This was a very practical solution modeled after the Antarctic treaty, which erstwhile adversaries such as the United States and the Soviet Union signed at the height of the Cold War. As the world's longest non-polar glacier, Siachen has particular importance for science and since this region is not habitable by humans, there is little value in terms of useful real-estate. In the age of military drones and cyber warfare, coupled with a massive nuclear deterrent, the strategic value of Siachen is also very limited. This is the most hostile border to cross and is clearly not on the priority list for terrorist infiltration! Contrary to popular opinion in both India and Pakistan, incursions such as the Kargil episode also have no connection to strategic advantage over Siachen. Even if troop deployments now extend across the full range, such deployments are malleable and the cooperative monitoring system proposed in various peace plans could easily assuage concerns of security on both sides.
Yet despite all these very pragmatic reasons provided, the resolution to the Siachen dispute has still eluded us. I had many high hopes for a distinguished Prime Minister (PM) like Manmohan Singh to work practically to resolve this particular dispute. Four months after my article was published, the Prime Minister actually visited Siachen (the first such visit by an Indian PM). His speech there on June 12, 2005 was very heartening as he noted: “nobody fears any threat, there is no scope for any conflict and this place becomes an example of peaceful environment… How long shall we allow such conditions to prevail (in Siachen)? Now the time has come for us to make efforts to convert this battlefield into a peace mountain."
Science For Peace
Sadly these words have not been acted upon and the blame games continue from both sides of the border. Since the glacier is physically under Indian control, leadership in resolving this dispute will have to come from India. The idea of a ‘science for peace' effort has also received wide ranging strategic study by eminent personalities in the military establishment in India, including Retd. Air Marshall Nanda Cariappa and Retd. Brigadier General Gurmeet Kanwal (current director of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies). The United States Sandia National Labs' Cooperative Monitoring Center sponsored two rounds of joint strategy papers on Siachen conflict resolution which were coauthored with Pakistani counterparts. In these documents as well the prospects for territorial resolution of this conflict through the establishment of science for peace initiative were positively discussed. A law student at Georgetown University at the time, Neal Kemkar, soon thereafter even authored a detailed paper laying out the legal mechanisms by which such a peace park could operate and the paper was published in the Stanford Environmental Law Review. All the groundwork for such a resolution is already in place. Read the full report here.
Source: by Saleem Ali of University of Vermont (USA), National Geographic.
