Siachen:
Prospects for a Mutually Agreeable Settlement
Aruni Mukherjee
[Figure-
Composite Satellite Picture of Siachen; Source- Ahmed &
Sahni]
Introduction
Though
the “line of control [in Jammu & Kashmir]…continues to
witness spurt(s) in infiltration”, the feel-good factor has
never been greater in the Indo-Pak relationship. Nothing could
more exemplify this than a report in The Hindu on July
21, which reported how Indian jawans in Siachen had helped their
Pakistani counterpart recover the body of a fallen comrade. The
report also included a line about a Pakistani civilian who had
strayed into
Indian territory
by mistake being
returned to his homeland. Prospects for the peace process, we
are told, seem irreversibly bright.
So
why the persisting deadlock over Siachen? 21 years have passed
since Operation Meghadoot (1984), and “the world’s most
absurd war” on the world’s highest battlefield continues,
even though the current round of negotiations began more than a
year ago in January 2004.
Current
Progress
I
see no need of venturing into great details about past
propositions from both sides aimed at resolving the issue, since
a lot of literature is already available on that matter.
Instead, I place greater emphasis on the recent ‘roadmap of
troop withdrawal’ drafted by
India
, currently under inspection by
Islamabad
.
It agrees to a drawback of forces to the positions prior to the
1972 Simla Agreement. However, it has already run into a
roadblock in the military and diplomatic circles in
Pakistan
, due to its attached conditionality of “authentication of current
positions”.
India
insists on making the present Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) a
permanent border between
India
and the planned “disengagement zone”. On its part,
Pakistan
argues that the borders should be re-drawn as per the Simla
Agreement, which it claims
India
violated by launching its “invasion” in 1984. For
India
,
Meghadoot was purely a pre-emptive move to torpedo a seemingly
inevitable Pakistani incursion. To illustrate how fundamental
this difference is to the problem, a Pakistani official was
quoted by Gulf Times as saying, “
Pakistan
is ready to withdraw troops only if
India
drops its insistence on the authentication of current positions
being held by Pakistani and Indian troops”. This was as recent
as July 2005. The newspaper argued that despite this ostensibly
dead-end situation, the document was still being studied in
Islamabad
to devise a way where
India
would be able to accept the Pakistani position without losing
face to the nationalist circles. In other words, the resolution
process is at a cul-de-sac.
Why Siachen must be solved
India
and
Pakistan
cannot turn away from attempting to settle the score over
Siachen once and for all, because the arguments in favour of a
de-militarised Siachen overwhelmingly outweigh the arguments
against.
India
might disagree to the notion of” logic for change” on the
glacier, but even it accepts that some sort of a solution is
needed, albeit in the form of cementing the status quo.
First,
the cost of the troop deployments, both in terms of greenbacks
and human costs, are staggering. Lt. Gen. V R Raghavan (Retd.),
in his Siachen: Conflict Without End puts it aptly- “No
one has an accurate assessment, but everyone has a figure to
quote”. Echoing his arguments, the Times of India
stated that it costs nearly Rs.500 to supply a loaf of bread to
a soldier in Siachen. Similarly, a range of astonishingly high
amount of money is deducted from the Pakistani treasury towards
this commitment. The total cost could be between $1 million and
$3 million a day for the two countries. This entails that both
countries have been and are incurring opportunity cost; the
unseen benefits of re-investing this money in their economies,
say in improving public services or infrastructure, offset the
seen benefits of the continued troop maintenance.
And
then there are the human casualties.
Rising between 18,000 and 22,000 feet above sea level,
temperatures in the region can drop to an alarming 60 degrees
Celsius below freezing. Total casualties on Siachen since 1984
are estimated to be around 1,500, of which nearly all (97% to be
precise) of the deaths have been due to a variance of weather
related illness, fatigue or injuries.
Second,
the region’s ecology demands that the troop and armament
movements on the glacier stop right now. It has been calculated
that the frozen river is melting at the rate of 2 inches a day
during winter to a disquieting 10-20 feet a day during summer.
Extrapolating from current trends, severe floods due to melting
of almost the entire glacier is to occur around 2050. Moreover,
continuous human habitation results in the creation of en masse
waste, 1,000 kilograms of which are dumped into ravines and
rivers daily. This waste flows into and pollutes the waters in
the Nubra, Shylok and Indus rivers which then take this dirt en
route their descend towards the valley.
