The Himalayas War at the Top Of the World

By EDWARD W. DESMOND KASHMIR

The blast is startling, and so is the reverberation that echoes like a landslide. But the sound of artillery fire -- the sound of war -- fades quickly in the gigantic stillness of mountain and glacier. Soldiers clad in dirty white snowsuits, their faces burned black by the sun, scramble to put another shell in the 105-mm howitzer and fire again. They are Pakistanis, serving at an outpost 17,200 ft. up on the Baltoro Glacier, just short of a sweeping ridgeline called the Conway Saddle. Their fire is aimed over the ridge at similar positions manned by Indian troops seven miles away on the Siachen Glacier, the longest in the Karakoram mountains. When the weather is clear, the big guns sometimes boom round the clock.

On this day, the other side is not shooting back, so only a handful of Pakistanis man machine guns, to ensure that no Indian reconnaissance helicopter passes unchallenged. Blue sky forms a stunning canvas for the cathedrals of snow-laden mountains topping 20,000 ft., including K2, the world's second highest peak. The Pakistani brigadier who commands the northern sector of the area looks around and says, "This place is beautiful. It was not meant for fighting."

But fighting there is -- and has been for more than five years. The Karakoram fastness of northern Kashmir is an area no men ever inhabited, and only a few had traversed, before Pakistani and Indian troops moved in to wage a bitter conflict, largely out of sight of their own people and the rest of the world. Pakistan and India each deploy several thousand troops in the region. Neither side releases casualty figures, yet hundreds of men have died from combat, weather, altitude and accidents, and thousands have been injured. Says the general commanding the Indian sector: "This is an actual war in every sense of the word. There is no quarter asked and no quarter given."

The paradox is that India and Pakistan are supposedly at peace and that Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto are trying to move from a chilly standoff into a friendlier era. Both say they want to erase what Bhutto calls the "irritant" of the Siachen Glacier problem, and both instructed their negotiators to do so in the most recent round of talks that began last month in Pakistan. When Gandhi and Bhutto met face to face in Islamabad last week, however, they failed to come close to devising a practical solution. Progress has been as thin as the atmosphere in the Karakorams, as the negotiators struggle to settle the central issue: how to divide the disputed mountain area between Pakistan and India.

At stake is national prestige as well as control of Kashmir's northern reaches. Since gaining their independence from Britain in 1947, both countries have wanted the 85,805 sq. mi. of the state of Jammu and Kashmir as their own. In 1949 Pakistan and India signed the so-called Karachi Agreement, which drew a cease-fire line that ended at map coordinate NJ 9842, at the southern foot of the Saltoro Range. The negotiators did not extend the line because there had been no fighting in Kashmir's northernmost reaches, but merely mentioned that the line should continue "thence north to the glaciers." Despite minor adjustments after the 1965 and 1971 India-Pakistan wars, the official boundary still ends at NJ 9842, leaving the Siachen ownership question unresolved.

Almost from the beginning, New Delhi has argued that India is entitled to control all of Kashmir. Islamabad's claim is more complex: besides supporting a 1949 U.N. call for a plebiscite on Kashmir's future, Pakistan has marshaled what it considers proof that it has all along controlled the area from NJ 9842 to the Karakoram Pass on the Chinese border. Islamabad cites circumstantial evidence, like the fact that mountaineering expeditions for years sought Pakistan's permission to enter the region, and its agreement to cede some of the territory to China in 1963.

India was the first to deploy troops on the Siachen Glacier. In April 1984 the Indian army launched Operation Meghdoot (Cloud Messenger), placing forces at two key passes of the Saltoro Range, which runs along the Siachen Glacier's western edge toward the Chinese border. India says it was pre-empting a planned Pakistani move -- a contention Islamabad denies. The Indian advance captured nearly 1,000 sq. mi. of territory claimed by Pakistan; ever since then New Delhi has wanted to establish a formal boundary along that natural divide. The conflict escalated slowly as each side deployed more men, established more outposts, introduced more artillery and rockets. In September 1987 the action peaked, but neither side has been willing to take the next steps, which might involve introducing air power or expanding the conflict to the south.

