Pakistan's glacier disaster: fallout yet to be felt
On May 29, Pakistan officially announced that 129 soldiers and 11 civilians had died on April 7 after a massive avalanche buried the military unit operating in Ghyari, near the Siachen glacier.
Earlier, on May 26, the Pakistan Army had recovered three bodies from the area. The discovery of these bodies has ended public hopes of a miraculous rescue, and forced deeper introspection on the issue of contested leadership in Pakistan. Therein lies the path that inevitably leads to heightened civil-military tensions and this does not bode well for the current India-Pakistan peace process.
Despite the recovery of three bodies, the situation in Ghyari continues to be extremely difficult. Even with 50 or so of the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) heavy construction vehicles, the vast amount of snow and rock displaced by the avalanche is frustrating the efforts of the rescuers. The hundreds of Pakistani soldiers working at the site remain at risk of being buried in further avalanches as the rock in the area is quite unstable. The risk posed to the recovery operation is so great that Pakistani Saltoro veterans like Lt. Col. (Retd.) Zaheer ul Hassan have publicly suggested abandoning the recovery operation.
Pakistani positions east of Ghyari are due to run out of supplies in June. In a bid to contain this crisis, the responsibility of maintaining troops and re-supply to positions east of Ghyari has been transferred to a back-up battalion HQ at Goma and supplies are being dumped at Shabbir post, the artillery position east of Ghyari. However, due to the demanding nature of the rescue operations, the supply line to the positions in the middle of the Saltoro range remains stretched thin. It is likely that the Pakistan Army may not be able to meet its usual re-supply and stockpiling goals this summer. It is reported that the four helicopters in use there are logging much higher hours of flight time per day.
An estimated 1,00,000 kg of POL (petrol, oil, lubricants) was stocked at Ghyari. While the extent of recoverable POL at Ghyari is unknown, the POL at Goma should be enough for a few months endurance on the ridge at a normal operational tempo. However, at the present rate, the Pakistan Army will most likely consume the reserves at Goma very quickly. It is unclear at this stage as to how exactly the POL will be restocked.
In short, the human and fiscal costs are adding up very quickly.
For the Pakistan Army, the high costs have to be borne and are worth it. The Army accords the highest priority to the civilian relatives of the soldiers posted in this area. As these people are essential to the morale in the armed forces, the Pakistan Army spares no effort to keep them happy.
The 6 NLI (Northern Light Infantry) of the Pakistani Army has many Shias from the Gilgit-Baltistan region and it played a key role in the Kargil War. Yet, despite everything that the NLI did in Kargil, the Pakistani Army sought to deny the involvement of this unit in the war. In order to support the fiction that Kargil was the work of Kashmiri separatists, the Pakistan Army initially refused to accept the bodies of dead NLI soldiers from India.
Quite naturally, there was great anger in the region and the Pakistan Army backpedalled. It converted the NLI into a regular infantry unit and awarded its war dead proper recognition by conferring posthumous gallantry awards and other honors. Because of this history, today, until the bodies of the buried NLI soldiers are found and returned with honour to the families, the animosity and latent hostility towards the Pakistan Army in the region will remain.
Usually, after a natural disaster in Pakistan, international donors pour in aid money. These funds are deftly sucked up by corrupt Army men and politicians. Unfortunately for Ghyari, there are no international donors. The only funds -- when provided -- are likely to come from the emergency funds in the Pakistani treasury. This is as bad an option, as Pakistan constantly risks defaulting on its international debt obligations. Digging into the civilian budget to respect General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani's vow of recovering every body will make the politicians very unhappy and could lead to internal fights. The financial costs aren't quite as acceptable to the civilians.
As the realisation that Pakistan spends a much higher fraction of its GDP on the Saltoro war than India slowly sinks into the public mind, a cascading blame-game will begin. At present, the Pakistan Army may come across as a more caring and sensitive entity than its civilian counterparts, but deeper questions about the exact nature of accountability in the country are likely to surface in the internal debate. Given the terrible state of the economy, it is only natural for the civilian leadership to ask whether or not to incur the costs of rebuilding the capacity lost at Ghyari -- and such a question will be the veritable red rag for the bruised Pakistan Army.
A bruised Pakistan Army ego may seek to redeem itself by resorting to intimidation and putting the civilian politicians in their place with a coup or pull another utterly unnecessary Kargil-style stunt on the Saltoro range. Either way this plays out, given the state of the Pakistani economy, it is difficult to a see a future where the Ghyari disaster does not exacerbate civil-military tensions in Pakistan and adversely affect the peace process with India.
New Delhi's initiatives on Siachen should take Ghyari-related developments into account.
Pakistan's glacier disaster: fallout yet to be felt