Word: glaciered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...summer in the high Himalayas, but photographer Robert Nickelsberg borrowed a heavy-duty arctic snowsuit to cover this week's story on war on the Siachen Glacier between India and Pakistan. Just as well: he was stranded by a blizzard at a military camp 17,400 ft. up. Later, during an artillery exchange, Nickelsberg tried to dash to a better position only to discover that the thin air made it "nearly impossible to run." The rigors behind him, Nickelsberg sent back the first combat pictures seen in the West of this little-known conflict...
...blast is startling, and so is the reverberation that echoes like a landslide. But the sound of artillery fire -- the sound of war -- fades quickly in the gigantic stillness of mountain and glacier. Soldiers clad in dirty white snowsuits, their faces burned black by the sun, scramble to put another shell in the 105-mm howitzer and fire again. They are Pakistanis, serving at an outpost 17,200 ft. up on the Baltoro Glacier, just short of a sweeping ridgeline called the Conway Saddle. Their fire is aimed over the ridge at similar positions manned by Indian troops seven miles...
...paradox is that India and Pakistan are supposedly at peace and that Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto are trying to move from a chilly standoff into a friendlier era. Both say they want to erase what Bhutto calls the "irritant" of the Siachen Glacier problem, and both instructed their negotiators to do so in the most recent round of talks that began last month in Pakistan. When Gandhi and Bhutto met face to face in Islamabad last week, however, they failed to come close to devising a practical solution. Progress has been as thin as the atmosphere...
India was the first to deploy troops on the Siachen Glacier. In April 1984 the Indian army launched Operation Meghdoot (Cloud Messenger), placing forces at two key passes of the Saltoro Range, which runs along the Siachen Glacier's western edge toward the Chinese border. India says it was pre-empting a planned Pakistani move -- a contention Islamabad denies. The Indian advance captured nearly 1,000 sq. mi. of territory claimed by Pakistan; ever since then New Delhi has wanted to establish a formal boundary along that natural divide. The conflict escalated slowly as each side deployed more men, established...
...both sides: if there is a target, fire. Thus the battle is largely indirect, as howitzers and mortars lob shells -- mostly inaccurately -- over the ridges. Infantry assaults are rare, mainly because it is so hard for men to move, let alone charge, at such heights and over crevasse-riddled glaciers. At 18,000 ft. and higher, even a fully acclimatized soldier carrying rifle and combat pack can jog only a few yards without losing his breath. "The terrain does not allow much movement," says a Pakistani officer at an outpost on the Baltoro Glacier. "There is a natural limit...