avalanche kills ~130 Pakistani soldiers

[rob]

wipes out entire base

 

Crazy

[glassgowkiss]

yes, indeed a great tragedy!

[SeanO]

Wow, that's crazy. Very sad for the families.

 

That said, they shouldn't have left the nitro in the sun...

[keenwesh]

that border dispute is pretty dumb, seems like a glacier wouldn't be a good place for a missile silo.

[num1mc]

that border dispute is pretty dumb, seems like a glacier wouldn't be a good place for a missile silo.

 

There are some who would like you to beleive that this conflict is the fault of the good old USA, and to a lesser extent, the UN for being vauge

 

The United States Defense Mapping Agency began in about 1967 to show, with no legal or historical justification or any boundary documentation, an international boundary on their Tactical Pilotage Charts available to the public and pilots as proceeding from NJ9842 east-northeast to the Karako Pass at 5,534 m (18,136 ft) on the China border. Numerous governmental and private cartographers and atlas producers followed suit. This resulted in the US cartographically "awarding" the entire 5,000 square kilometers (1,900 sq mi) of the Siachen-Saltoro area to Pakistan.[/Quote]

 

The conflict in Siachen stems from the incompletely demarcated territory on the map beyond the map coordinate known as NJ9842. The 1972 Simla Agreement did not clearly mention who controlled the glacier, merely stating that from the NJ9842 location the boundary would proceed "thence north to the glaciers." UN officials presumed there would be no dispute between India and Pakistan over such a cold and barren region[/Quote]

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_conflict

 

I would posit that what a nameless cartographer in Washington DC did in 1967 does not give carte blanche to the heads of state to commit war seventeen years after that, or to continue the war for almost another thirty. But no one voted for me as Czar of Third World Victimization

 

Edited April 9, 2012 by num1mc

[JoshK]

Who knows, maybe an avalanche will be what finally brings this seemingly pointless conflict to an end?

 

"Speaking to Al Jazeera, Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani Brigadier and current political analyst, called the incident "the biggest casualty that has ever happened", and noted that more soldiers have died from the extreme elements than from combat during the entire Siachen conflict: "[T]he fact of matter is that 70 per cent of the people have died because of natural causes, and I think this is the time we ended this damn conflict, which has absolutely no explanation." He also expressed hope that the incident would help bring an end to the Siachen conflict, and that a meeting in India, between Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on 8 April could help "[settle] this issue for both [sides]".[6]"

 

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Siachen_Glacier_avalanche)

[Stefan]

I remember seeing their trails up to their "howitzer like" machines. those guys would carry the bombs on their backs up to the machines so they could fire into India. And to get the bombs into the base they would fly the helicopters...and helicopters need fuel. There is a lot of fuel spilled at Concordia for this effort....this border fighting thing is crazy...

 

I could understand for oil or for gold...but for an inhospitable place where only climbers like to go?

Edited April 10, 2012 by Stefan

[Jim]

Unfortunately, not unprecedented. On White Friday, Dec 1916, an estimated 10,000 troops were killed by avalanches in Dolomites. Lots more cumulatively:

 

During the three-year war in the Austro-Italian Alps at least 60,000 soldiers died in avalanches. [This conservative statistic comes from the research of Heinz von Lichem, in his outstanding three-volume study Gebirgskrieg 1915-1918] Ten thousand died from avalanches in the "lesser" ranges of the eastern half of the high front -- the Carnic and Julian Alps. In the "high" Alps to the west, the Ortler and Adamello groups, the Dolomites, avalanches claimed 50,000 lives.

 

The only good to come out of it I suppose were some interesting via ferreta routes.

[glassgowkiss]

Steve Swenson is working on a book, which will include the history and insight to this conflict. It might seem pointless to us here (in the good old USA), but we can't project our way of thinking onto everyone. It's a very complex socio-political issue, with huge historical background. I think at least trying to understand some of the issues at hand would be a good start for the State Department, and for us here. The avalanche is a great tragedy- imagine what the media would be doing, if 130 people died in such incident, but went virtually unnoticed by US main stream media.