Word: pakistan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...more than five years. The Karakoram fastness of northern Kashmir is an area no men ever inhabited, and only a few had traversed, before Pakistani and Indian troops moved in to wage a bitter conflict, largely out of sight of their own people and the rest of the world. Pakistan and India each deploy several thousand troops in the region. Neither side releases casualty figures, yet hundreds of men have died from combat, weather, altitude and accidents, and thousands have been injured. Says the general commanding the Indian sector: "This is an actual war in every sense of the word...
...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...
...stake is national prestige as well as control of Kashmir's northern reaches. Since gaining their independence from Britain in 1947, both countries have wanted the 85,805 sq. mi. of the state of Jammu and Kashmir as their own. In 1949 Pakistan and India signed the so-called Karachi Agreement, which drew a cease-fire line that ended at map coordinate NJ 9842, at the southern foot of the Saltoro Range. The negotiators did not extend the line because there had been no fighting in Kashmir's northernmost reaches, but merely mentioned that the line should continue "thence north...
Almost from the beginning, New Delhi has argued that India is entitled to control all of Kashmir. Islamabad's claim is more complex: besides supporting a 1949 U.N. call for a plebiscite on Kashmir's future, Pakistan has marshaled what it considers proof that it has all along controlled the area from NJ 9842 to the Karakoram Pass on the Chinese border. Islamabad cites circumstantial evidence, like the fact that mountaineering expeditions for years sought Pakistan's permission to enter the region, and its agreement to cede some of the territory to China...
...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 more outposts, introduced more artillery and rockets. In September 1987 the action peaked, but neither side has been willing to take the next...