Why
Siachen will not be solved
Col.
(Retd.) Anil Athale sums up the Indian perspective fittingly-
‘lack of trust’. As a discussion organized by the Observer
Research Foundation found on May 4, there is a unanimous
consensus among the Indian army and polity that “unless
Pakistan
recognizes the existing positions,
India
should not agree to demilitarization”.
It is way too soon for the wounds of 1948, 1965, 1971 and
1999 to be healed. Persistent re-occupation of Point 13620 by
Pakistani forces after every ceasefire seems to set a precedent
for any future behavior on their part.
India
,
on its part, has its own dubious precedent- that of the “no
crossing the LoC” set during the Kargil conflict. Coupled with
a dual lack of trust on its own politicians as well as the
enemy, the Indian army is extremely suspicious of any proposed
withdrawals. Moreover, amidst the continuing infiltration and
terrorist attacks, presence of the terror infrastructure in
Pakistan and the ‘trick’ of inviting Hurriyat leaders to
Islamabad via the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service only adds to
India’s impression that Pakistan may not yet be trustable.
There
are strategic concerns for
Pakistan
too, albeit laden with myopic nationalist jingo. As a result of
a recent dual re-endorsement of the Indian position by both the
head of the Indian polity (PM Manmohan Singh) and the army (Gen.
J J Singh), the Indian position seems entrenched. But there is
no way Gen. Pervez Musharraf can sell this deal to the jihadi
junta back home.
Pakistan
had lost the Soltoro Ridge and the erstwhile Quaid Post (now
re-named Bana Post after Subedar Bana Singh) during Operation
Meghadoot, and accepting the AGPL would entail it officially
accepts that.
On
India
’s
part, there are fine nuances that need to be tuned. The border
stretching from Sabha to point NJ9842 has been clearly
demarcated under the 1972 Simla agreement. But disagreements
remain over whether the line after this point travels northwards
to include the entire region within
India
,
or whether it travels northwestwards to give
Pakistan
access to the area. In two ways,
India
’s
position has already been compromised, as
Pakistan
controls the Gyong La pass overlooking Shylok and Nubra rivers,
along with the road that links mainland
India
to Leh, and
China
’s de facto hold over Aksai Chin. Therefore, leaving any leeway for
adjustments in borders could lead to a threat looming over the
forward posts near the Karakoram pass, Ladakh and virtually the
entire northern part of the state. The glacier itself may not be
strategically valuable, but it could be used by a determined foe
to threaten the strategically advantageous position currently
held by
India
.
India’s
Options
The
easiest option for
India
is to stay put. It hurts Pakistan more than India to maintain
troops in the “unforgiving mountain terrain”- around $365
million a year forms a greater share of the former’s budgetary
allowances vis-à-vis twice that amount does for India. Thanks
to
Meghadoot
,
India
occupies the heights and most of the strategic positions on the
glacier. The onus is therefore on
Pakistan
to make
India
budge from its position of relative advantage to chalk out a
somewhat compromise. Focusing on improving logistics and
providing better facilities to soldiers could reduce human and
monetary costs in the long-term for
India
,
and it has the short-term capital required for such an
investment, something that is denied to
Pakistan
given its smaller economic prowess.
Moreover,
there is evidence to suggest that
India
’s
strategic interests over Siachen are not really being hampered
by the status quo. First,
Pakistan
’s
control over the Gyong La pass, which remains closed for 90% of
the year anyway, has ceased to be a trump card. During the 80s,
due to the weak support structures of the Indian army in the
region, a serious threat could be mounted on the town of
Dzingrulma
from this area. Now, with improved joint operation capabilities,
presence of air bases nearby and satellite technology allows
India
to- a) detect any major troop movements along the AGPL; and b)
intercept the movements with pre-emptive air strikes on bases
and supply lines to give lead time for the ground offensive.
Second,
even if we assume for a moment that
Pakistan
is able to overwhelm the above-mentioned defense buffers (a very
big “if”, one might add) and capture Dzingrulma, we can
argue that its strategic objective has become irrelevant. The
reason why in erstwhile times, the town would be of prime
importance is that it was on the upper ridges of the Nubra
Valley which opened into Zhoji La and Photu La passes lying
National Highway 1A, which was the only road for delivering
logistical support to troops on the India-China border in Leh.
