joint survey of a disputed section of
the boundary in Sir Creek and a commitment to the
Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.
New
Delhi maintained that the Kashmir issue needed to
be dealt with from a human point of view, though
Pakistan reiterated that the "core" difference
over the divided state remained. New Delhi's
proposals include allowing a greater flow of
people across the LoC, trade ties between two
parts of the state and setting up meeting points
for divided families.
But, the most
significant agreement was the commitment over
Siachen. "The two sides exchanged ideas on the
Siachen issue and agreed to continue their
discussions so as to arrive at a common
understanding before commencement of the next
round of composite dialogue in January," the
ministers said in a joint statement.
An
Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that
Singh and Musharraf also discussed the Siachen
glacier and both sides welcomed discussions on a
"framework to promote settlement" of the dispute.
Kasuri said the possibility of a resolution of the
glacier dispute had been created but no agreement
had yet been reached. "It stands to reason that if
we had already reached an agreement, we would have
reflected that in the joint statement," he told
the news conference.
Indeed, as with other
issues, the glacier remains a relic of past
distrust. Any solution has to be a carefully
calibrated exercise in which both sides try to
ensure that they have not given in more,
especially in the eyes of the domestic population,
whether it be extremists in Pakistan or the hawks
who keep a keen eye on developments in India.
It is in this context that a breakthrough
over Siachen becomes important. Siddharth
Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
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