The Siachen threat

JYOTI MALHOTRA

The Telegraph, February 13, 2007


From Ashoka the Great in the 3rd century BC to Sher Shah Sur in the 1500s, the idea of linking the great, Indian landmass across time and space has always obsessed some people. After the Kalinga war, Buddhism was one such cultural import into the melting-pot of the north-west frontierlands – and Taxila its fountainhead -- while Sher Shah’s Grand Trunk road was the equivalent of building an Indo-Gangetic artery of the mind. Where men went and goods travelled, a hundred, diverse ideas naturally followed.

The partition of India had the effect of stunning the idea of India into catatonic schizophrenia. From the bloodbaths of Punjab and Bengal, via Kashmir, Siachen and Kargil, India and Pakistan have been on a mindless roller-coaster for much of their 60 years.

Clearly, though, the stakes for peace these days are so high for a few people in New Delhi and Islamabad, that they cannot stomach the idea of losing control over their stamp-sized bureaucratic kingdoms.

One such rebellion by South Block two years ago over the issuance of ``travel documents’’ and not ``passports’’ to passengers on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus across the Line of Control, was temporarily put down by the late J N Dixit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s redoubtable National Security Adviser, who wielded the strategic whip with courage.

The passengers got their travel documents on April 7, 2005, in open admission that ``Kashmiris’’ had special privileges within the Indian union. Two years later, though, South Block seems to have won that battle hands down, with most of the cross-LoC buses going almost empty. Turns out that the procedure for filling up that ``travel document’’ is so tough that most who apply can hardly pass the bureaucratic test.

Something similar seems to be happening with the Siachen story these days. Each time India and Pakistan talk Siachen, Army officials – located in the other half of South Block – break out in a nervous sweat. Thereby begins the not-so-subtle attempt to influence the flow of information.

Last time around, on the eve of the Defence Secretary-level talks between the two countries in August 2006, the Army flew journalists to Siachen base camp. There, amidst spectacularly icy landscapes, they issued the dread warning that if India did a deal on Siachen, and if something like Kargil happened in the near future, they could not be called upon to perform ungodly acts of heroism as they did in 1999.

Small wonder that at the end of the first day of the Defence Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan, then Defence minister Pranab Mukherjee announced, ``The talks have failed.’’

Six months later, Pranab Mukherjee has become External Affairs minister, in which capacity he visited Pakistan – for the first time – this weekend. There, Mukherjee is believed to have made an unusual proposal on Siachen : Even as both countries debated the pros and cons of authenticating the ground positions of Indian troops on the Saltoro ridge that is west of the Siachen glacier, even as they put together a schedule of troop disengagement and redeployment to their respective base camps, both sides could begin to build trust by jointly cleaning up the Siachen glacier.

We don’t know what Musharraf said to Mukherjee in reply, but within 48 hours Army chief J J Singh had decided that it was time for some headlines. He told journalists that he had conveyed the Army’s views to the political leadership on Siachen, and he hoped that ``these would be taken into account.’’

Clearly, the Indian Army, so far subservient to its political masters, was seeking to expand command and control. Not quite like the Pakistani Army next door, quite used to being the master of all it surveyed in Pakistan, but certainly chafing at the bit of its limited influence.

In fact, the Pakistani intelligentsia is also remarking on the Indian Army’s extraordinary energies these days. ``India was always proud of the political control over the army,’’ one wag said in Islamabad, adding, ``but it seems that you are beginning to get more and more like us.’’

Meanwhile, at the Foreign Secretary bilateral talks last November, Islamabad gave New Delhi a detailed ``package’’ on Siachen. In exchange for Pakistan authenticating ground positions of Indian troops, New Delhi could not ``claim’’ territory it would be withdrawing from.

Clearly, the Army feels it has a right to its point of view. After all, wasn’t it called upon to defend territory at Kargil, under extraordinary circumstances? Moreover, Indian troops had taken the strategic heights at the Saltoro ridge, west of the Siachen glacier in May 1984, not because there wanted to go on a mountaineering picnic, but because they were ordered to do so by none other than their political masters. So, 22 years later, had the strategic reasoning behind that decision changed? And if so, what was that change?

On the other South Block flank, where Pranab Mukherjee and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shanker Menon sit – the latter recently returned from Pakistan as high commissioner – they’re already beginning to think beyond antediluvian matters such as war and conflict. Instead, they’re focussing these days on what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a refugee escaping the bloodbath of partition in 1947, has been saying : Clean the glacier of blood and tonnes of toxic waste. Siachen is the highest battlefield in the world. Let India and Pakistan, jointly, convert it into a mountain of peace.

ENDS