War at the Top of the World

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The origins of the ice war date back to 1949, after India and Pakistan came to blows over possession of Kashmir, a former kingdom coveted by both countries. Negotiators agreed on a cease-fire line that stopped at a map coordinate known as NJ9842, a mountaintop northeast of the Kashmiri city of Srinagar. In vague wording, which would come back to plague both nations, the agreement stated that the cease-fire line would extend from NJ9842 "thence north to the glaciers." This, according to the Pakistanis, put Siachen firmly inside their territory. The Indians think otherwise. New Delhi insists that because Siachen is the source for the Nubra River, which flows eastward into India, the glacier should belong to them. In the mid-1970s, Pakistan began to issue climbing permits to foreign mountaineers who wanted to explore the Karakoram Range, which has some of the world's highest peaks. Then, in 1977, an Indian colonel named Narinder (Bull) Kumar was leafing through a mountaineering magazine when he spotted an article on international expeditions venturing onto the glacier from the Pakistani side. Kumar persuaded his superiors to allow him to lead a 70-man team of climbers and porters to the glacier. They returned in 1981, climbed several peaks and walked the length of Siachen. In an interview with Outside magazine in 2003, Kumar described the glacier as "like a great white snake ... going, going, going. I have never seen anything so white and so wide."

Bull's secret trek was spotted by Pakistan. On patrol, some Pakistani soldiers found a crumpled packet of "Gold Flake" cigarettes—an Indian brand—and their suspicions were raised, according to a senior Pakistani government official. Soon, the Indian expedition on Siachen was shadowed by the Pakistanis. At army headquarters in Rawalpindi, Pakistani generals decided they had better stake a claim to Siachen before India did. Islamabad then committed an intelligence blunder, according to a now retired Pakistani army colonel. "They ordered Arctic-weather gear from a London outfitters who also supplied the Indians," says the colonel. "Once the Indians got wind of it, they ordered 300 outfits—twice as many as we had—and rushed their men up to Siachen." When the Pakistanis hiked up to the glacier in 1984, they found that a 300-man Indian battalion was already there, dug into the highest mountaintops. The Indians control two of Siachen's three passes, and two-thirds of the glacier. Says Lieut. Colonel Abid Nadeem, Pakistani commander at Gyong, which at 4,266 m is the highest battalion headquarters in the world: "The Indians were climbing heights. And we were climbing heights. Then the shooting started. And so the war began."

Battles for these nameless peaks often involved surreal acts of heroism and self-sacrifice. In April 1989, for example, the Pakistanis decided to try to dislodge an Indian squad from a saddle between two peaks known as the Chumik Pass before reinforcements arrived. First, a platoon of Pakistanis, roped together, tried scaling a 600-m cliff to reach the Indian post, but they were wiped out by an avalanche. Time was running out; Indian reinforcements were approaching. So a Pakistani lieutenant, Naveed Khan Qureshi, 27, with no mountain-warfare training, volunteered for a crazy mission. The plan was for Qureshi to be dangled from a tiny helicopter by a rope and then dropped on top of the peak, above the Indians. Slapped by high winds, the helicopter stalled and went into a dive. Qureshi was still underneath it, swinging to and fro. "I was sure that he was going to get caught in the tail rotor blades," says the pilot, Raheel Hafeez Sehgal, now a colonel. Sehgal pulled the chopper out of its stall and headed for a lower ridge. Qureshi was cut loose—and fell straight into a crevasse. Miraculously, he survived, but was trapped there until a second soldier was airlifted in. The two men were stranded in a blizzard for two days until the weather cleared long enough for Sehgal to land four more troops and supplies. Trouble was, their position was 150 m below the Indian outpost instead of above it. Lashed together by ropes, the six men advanced up the mountain, and eventually overran the Indians' bunker. From that vantage point, the Pakistanis began to pound a lower Indian base on the glacier with mortars and rockets. A month later, the two countries realized the madness of trying to slug it out, and agreed to demilitarize the sector. The pact has held firm—proof, says Pakistani military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan, that Siachen can be a place of peace.

Today, an icy stalemate prevails. At Gyong, the Pakistani battalion headquarters, the military has made a large-scale model of its sector of Siachen. Using a swagger stick, an officer points out the positions of the Indian outposts, which dominate many of the highest peaks and ridges. Analysts reckon that India and Pakistan have 150 manned outposts along the Siachen Glacier, with some 3,000 troops each. At the Indian Forward Logistics Base, a 4,927-m-high post that is a key coordinating point for Indian troops manning the northern part of Siachen, Lieut. Colonel Pundir claims that the Pakistanis still don't control any part of the glacier. "Not even an inch," says Pundir. With an air of contempt, he adds: "They can't even show their faces near it." Pakistani Lieut. Colonel Saeed Iqbal concedes that the Indians control the heights. But he insists that the Indian success comes at a price. "It's costing them far more than us," says Iqbal. "We can deliver our men and supplies to the front line using roads, while the Indians have to bring in everything using helicopters and snowmobiles." Islamabad political analyst Hussain calculates that it costs the Indians $438 million a year to fight for Siachen (Indian officials claim it is less than $300 million), while Pakistan's bill is estimated at $182 million.

Since 1989, India and Pakistan have held nine meetings to hammer out a peace deal for Siachen. So far, they have got nowhere. At the last meeting, in May, India insisted that Pakistan accept the current 110-km front line along the glacier and the surrounding peaks—known as the Actual Ground Position Line—as the de facto international border. That way, say the Indians, if Pakistan does try to seize the Indian positions after a withdrawal, it would attract international condemnation. "The ball is in the Pakistani court; they must accept the ground reality," says Oberoi, the former Indian army vice chief of staff.