However, ever since
Pakistan
targeted this precise road during the infiltration in Kargil
(1999), the Government of India has decided to spread its risks
by building another road through Rohtang La for supplying troops
in Leh. This road, albeit not complete entirely, is able to
serve the army for the better part of the year. Thus,
Pakistan
’s
incentives for occupying Dzingrulma are much weaker.
A
dubious second option is to concede to
Pakistan
’s
demands, which faces dual and vociferous opposition from the
political as well as military circles. While the objections of
the army have been mentioned above, the political argument is
easy to see. It would be extremely difficult to sell any
concessions to the electorate after PM Singh ruled out any
redrawing of boundaries categorically. Moreover, agreeing to
redefine the LoC would virtually entail
India
’s acceptance of the “aggressive” nature of Operation Meghadoot,
something long asserted by
Pakistan
.
An
interesting third way of ‘Trust but Verify’ has been
suggested by Ahmed and Sahni [see Bibliography]. A framework for
data collection could be set up to try and monitor the progress
of troop withdrawals and ecological issues in the region in the
form of unilateral or bi-lateral data collection at the minimal
or optimal levels. The authors suggest various practical means
viz. aerial sensors, satellite monitoring, ground sensors, video
and optical sensors, tags & seals and frequent inspections.
However,
the obvious problem with such an approach comes with the notion
of “permitted intrusiveness”. How can each party trust
that the other would provide access to all the data, and verify
whether the data is accurate? To varying degrees, this argument
could be associated with each of the measures suggested by the
authors. Whatever the supposedly overtly optimistic vibes one
gets these days from the South Block, it is definitely premature
to argue that India and Pakistan are ‘friendly’ nations. The
situation on the ground remains much frostier and laden with
ample mistrust.
Mao
Zedong once remarked, “A single spark can start a prairie
fire”. The joint monitoring system is doomed to failure
because of two reasons. First, the system will be hard to
coordinate with inevitable mud slinging from both sides about
lack of access to each other’s information. Such a bogged down
system hardly bodes credibility. Second, in case of a major
breakdown of the system, say failure to intercept a major
infiltration, India will naturally feel that Pakistan has
deliberately withheld information to facilitate the incursion.
Thus, these elaborate means are a no starter.
Epilogue:
Wither the Mountain Rose?
The
international community hopes that “sanity might prevail”
this time, given the overall improvement in Indo-Pak relations.
This author has argued otherwise, showing that although there
remain persuasive arguments for solving the Siachen problem,
there are stronger incentives working against it. The recent
discovery of ancient rock art near the region will not stop the
standoff, nor will the blatantly obvious degradation of the
local environment. However “frank and candid” the
discussions between the officials are, strategic concerns are
above all when it comes to inking a settlement.
The
failure of many rounds of talks in 1989, when India presented
its 6-point plan to Pakistan, and 1992 denotes just that.
Surprisingly, it has been India that has initiated most of the
negotiation rounds when Pakistan stands to lose much more in the
absence of a settlement, and has a greater incentive to push for
change. Even in 1998, it was India that came up with the
framework for the current ceasefire. It displays the flagrant
lack of vision in the Pakistani leadership, and it shows no
signs of waning.
PM
Manmohan Singh’s
“mountain of peace” is a distant dream.
[The
author is based at the University of Warwick, UK and takes a
deep interest in the political economy of the Indian
sub-continent. He is originally from Kolkata, India]
Bibliography
Ahmed, Samina & Sahni, Varun:
“Freezing the Fighting: Military Disengagement on the Siachen
Glacier”, Cooperative Monitoring Centre/ Sandia National
Laboratories http://www.cmc.sandia.gov/links/cmc-papers/sand-98-0505-1/sand-98-0505-1.html
“Army to probe Siachen Oil Scam”,
New Kerala 21.07.2005, http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=8220
Athale, Col. Anil (Retd.): “Why
Siachen Matters”, Rediff 16.06.2005 http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/jun/16athale.htm
Bhushan, Bharat: “Tulbul, Sir Creek
and Siachen: Competitive Methodologies”, South
Asian Journal Vol. 7,
January-March 2005
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Thin Ice”, Times of India 28.07.2005
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The Hindu 29.07.2005
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