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Outside Magazine February 2003

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The Coldest War (Cont.)


	Weighing a mortar round. (Teru Kuwayama)

LAST AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER, after securing access from the Pakistani and Indian armies, Teru and I trekked to both sides of the Siachen conflict to get a look at this highest and most hidden of military standoffs—the first American journalists to do so on foot. It was a tense time. Islamic militants had bombed the Indian Parliament in New Delhi the previous December. By the summer, a million troops were deployed along the border. When we arrived in Pakistan, British and American diplomats had just succeeded in getting the two countries to step back from the brink of a nuclear exchange.

Our journey began in Khapalu,

One Indian officer marveled at the tenacity of the Pakistanis at Tabish. "We can throw grenades just like pebbles on top of them," he said. "It really takes guts to be there."

a town on the Shyok River, where we met Major Mohammed Tahir Iqbal, the second-highest-ranking officer at brigade headquarters for Pakistan's Siachen operations. The major greeted us in his office, then took us outside to view a concrete scale model of the entire Siachen theater. "Our objective is to foil the Indian designs," he explained, waving a long bamboo stick to point out various features of the model. "We are just trying to maintain operational readiness so that they do not think of any further mischief." Easy enough to say, but by almost any measure—military might, economic clout, political stability, population—India is more powerful than Pakistan. And it never lets Pakistan forget it. To compensate, Pakistani soldiers exhibit a spirited swagger, which can be fierce, comical, and endearing. Dressed in a tan one-piece uniform and speaking with clipped military precision, Tahir combined a little of everything as he clomped about on the Siachen model in his heavy black boots.

The model featured more than 100 white-capped mountains and ridges, blue rivers, and carefully labeled flags marking each army's bases and posts. To the east and west stood a dense thicket of peaks divided by the two main rivers cutting through the region, the Indus and its mighty tributary the Shyok. There were few towns, roads, or bridges. Several glaciers were splayed across the map, the largest of which, by far, was the Siachen, which ran in a long diagonal line from northwest to southeast. Running parallel to the Siachen on its western side was a massive, virtually unbroken wall of peaks and escarpments. This was the Saltoro Ridge.

Looking at the impenetrable mountaintops, you could see why almost a century passed between the first report of the Siachen Glacier's existence—by the British explorer William Moorcroft, in 1821—and its first survey, in 1912, by the American team of Fanny Bullock Workman and her husband, William. You could also see why climbers have been intrigued: Here, deep in the Karakoram, an entire sea of virgin peaks lay waiting to be bagged.

During the decade after the first ascent of Mount Everest, by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953, virtually all the great peaks in the eastern Himalayas of Nepal were climbed, including Cho Oyu, Lhotse, and Dhaulagiri. Soon enough, mountaineers turned their gaze to the Karakoram, which contains four of the 14 highest mountains on earth—most notably K2, first summited by an Italian team in 1954. The door to the Karakoram was mostly shut, however, during the two wars that India and Pakistan fought over Kashmir in 1965 and 1971. Then, in 1974, Pakistan's Ministry of Tourism decided to open the region again, issuing permits allowing foreign expeditions to climb on the Baltoro Glacier, near K2, and to explore the no-man's-land around the Siachen.

Between 1974 and 1981, at least 16 major expeditions climbed up to the Siachen and beyond—11 from Japan, three from Austria, and one each from Britain and the United States. Pakistan's motive for issuing the permits, it seems, was a desire to promote mountain tourism. But as expedition reports circulated through the mountaineering community made clear, the foreigners had concluded that the Siachen belonged to Pakistan. This impression also took root in the minds of the Pakistani government, and today the list of these expeditions is often cited as proof of ownership. "Our contention," Tahir told me, waving his stick, "is that this is our area."

India says the same thing, and both sides are unwilling to admit that neither has a solid legal claim to the region. (To avoid being dragged into the conflict, the United States has steadfastly refused to take a side.) Robert Wirsing, a professor at the U.S. Navy's Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu and one of the world's leading experts on the dispute over Kashmir, puts it more bluntly. In his view, the claims of both sides are equally spurious. "The Indian arguments are absolutely 100 percent false, and so are Pakistan's," says Wirsing. "The Pakistanis have no right to base their claim on permits issued to foreign mountaineers. And the only strength to the Indian argument is that it's backed by a force that cannot be dislodged."

Neither side is budging, but judging from Tahir's map, the Pakistanis definitely face an uphill task. The entire Saltoro Ridge, including the two highest passes that connect Pakistan to the glacier—Bilafond La at 18,200 feet and Sia La at 18,850 feet—is bristling with red flags: Indian army posts. On ridges running parallel but at significantly lower elevations, you see a corresponding belt of blue flags: the Pakistani posts.

Tahir reluctantly conceded that the Indians own the high ground, but insisted that Pakistan has "better communications, better roads, and better motivation." And that wasn't all.

"Morally," he said, bringing the tutorial to a close, "we occupy the high ground."

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