NEW DELHI: Nearly a thousand soldiers have died guarding Siachen since the Indian Army took control of the glacier in April 1984 —almost twice the number of lives lost in the 1999 Kargil war.
AFP FILEA soldier keeps vigil at Siachen. Guns have been silent on the glacier for the past 12 years but weather and terrain have continued to claim lives.The numbers come after 10 soldiers were killed when a deadly avalanche struck their post in Siachen where the Indian Army holds posts at heights of more than 21,000 feet.
It is the world’s highest battlefield that India and Pakistan have fought over inter mittently for three decades. One of the soldiers, Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, miraculously survived being trapped under 35 feet of snow for six days but died in an army hospital on February 11.
Latest Army figures accessed by Hindustan Times reveal almost a fifth of the lives in Siachen were lost to enemy fire before the November 2003 ceasefire between India and Pakistan. The remaining deaths were linked to avalanches, crevasses and storms, accidents and medical reasons. Not a single shot has been fired on the glacier after the ceasefire agreement. Figures show that 997 Indian soldiers have died on the glacier in the last 32 years–this includes the 10 men who died this month. The Army’s casualties include 220 men killed in exchange of fire. Previous official figures, tabled in Parliament last December, pegged Siachen deaths at 869 from 1984 to 2015. When Pakistani troops occupied strategic peaks in the Kargil, Dras and Batalik sectors in Kashmir in 1999, India lost 527 lives in driving them back.
India’s longest continuing military mission has caused nearly 700 non-fatal casualties. The figure includes 295 men who were injured in exchange of fire with the Pakistani troops. Pakistan is paying a high price too. Its army lost 213 soldiers in Siachen in 2003-10. Also, 140 Pakistani soldiers were killed when a deadly avalanche swept away a military camp in April 2012–the highest number of army casualties in a single incident at Siachen. India recorded a high percentage of casualties in the late eighties and early nineties, but Army officials said these had been brought down significantly in the last 10-15 years.
“Advances made in highaltitude medicine, better gear, best possible training, in-house innovations and following proper drills have helped us keep casualty rates low,” said retired Lieutenant General Om Prakash, who commanded the Army’s Siachen brigade during 2005-2006. It was during Prakash’s tenure that Manmohan Singh visited the glacier in June 2005 as prime minister and later talked about converting it into “a mountain of peace.”
The Indian Army launched Operation Meghdoot in April 1984 to evict Pakistani soldiers who had occupied strategic heights at Siachen, a 76-km river of slow moving ice. Several rounds of talks between India and Pakistan on demilitarising the Siachen glacier–an old sore in bilateral ties–have failed with Islamabad refusing to authenticate troop positions on the ground.