Pak talks peace in Siachen, but wages propaganda war

There’s something about the rarefied atmosphere in the snowy heights of the Siachen glacier that induces Pakistan’s army officials and politicians to talk peace with India. Pakistan army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was in Siachen on Wednesday to oversee the rescue operations for the Pakistani soldiers who were buried by an avalanche in early April. And he used the occasion to talk ‘peace’ – and launch a propaganda war against India. Calling for the demilitarisation of the Siachen glacier, Kayani noted that the “dispute” over this remote iceland had been discussed several times between India and Pakistan.“Sometimes we get close to a resolution but then issues come up.” Kayani, who was addressing principally an international group of journalists and was evidently channeling a propagandist message, went so far as to advocate “peaceful coexistence” with India. The irony of such a motherhood statement coming from the head of a military organisation that spawns and protects jihadi outfits to wage “proxy war against India” was lost on both Kayani and his audience. [caption id=“attachment_280297” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“The General sings a peace song, but he fails to convince. Reuters”]  [/caption] Barely days earlier, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif too visited Siachen – and advocated more radically that Pakistan should initiate the process of troop withdraw from Siachen. But that peacenik message was shot down by Interior Minister A Rehman Malik who thundered that “every inch” of Pakistan was “sacred” and that Pakistan would never withdraw its troops from Siachen unilaterally. How does one explain this outbreak of a “peace epidemic” in Pakistan, where even the head of the Army chief is talking of demilitarisation of Siachen and “peaceful coexistence” with India? On the face of it, the standoff between India and Pakistan over the Siachen glacier is worthy of a Joseph Heller satire on the idiocy of war and conflict. The block of ice, some 90 km long and 50 km wide, where as was famously said on another occasion, not a blade of grass grows, was not even considered worthy of occupation until the 1970s. It is one of the most inhospitable terrains in the world, and yet Indian troops have held it since they seized it in 1984. Pakistan’s memory of the Siachen dispute traces only from 1984, but the Indian operation, codenamed ‘Meghdoot’, happened in a specific context: in the mid 1970s, Pakistan began to publish maps claiming Siachen as its own, and began to allow international mountaineers (accompanied by Pakistan army officials) to visit the peak. Sensing the creeping loss of Siachen, with enormous strategic consequences, the Indian Army persuaded Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the imperative of taking the glacier. To her eternal credit, she went along with it, displaying decisiveness that is so lacking in civilian leaderships today. The nearest that the Siachen dispute came to a resolution was in June 1989, when the two sides outlined the contours of a solution after the fifth round of talks. But from there on, propaganda takes over. The Pakistan side claims that the Indian army sabotaged a peace agreement. The official Pakistani perception is illustrated in this editorial, which claims, that the Indian Army “has been a key impediment to resolving the deadlock … over Siachen. American officials have reported…. That while the Indian prime minister has wanted to show flexibility in negotiations, pressure from the army has not allowed him to do so.” But in fact, the Indian army and the civilian administration are on the same page on Siachen. The real problem that is holding up a resolution is Pakistan’s unwillingness to demarcate the positions held by both sides on the ground – because it would authenticate its past attempts to seize Siachen by stealth. As Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal PV Naik observed last year, the talks cannot make progress until the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) was demarcated –and authenticated. “The main issue over Siachen is that there is no clear marking of what we call the AGPL. If both sides have to vacate this position, the AGPL needs to be marked and internationally approved,” Naik added. Until then, it would be folly for India to surrender the advantage it holds. In any case, Siachen’s strategic significance today has less to do with Pakistan and more to do with China, given the proximity of the Karakoram Pass, and the presence of Chinese troops in parts of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). And as the Kargil episode (where Pakistani army troopers, masquerading as jihadi fighers, sought to cut the Siachen supply line) reveals, Pakistan cannot be trusted to abide by its agreements. The next Army chief in Pakistan may be more adventurous and less inclined to honour any peace agreement that may be signed today. Rather than address the real issue that is holding up forward movement on a resolution of the Siachen dispute, there is little point in Kayani taking the moral high ground with pious baloney about “peaceful coexistence”. It makes for great headlines, and resonates with the incorrigible peaceniks in India. But for anyone who knows the history of the Siachen dispute, this is merely another salvo in the long-running propaganda war that Pakistan has been waging. Given Pakistan’s record of talking peace when it is down militarily and economically - and waging wars and proxy wars when it gains a foothold, there is no earthly reason to be so easily swayed by the peace melody that even its army chiefs are singing today.