Arun Joshi

We have been condemned to count casualties in the Siachen glacier. Ten more soldiers have died as their post was swamped by a giant snow wall on February 3. This tragedy is greater as they did not die fighting the enemy. “There are remote chances” of now finding their bodies buried under tonnes of snow.Why should they die like this? The Ministry of Defence and the top brass of the Army have to answer this. Soldiers have been stationed at the glacier since 1984 to guard the nation’s strategic asset. That strategic assets have to be guarded whatever the cost, is an argument well taken. But those who guard it deserve extraordinary protection too from blizzards, frostbites and mental ailments to maintain vigil at the highest battlefield of the world. Over the decades, the Centre could not install an effective avalanche warning system at the glacier where billions of rupees of taxpayers are being spent every year.In the 1990s, it was claimed that an effective avalanche warning system was in place. That system rarely seems to work. Soldiers were asked to celebrate the installation of a satellite phone with which they could talk to their families. The facility was provided to help them battle the isolation of their snow-bound station. But there was no internal communication system to forewarn them at 19,600 feet that they were in an avalanche-prone area. The whole glacier is not avalanche-prone but still posts were set up where snow rivers can hit them any time.The problem is four-fold. Firstly, it is the glacier itself, which has not been properly delineated. The cartographers while drawing the Line of Control (earlier the ceasefire line) after the Simla Agreement in 1972 left things undefined. Secondly, the bureaucracy does not have much knowledge of the weather and terrain but decides what the soldiers should or should not have. They sit on the files while the soldiers wait and die.Thirdly, the plague of corruption has brought soldiers in harm’s way at the glacier. Corruption is as deadly as the hostile surroundings. The former Defence Minister had been put in the picture about the poor quality of shoes and socks. He had been told that the stockings provided to soldiers failed to protect them from frostbites. But, there is yet no word suggesting that the soldiers deployed and operating in – 45 degrees Celsius should get an adequate gear. Their special rations are sold on the black market in Leh. A few inquiries indicted low-rung officers; others were closed without telling anyone what happened to the men involved in brazen corruption. In 2005, water was passed off as diesel. Fourthly, there are ceremonial visits which make headlines while the soldiers are made to wait for years for the promised substantive things.The soldiers are told that the whole nation salutes them for their bravery and fortitude for standing high at the highest battlefield of the world. The saga of bravery, however, is not written with the burial of soldiers under avalanches.In the 21st century, there is a need to devise a clear, political, diplomatic and military strategy. The political leadership should summon the courage to take a call about how to save the soldiers from such unnatural deaths.

BATTLING THE ELEMENTS