India takes glacier politics to new high
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - India is using oropolitics (the use of mountaineering for political
purposes) again to reassert its claim over Siachen Glacier. For the second year
in a row, the Indian army is organizing a civilian trek to the glacier to
underscore to the world its firm control over it. The trek is scheduled for
October-November.
But before that, an army team will head off this week to Khatling Glacier.
Unlike Siachen Glacier, to which Pakistan has laid claim, Khatling Glacier is
not disputed, even though it lies near the yet-to-be-delineated Sino-Indian
border.
At an altitude of 3,717 meters above sea level, Khatling Glacier nestles in the
Garhwal Himalayas. An eight-member team from
the Indian army's Mechanized Infantry Regiment will leave for the glacier on
June 25.
The army expedition to Khatling Glacier comes amid a spurt in Chinese
incursions into Indian territory across all three sectors of the
4,057-kilometer Line of Actual Control - the effective border between India and
China. The most recent came on June 16, when Chinese soldiers crossed into the
Indian state of Sikkim for the 65th time this year.
For all the handshaking across the Himalayas, a perceptible chill has gripped
the Sino-Indian interaction in recent months. In India, there is mounting
concern that the government is not standing up to Chinese intrusions along the
border.
A little over a fortnight ago, India re-opened an old airfield at Daulat Beg
Oldi in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, close to the Line of Actual
Control and near Aksai Chin, a chunk of Indian territory that China occupied in
the 1962 war. And now comes an army expedition to a glacier, again near the
Line of Actual Control.
The "army expeditions" to Khatling Glacier, says Brigadier (retired) Gurmeet
Kanwal, director of the Delhi-based Center for Land Warfare Studies, are
"long-range reconnaissance patrols (LRPs) that the Indian army carries out to
physically go over territory that belongs to the country and to ensure that
there are no intrusions into Indian territory". About 10 to 12 LRPs are carried
out in that area in a year, he told Asia Times Online, adding that the upcoming
LRP is "most probably nothing new".
While it is an army team that will first trek up to Khatling Glacier, civilians
will head off to Siachen later this year.
The civilian trek to the Siachen last year triggered angry protest from
Pakistan. "The area remains a conflict zone, and the reported move by India to
open this for tourism could aggravate the situation, with serious consequences
that vitiate the atmosphere for the ongoing peace process," the Pakistan
Foreign Office said at the time.
Despite the objections from across the border, India pressed ahead with the
trek. Indian officials said that India was well within its rights to take
trekkers to the Siachen as it is under India's control and also part of the
state of Jammu and Kashmir, an integral part of India.
Cradled in the eastern Karakoram Range of the Himalayas, Siachen Glacier lies
at the tri-junction of India, Pakistan and China. The 70-kilometer-long glacier
- the second-largest in the world outside the polar regions - slides down
between the Saltoro Ridge to its west and the main Karakoram Range to its east
and overlooks the strategic Karakoram Pass.
Siachen is notorious for its savage climate. Temperatures drop to minus-40
degrees Celsius and blizzards touch speeds of about 300 km per hour. Its
terrain is treacherous. Avalanches and crevasses take a heavy toll of human
lives. The glacier's height - 5,472 meters - makes survival here all the more
difficult as the air is thin. High altitude pulmonary and cerebral edemas are
common.
Both India and Pakistan claim Siachen Glacier as their own. While the conflict
over the glacier erupted in 1984, its roots can be traced back to the
formulation of the ceasefire line in the 1949 Karachi Agreement. The text
defines the ceasefire line in this area as running to map coordinate NJ 9842
and "... thence north to the glaciers". Even when the ceasefire line became the
Line of Control (LOC) under the Simla Agreement of 1972, the line remained
hanging in the air.
In 1984, amid growing signs that the Pakistan armed forces were moving into
Siachen Glacier, India landed two platoons on two key passes, Bilafond La and
Sia La on the Saltoro Ridge. Since then the glacier has been under India's
control. For almost two decades thereafter, the armed forces of the two
countries were engaged in fierce fighting here.
"But the fighting is not on the glacier itself or anywhere near it," a retired
Indian Army official who has served on the Siachen pointed out to Asia Times
Online last year. "Indian soldiers are sitting on the Saltoro Ridge to the west
of the glacier. Between the Pakistani forces and the glacier, there are high
mountain peaks controlled by India."
With a ceasefire coming into effect in 2003, hostilities have ended but both
sides continue to maintain a strong military presence in the area. The dispute
over Siachen Glacier - of all the India-Pakistan disputes - is said to be the
easiest to resolve and is among the issues the two countries have been tackling
as part of an ongoing composite dialogue.
Both sides agree that the conflict is costly in human and material terms and
that keeping soldiers in such a brutal environment is inhumane. Besides, there
is growing support for the view that control of the glacier does not confer any
great strategic advantage and a prolonged conflict over this theatre is a
waste. In fact, an American analyst once likened the India-Pakistan conflict
over Siachen to two bald men fighting over a comb.
India controls the Siachen, and Pakistan would like the Indians to vacate it
and is pushing for demilitarization. India is not opposed to demilitarization.
But it would like the actual ground position line (AGPL) to be authenticated
first as a safeguard in case Pakistan were to occupy the heights once India
vacates the posts it currently controls. An authentication of the AGPL would
help India rally international support if Pakistan reneges on the terms of a
withdrawal agreement.
The authentication of ground positions will give India's claims greater legal
standing when India and Pakistan eventually sit down to demarcate a border
based on the 1949 and 1972 agreements.
It is in this context that the civilian treks to the Siachen should be seen.
In the run-up to last year's civilian trek to Siachen, India's then-chief of
army staff, General J J Singh, said that opening the glacier to civilians would
enable people from India and abroad to enjoy the region's beauty.
But it is more than Siachen's breathtaking scenic beauty that India wants the
international community to take in. "It wants them to see that it is India that
is in full control of Siachen Glacier, and that Pakistan is nowhere near it,"
says Kanwal. This is the "subsidiary but unstated aim" of the civilian trek.
Oropolitics is not new to the India-Pakistan relationship. From the late 1970s
Pakistan began launching foreign mountaineering expeditions from the part of
Kashmir under its control to peaks such as Saltoro Kangri and Teram Kangri,
which flank Siachen Glacier.
The civilian treks of the last two years to the Siachen are hardly the first.
"The Indian Mountaineering Federation [IMF] has organized several joint
expeditions with Japanese, French, British and other nationalities to the
Siachen. This has been going on for more than a decade. Every year, there are
two or three expeditions to the glacier," IMF spokesperson M Ashraf said last
year.
If civilian treks to Siachen and the LRPs to Khatling are routine, why the high
publicity now? In the case of Siachen, it does seem that as talks on the issue
proceed, India's transparency on the treks is providing its control of the
glacier maximum media coverage.
As for the Khatling Glacier, the publicity to routine army LRPs is "in line
with growing transparency in what happens along the border", says Kanwal.
Besides, it also acts to reassure the Indian public that the Indian army is
keenly patrolling the frontier.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
