Abhi posted earlier about the India-Pakistan fight over the high-altitude Siachen glacier. Let’s take a closer look at the economic aspect: the 23-year-old Siachen conflict is the epitome of inefficient war engineering, even worse than the kill ratio of musket warfare in the 18th century. The enemy here isn’t the other nation, it’s the territory you’re purportedly saving. It’s like fighting on Mars or the ice planet Hoth (photos):

Ninety-seven per cent of casualties here are due to the extreme weather and altitude, rather than fighting. “On the glacier you have to first survive the elements and then you fight the enemy,” says a senior officer…. [Link]

… with winter temperatures of 70 degrees below zero, the inhospitable climate in Siachen has claimed more lives than gunfire. [Link]

India has lost more than 2,500 men in Siachen, most of them to the hostile weather. [Link]

Every ounce of supply is hauled on specialized high-altitude helicopters and snowmobiles. The cost has been $10B (extrapolated), or $30B adjusted for purchasing power. The cost of supplies is a hundred times more expensive than on a normal battlefield, and India’s paying platinum rates to airlift human feces. Instead it could have bought fourteen Russian aircraft carriers:

… a chapatti delivered to a soldier there cost Rs 500. Even the excreta of soldiers manning these posts has to be lifted by helicopters and brought to base for disposal… [Link]

Islamabad political analyst Hussain calculates that it costs the Indians $438 million a year to fight for Siachen (Indian officials claim it is less than $300 million), while Pakistan’s bill is estimated at $182 million… [Link]

The barren glacier’s value lies only in domestic politics:

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… [Link]

Analysts say Siachen has lost much of its strategic value since the two countries tested nuclear weapons in May 1998. [Link]

“This is like a struggle of two bald men over a comb,” said Stephen P. Cohen, an authority on the Indian subcontinent at the Brookings Institution…

Over the years, Siachen itself has been the subject of seven “major rounds of talks,” said Robert G. Wirsing, a scholar at the University of South Carolina. Under various Governments ruled by various parties, negotiators have agreed that the conflict is futile — and some have even called it lunatic. But one side or the other has always been too afraid of a double-cross to complete a deal. Domestic politics are also a hitch. Any compromise involving Kashmir looms like a lit fuse, especially to unstable Governments. So the two armies fight on… [Link]

It all started with the drama of a Milan fashionista hissy-fit, when rival buyers met cute at European boutiques:

In late 1983, the Indians became convinced the Pakistanis were about to seize the glacier, General Chibber said. This was inferred from intercepted communiqués. If further evidence was needed, he said, it came when India sent procurers to Europe to buy cold-weather gear. They ran into Pakistanis doing the same shopping. [Link]

That the standoff continues despite the surreal survival conditions is proof that you can in fact sell ice to eskimos:

… sudden blizzards can bury field artillery in minutes. Men sleep in ice caves or igloos and breathe air so spare of oxygen that it sends their hearts into a mad gallop. Fainting spells and pounding headaches are frequent…

Rifles must be thawed repeatedly over kerosene stoves, and machine guns need to be primed with boiling water. At altitudes of 18,000 feet, mortar shells fly unpredictable and extraordinary distances, swerving erratically when met by sledgehammer gusts…

Transporting kerosene is one major expense. Some Indian soldiers live in igloos made of fiberglass panels. Six soldiers can sleep in jigsaw configurations, crowded into a room the size of a king-size bed. Others live in ice tunnels gouged out with a pickax. Either way, small kerosene stoves are the hearths they huddle around. The hissing competes with the howling of the wind. Black smoke seems to color everything, including a man’s spit…

… sleeping is rarely done at night, for this is the most likely time for the enemy to sneak up. Sentry duty is bleak work. Hot water bottles do not stay hot for long. A relay must be set up to exchange frozen rifles for defrosted ones… “At my post, you have to use a crawl trench to get to the toilet,” said Cpl. Joginder Singh. “When it snows, the trench fills up and you have to stand. The enemy can see you and that’s how you die…”

