War at the Top of the World

[SwordFish_13]

Hi,

From CNN :

At 6,300 meters (20,700 feet) India controls these breathless heights at an estimated cost of up to $1 million a day and is reluctant to back off for fear Pakistan might walk in.

Yet there is no doubt the logistical and physical challenge of supplying troops at sub-zero conditions beggars belief.

Ironically experts say the strategic importance of the glacier, where neither side had troops until 1984, is debatable.

After partition in 1947 no one bothered to extend the line of control between Pakistan and India up to Siachen because no one thought it was worth bothering about.

The fact is the human body continuously deteriorates above 18,000 feet and with winter temperatures of 70 degrees below zero, the inhospitable climate in Siachen has claimed more lives than gunfire.

The world's highest helipad also exists here at Sonam, at a height of 21,000 feet.

At these dizzying heights, breathing can also be a huge effort and many soldiers suffer from high-altitude pulmonary and cerebral edema, headaches and hypertension.


Time Magazine recently Conducted a Photo Essay on Siachen from Both Sides of the Border

From Indian Side:


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Indian soldiers patrol the Siachen Glacier near the Forward Logistics Base (FLB), a key coordinating point for troops manning the northern part of Siachen


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A view of the 75-km long Siachen glacier from the cockpit of an Indian air force helicopter


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With the peaks of the Karakoram range in the background, a group of Indian troops cling to an ice wall during high-altitude training



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Indian soldiers check their weapons outside a shelter at the Forward Logistics Base. Siachen Glacier stretches away behind them


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At Siachen Base Camp on the banks of the Nubra River, troops pay their respects at the Siachen War Memorial. On this dangerous battleground, more soldiers die from avalanches than from gunfire


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New recruits wait their turn during high-altitude training on the glacier


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A soldier's gun and helmet stands silhouetted against the dark mountain sky at India's Siachen War Memorial


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Indian soldiers climb an ice wall at the mouth of the Siachen Glacier


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Indian soldiers pause by a glacial stream as they return to base camp following their tour of duty at higher elevations




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Soldiers on patrol at 4,900 meters near India's Forward Logistics Base above the Siachen Glacier


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Praying at the all-faith O.P. Baba shrine, dedicated to a fallen Indian soldier, at Siachen Base Camp. It's estimated as many as 5,000 troops on both sides have died during the conflict


And the Time Magazine Story :

Source:Time

Up at 5,653 m, Pakistani army Captain Ali Nazir watches the crows as they soar down from the spires of rock, gliding over the blue glacier. "I like the crows," Nazir says. He points to his soldiers clustered around a fiberglass igloo. "Aside from us, they are the only living creatures we ever see." And when the crows leave during the fierce, three-week-long winter blizzards? Then, says Nazir, "I cannot describe the absolute desolation I feel." He gestures grandly, like an orchestra conductor, at the view: snow clouds roiling down from the crags, avalanche tracks, man-eating crevasses ribbing the glacier. Soldiers see strange things at such altitudes—genies flitting across the glacier, phantom troops along a ridge. Men go mad and wander off to die in blizzards. "This is a terrible place. It is a battle just to survive," says Nazir, 27, his face darkened by high-altitude exposure.

Across a rampart of rock and ice stretching the length of the 75-km Siachen Glacier, an Indian soldier, Amarjeet Singh, is preparing to take up his battle position against the Pakistanis. Singh had served on the glacier before, in 1989, at the height of the fighting with Pakistan, but he thinks his second tour of duty will go easier. Indian and Pakistani troops are no longer shooting at one another. They are mainly worried about avalanches and deadly high-altitude sickness instead. "It was much worse before," recalls Singh, who says he now has warmer boots to protect him against frostbite, and better ice axes. Once he gets to his mountaintop bunker, entombed under layers of snow, Singh, like the other soldiers there, can call home by satellite phone from their soot-blackened igloo, while waiting out the hour that it takes to boil rice at these altitudes.

Even with improvements in military equipment, Siachen is still an awful place to wage a war. Both countries refuse to disclose their casualties in the 21 years that they have been fighting up here, but some military analysts put the combined death toll at anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 lives. Temperatures can fall below -55°C; and more soldiers are killed in avalanches than by gunfire. To mount an assault on an enemy-held mountaintop is often suicidal. Because of the lack of oxygen, attacking soldiers can climb only about five meters before they have to stop to catch their breath. If you let bare skin touch steel for more than 15 seconds—a finger on a trigger, for example—you risk severe frostbite. Says Rifaat Hussain, who teaches political science at Islamabad's National Defence College: "It's totally insane to be fighting a war at these altitudes."

