For nearly three decades, India and Pakistan have engaged in a maddening conflict over Siachen Glacier in the Himalayan peaks of disputed Kashmir region. The “world’s highest battlefield” has claimed thousands of lives due to hostile weather conditions—frostbite, avalanches and blizzards—as against merely over a hundred soldiers killed in sporadic combat until 2003, when the two countries agreed to a ceasefire across the Line of Control in Kashmir. Its latest victims are 139 Pakistani soldiers, who were buried deep in snow after an avalanche hit their Gyari battalion headquarter on the Pakistani side on April 7. Since then, the worsening weather has prevented the rescuers to gain access even to their dead bodies. Sustaining a conflict for so long at an altitude of nearly 6,700 metres, where temperature plunges to -70 C, points to virtual insanity on the part of its contestants. Problems such as trust deficit between India and Pakistan, and the egoistic outlook of respective security establishments have at least twice in the last 20 years prevented their leaders from putting signatures on an agreement meant to amicably resolve this unnecessary conflict over an inhospitable terrain. The conflict’s human and financial cost for India and Pakistan has been enormous—more for India, as its forces occupy higher positions on the 78-kilometre-long glacier. Despite the ceasefire, 5,000 India troops and over 2,500 Pakistani soldiers remain deployed in the conflict zone.
However, despite suffering comparatively less loss in men and material, Pakistan has finally started to offic