AFVOA Newletters of Year 2004

Page 16 of 153 Chakra after 1971. After this defeat, Benazir Bhutto tauntingly told late General Zia-ul- Haque to wear a burqa. 60. To dislodge India from Bilfond La, Pakistan raised an elite Special Service Group (SSG) commandos in 1987. It built up Khapalu garrison with eight thousand troops. General Pervez Mushraff, then in charge SSG, and now Pak Army Chief, spent his first soldier’s night with SSG at Siachen. Pakistan launched the assault in September 1987 and suffered a crushing defeat. 61. Though Pakistan failed in its attempt to capture the Bilfond La pass but Indian also lost the strategic initiative. It failed to appreciate that takeover of Khapalu rather than the control of either Siachen or the Saltoro-ridge line was strategic to Indian security interests in the area. 62. Distance between Khapalu and Saltoro passes is only forty kms as crow flies. Defence strategists believe that any attack on Leh from Pakistan via Saltoro and Siachen would be logistically and humanly difficult. The likely route can be only along the Shyok river to Khardong La, which leads on to Leh. Obviously, it would have made sense strategically, if Indian army had taken over Khapalu before Pak build up in 1987, using Shyok river route, which is militarily, viable. But then, this is the sad story of India’s repeated failures in appreciating strategic security interests. 63. In 1990 there were again skirmishes on the periphery of the glacier. In 1995 Pak SSG suffered forty casualties in an attack on an outpost by Sikh battalion. An IAF MI-17 helicopter was shot down in 1996. In 1998 there were five abortive attacks in fifteen days by Pakistan on Ashok, Malon, Fateh 5770 and other posts. Last Pak attack was on March 10, 1999 some three weeks after the Lahore summit, of and on artillery fire is exchanged intermittently. Pakistan’s elite commandos and soldiers of 36 Baluch Regiment have failed to gain a toehold on Saltoro crest line, Indira Col, to an anonymous benchmark NJ9842. This has forced Pakistan to shift its strategy from one of offensive to containment by forcing huge expenditure on India. 64. Currently Pakistan maintains three battalions, while India has seven battalions defending Siachen. Pakistan spends Rs 10 million a day, which amounts to Rs 3.6 billion a year. Indian expenditure is Rs 14.40 billion a year. So far Pakistan has spent Rs 50.2 billion, a huge drain on financial resources for a small poor country like Pakistan. On an average, one Pakistani soldier is killed every fourth day, while one Indian soldier is killed every second day. 1344 Pak soldiers have died on Siachen since 1984. Ninety five percent casualties have been due to extreme and intolerable weather conditions. The number of wounded is nearly twenty times more, while the number is in thousands of those traumatized. DIALOGUE 65. The huge drain on resources have forced India and Pakistan to open a dialogue for a disengagement on Siachen, without prejudice to either side’s actual ground position locations or its interpretation of the extension of LoC beyond NJ9842, where it was terminated in 1972. As per India the line follows the Saltoro crest line to Indira Col, while Pakistan draws a straight line from NJ9842 to Karakoram pass. This triangle of dispute is made up of NJ9842, Indira Col and Karakoram pass. The zone of disengagement, however, would require the Indian troops to move east of Siachen glacier around its snout in the Nubra valley, while the Pakistani troops would have to pull back west to fall back positions around Goma-NJ9842. The Indian Himalaya brigade is based in Pratapur, while Pakistan’s Frontier Controlled