Can Siachen be An 'Ice Breaker' for India and Pakistan?

But the defeat on the glacier was never forgotten by the Pakistani Army. So in 1999, then Army Chief General Pervez Musharraf tried to avenge the defeat by quietly sending forces to occupy Indian positions in the Kargil heights that were left unmanned by India during dangerously cold snowy winters. Pakistan's adventure in Kargil was aimed at cutting off Indian supply routes to Ladakh and thus secure Siachen indirectly. The attempt failed but brought the two rivals close to a fourth war, with both sides suffering heavy casualties. The Pakistani move in Kargil is etched permanently in the Indian psyche.

Now Pakistan wants that Indian troops in Siachen glacier should just withdraw to the positions they held prior to 1984. But the problem for India is that in 1963, Pakistan unilaterally and illegally conceded the Shaksgam area, north of Siachen, to China. So now if India withdraws to the positions it held prior to 1984, it would mean removing the only bulwark to prevent Pakistan and China from linking up militarily on the glacier, a move that will be a losing proposition for the Indian Army. Even if they are authenticated and marked before the troops are withdrawn, as India had proposed, it will take third-party neutral observers to monitor the situation. Pakistan, so far, has refused even to accept India's demand of authentication of the positions, and India sees the refusal as a hidden agenda of Pakistan of occupying them at some future date.

The hurdles are so gigantic that any sudden hype about an agreement between the two rivals on this dispute might boomerang against both governments, unless, of course, they find a solution that will not be perceived in India as a "sellout", and is seen as a "win-win" solution of the dispute for both.