Recently, TIME was able to visit both sides on the glacier and talk to soldiers involved in something that, if not the world's most insane war, is surely the war fought in the most insanely impractical place. But the Siachen Glacier is worth visiting for more than the spectacular scenery. It is both a potential flash point between two nuclear powers—and potentially evidence of a new spirit of cooperation between them. The two neighbors nearly waged a full-scale war in 1999 when 800 Pakistani soldiers disguised as militants scaled a 5,100-m-high ridge near Kargil in Indian-held Kashmir and began shelling a major road used by the Indians to supply their Siachen outposts. India recaptured Kargil after suffering many casualties, but the Indians remain wary of the peace-making vows of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who, as army chief, had planned the Kargil offensive. Today, Siachen is more important as a test of diplomacy than of high-altitude battle skills. If India and Pakistan cannot solve a dispute over a chunk of ice that is of little strategic value, asks Jalil Abbas Jilani, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman and one of the key diplomats in talks with India, "then how can we fix more complex issues like Kashmir?"

Continued...

Peace
-=SF_13=-

 

[phoenix80]

this was posted in 2003... this is 2005 now!

 

[SwordFish_13]

Hi,

this was posted in 2003... this is 2005 now!

Because Global warming is not helping enpough over there ........... because it is not getting any less hostile than in 2003 ......

The CNN Story was done back in 2003 and the Time Magzine Photo Essay named War at the Top of the World was done in May , 2005 ......... it was Time Magzine Cover Story ......... things haven't changed much since 2003 ........So I used Both the Stories ........


From the Pakistani Side


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At 4,200 meters above sea level, a Pakistani Army soldier practices a mountain descent during exercises in the Siachen Glacier region. Desite the ceasefire which has been in place, the two sides are in a constant state of alert


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At 5,600 meters, an army helicopter hovers in the thin air over a Pakistani outpost on a spur of the Siachen Glacier


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An officer sits in front of a fiberglass igloo used as living quarters. Soldiers generally spend 90 days at high altitude bases before decending for 20 days of leave


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The army base at Gyari, the highest battalion headquarters in the world, home to some of the estimated 3,000 Pakistani soldiers on Siachen


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Soldiers at attention to meet their commanding officer during a mountaineering exercise near the Siachen Glacier


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A Pakistani soldier stands in front of a row of AK-47 rifles and heavy machine guns used prior to the 2003 ceasefire


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Pakistani soldiers play cricket on the grounds of their battalion headquarters in Gyari at an elevation of 4,200 meters


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Soldiers practice a rope crossing of a glacial river during mountaineering exercises at Gyari


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Troops cheer on a fellow soldier during a mountaineering exercise at 4,200 meters near the Siachen glacier


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Pakistani porters stop for a rest on the Siachen Glacier before pushing on to resupply a forward military outpost. Temperatures on the glacier can drop to -55°C and the thin air makes any form of exertion difficult


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Soldiers perform their traditional Muslim ablutions before afternoon prayers in a mosque at headquarters, 4,200 meters above sea level


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A soldier reads his Koran by the light from a window of an army mosque at Gyari


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Soldiers pace outside their stone barracks below the jagged peaks of the Karakoram range, some of the highest in the world


Peace
-=SF_13=-

 

[Redleg]

Very interesting pictures and story Swordfish.

I've spoken with a few indian Ghurkas in Lebanon that had server in Kashmir (don't know if they were in Siachen or not), and they didn't have much good to say about the conditions up there.. :?

 

[SwordFish_13]

Hi,

Some more Older Pictures From the Indian Side ..........

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Solders climbing ice wall on route to their post.

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Flash from a 130mm M-46 field gun, as it fires away at enemy outposts.

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A well-equipped infantry patrol on route to a high-altitude post in Siachen

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vigil for enemy intrusions, in the numbing cold and icy winds.

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A HAL Cheetah lands on an ice pillar, covered by tarpaulins and old parachutes.

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A 105mm LFG crew. In the background, a HAL Chetak can be seen hovering.

Peace
-=SF_13=-

 

[Xion]

Nice pics

 

[FULLMETALJACKET]

thin air up there, hard to train.