Getting real on Siachen

The tragedy of the Gayari landslide has generated a spate of comments in Pakistan on the huge financial and environmental costs of stationing soldiers under unbelievably inhospitable conditions in an area of dubious strategic importance. Some of our “analysts” and political leaders have also proposed “solutions” to the dispute that are quite divorced from reality. The top honours must go to Nawaz Sharif, who called for a unilateral withdrawal from Siachen. He later tried unconvincingly to explain it away. He was of course not the only one. The secretary general of SAFMA also came up with the same bright idea.

For the SAFMA head, that seems to be a part of the job description. But it is a far more serious matter when such a proposal comes from the leader of the second-largest political party in the country and a two-time prime minister who hopes to return to that job in the next election.

Besides, Nawaz’s suggestion for unilateral concessions on Siachen seems not to have been a one-time aberration. On May 6, he called for the immediate, unilateral abolition of the “visa regime” between Pakistan and India. Those who recall Nawaz’s speech at a SAFMA seminar last August would notice that his statements on Siachen and on abolishing visas for the Indians are part of a pattern.

Reflecting a popular view, former foreign secretary Najmuddin Shaikh wrote in an article two weeks ago that the dispute over Siachen was one of the two items on the agenda of the bilateral dialogue-the other being Sir Creek-on which progress could be made quickly, the so-called low-hanging fruit that could be plucked immediately. He suggested that the main obstacle to a Siachen settlement was India’s fear, however ill-founded, especially after Kargil, that Pakistan might “renege upon or breach” an agreement on mutual troop withdrawal from Siachen and that this possibility had made the Indian army extremely reluctant to leave the glacier.

If that was the reason for India’s inflexibility on Siachen, a solution could still have been found. But India’s real considerations, as articulated by several official and unofficial spokesmen of the Indian establishment, are quite different.

First, in the opinion of many Indian defence analysts, Siachen is a great strategic prize because of its location at the Pakistan-India-China tri-junction. India’s control of the Saltoro Ridge, in this view, prevents Pakistan and China from joining up through the Karakoram Pass at Xaidulla (Shahidullah) on the Kashgar-Xigatse road, the main Chinese route between Xinjiang and Tibet that runs through Aksai Chin. Such a linkup between Pakistan and China, in the imagination of India’s armchair strategists, could threaten India’s control of Ladakh. Besides, the possession of the Saltoro Fidge also gives India strategic high ground over Gilgit-Baltistan. Vikram Sood, a former RAW chief, writes that the “China factor” was not so evident in 1984 when India seized Siachen, but it is much more important now in view of the larger Chinese footprint in the area and China’s “strategic interest” in Gilgit-Baltistan. In this connection, Sood points to the widening of the Karakoram Highway and reported plans of a rail link with Pakistan and an oil and gas pipeline from Gwadar to Xinjiang.

Second, India’s possession of Siachen strengthens India’s hand in any eventual Kashmir settlement with Pakistan based on the status quo, in keeping with the maxim that “possession is nine-tenths of the law.” Siachen should therefore be the “last issue on the table, not the first.”

Third, Indira Col, in the northern-most part of the Saltoro Ridge, directly overlooks the Shaksgam valley “that was illegally ceded by Pakistan to China” in the 1963 border agreement. India’s control of this ridge, in the words of one Indian expert, enables India to “legitimately and effectively dispute the illegal Chinese presence there.”