… the sun was bright enough to rapidly turn an exposed nose the color of a radish. Sweat is a problem because it becomes ice in a soldier’s gloves and socks. Frostbite is then quick with its work. Even after a day’s exertion, most soldiers have little appetite at these heights. Rations come out of tin cans. Fresh produce is rare. An orange freezes to the hardness of a baseball; a potato cannot be dented with a hammer…

Soldiers brought down to base camp often suffer hearing, eyesight and memory loss because of prolonged use of oxygen masks. Many lose eyes, hands or feet to frostbite. At the glacial heights, where even drinking water is from melting the ice on stoves, bathing is a rarity. Washing of clothing, too, is not possible. Hence, 14 pairs of thermal socks per individual are given for a 90-day stay so that the problem of washing at the posts is eliminated… [Link]

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… [Link]

Toothpaste freezes in its tube, speech can be blurred, frostbite and chilblains are common and plummeting temperatures can leave scores dead. [Link]

… for forward positions above 18,000 feet, no acclimatisation is possible — the body steadily deteriorates through the three months of deployment at these heights… [Link]

At least some innovations have come out of it: helicopter design…

Not any ordinary helicopter but India’s Indigenous Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) that can generate lift in the extremely thin air at this altitude. The world’s highest helipad also exists here at Sonam, at a height of 21,000 feet. [Link]

The rotor blade and gearbox operate at maximum speed and pitch-angle… The engine’s maximum jet pipe temperature limit the available power… Sudden & sharp high altitude mountain gust put extreme stress on the rotor blade… Lack of depth perception due to whiteout condition… Oxygen required in non-pressurized pilot cabin… Enemy medium/heavy calibre firearm, howitzer and missile fire…. Siachen [missions] require flying fast and low with little dwell time on helipad in view of omnipresent threat of enemy fire. [Link]

… green technology…

Solar panels are affixed to some igloos. On the Indian side, a kerosene pipeline is being completed. A ski lift will ferry soldiers across the canyons. A pulley system has begun to hoist supplies up the mountainsides. Bacteria are eating human waste in machines called biodigesters. “We have become specialists at high-altitude fighting — probably the best in the world,” boasted General Sawhney… [Link]

… medicine…

Indian doctors are credited with establishing that inhaling nitric oxide can help treat pulmonary oedema and are now pioneering research in using Viagra, which offsets the constriction of blood vessels. The hospital’s High Altitude Medical Research Centre has also found that people living in high regions tend to be physiologically better adapted to extreme altitude, though second-generation Tibetans living in India fare no better than lowlanders…

All forward posts have Hapo (high altitude pulmonary oedema) bags — similar to a sleeping bag — with slits to see through, zipped at the front and sealed so the air pressure inside can be pumped up to simulate lower altitudes. For anyone with the slightest trace of claustrophobia, it is hard to imagine a more terrifying life-saver than a pulmonary oedema bag. “You do feel like you are in a coffin…” [Link]

… and laundry. Laundry?

Clothing used in the glacier is washed at the hot water sulphur springs on the banks of the Nubra at Panamik, a village near the base camp. Such is the rotation schedule that the washing goes on round the year. A serving Captain, just back from his glacier tenure, describes Panamik as the “world’s biggest and highest dhobi ghat.” [Link]

I’m all for the march of technology, national pride and the romance of commando extremes. But how much soldiering can a man get done when he has to crawl trembling on his belly every day just to take a shit? In the lowlands we hustle such people into hospitals.

On this glacier, nationalism is colliding with a culture of saving face. It’s like playing Russian roulette with six bullets. Twenty-three years of festering battle atop a useless glacier at usurious rates are an obscene waste.

Long ago, India and Pakistan should have dropped buoy fencing, negotiated a border agreement and gone back up only in case of territorial incursion. Siachen is symptomatic of the entire India-Pakistan conflict, and the issue isn’t military — it’s a desi culture of honor at war with itself.

Of course, it fell to an economist to make the first move toward ending this misadventure:

“… Now the time has come to make efforts to convert this battlefield into a peace mountain. Talks are going on with Pakistan in this regard,” Dr Singh, who became the first prime minister to visit Siachen… told troops deployed in Siachen. [Link]