The only benefit for both sides has been improvement in their capability for high-altitude warfare. Both forces have built all-weather roads that twist up between towering peaks to base camps on the glaciers. Soldiers spend six weeks acclimatizing to the torturous conditions, learning ice climbing and winter survival. From the camps, men fan out to front-line positions in snow-choked mountain passes. They take turns watching for movement on the other side -- and the opportunity to call in artillery.

The rules of engagement are clear-cut on both sides: if there is a target, fire. Thus the battle is largely indirect, as howitzers and mortars lob shells -- mostly inaccurately -- over the ridges. Infantry assaults are rare, mainly because it is so hard for men to move, let alone charge, at such heights and over crevasse-riddled glaciers. At 18,000 ft. and higher, even a fully acclimatized soldier carrying rifle and combat pack can jog only a few yards without losing his breath. "The terrain does not allow much movement," says a Pakistani officer at an outpost on the Baltoro Glacier. "There is a natural limit to this conflict."

The principal causes of casualties are terrain and weather. Never before have men fought for any length of time at such altitudes, breathing air that contains less than half the oxygen at sea level, at temperatures that drop below -43 degrees F, in blinding blizzards that can last days. Both sides admit that 8 out of 10 casualties are caused by the harsh conditions -- including soldiers being swept away in cascades of snow or tumbling into crevasses. Says a Pakistani officer at the northern end of the Saltoro sector: "We are brave. They are brave. And we both face the same enemies: the weather and the altitude."

On those occasions when the antagonists do fight at close range, the results can be fearsome. In a month-long clash ending last May, soldiers battled intensely on a mountain and ridges near the Chumic Glacier. Both sides dispatched men in a furious race to an icy 21,300-ft.-high peak that commanded the area. "The secret in this terrain," says an Indian officer, "is to be the first on top." Seeing that the Indians would in fact get there first, the Pakistanis took a gamble: in howling winds they tied two soldiers to the runners of a helicopter for a seven-minute ride to the peak, not certain whether wind speed and icy temperatures would cause them to freeze to death before they reached their destination. The soldiers survived, landed on the summit and held off about a dozen Indians climbing toward the same spot.

During a month of fighting, the Pakistanis claim six of their men died, while at least 34 Indians were killed; India refuses to release its casualty figures. Though accounts of the struggle differ, it appears that the Indians eventually requested a meeting between the two opposing brigade commanders. After three sessions, both sides pledged to pull back their men, and the Indians agreed to accept two enemy posts that the Pakistanis said had been there all along. It was the first time local commanders had met face to face to sort out a disengagement.

By sitting down with each other, the two commanders were clearly acting in the spirit their Prime Ministers want to establish. But who will compromise?

Pakistan wants India to pull back from the glacier, after which the two sides could discuss a new boundary line. The key requirement: it must begin at NJ 9842 and end at the Karakoram Pass. But Pakistan would be willing to draw a demarcation between those points that would fall somewhere between its earlier claims and India's current position on the Saltoro Range.

India proposes a cease-fire in place, followed by a thinning out of forces in the Saltoro area; the suggestion has been rejected by Pakistan. In the talks last month, New Delhi broached a new formula slightly closer to Pakistan's: pull back all troops and establish a demilitarized zone, then negotiate on establishing a line from NJ 9842 to the Chinese border. So far, there has been no agreement.

After investing heavily in lives and money to take and hold the Saltoro, it would be politically difficult for Gandhi to yield even part of the territory to Pakistan, especially with national elections only months away. Bhutto is in an even more sensitive position. Having once taunted late President Mohammed % Zia ul-Haq, her predecessor, for losing the territory in the first place, she now faces poisonous criticism from opposition leaders who accuse her of "submission" to India. In the end, both Gandhi and Bhutto will have to stare down their political antagonists in order to agree on a boundary line across the north's icy fastness. Otherwise it will continue to be drawn in men's blood.