CORRECTED-Indian troops launch spring clean of icy battlefield
13 Feb 2007 08:39:14 GMT Source: Reuters
(Corrects height of glacier in 5th para to 5,500 metres from 5,5000) By Nita Bhalla NEW DELHI, Feb 13 (Reuters) - After decades spent squared off against Pakistani troops on the Siachen glacier, the world's highest battleground, the Indian army is waging war on a different enemy -- tonnes of rubbish scattered over the ice. Operation "Clean Siachen, Green Siachen" is targetting the mounds of food packaging, human waste, empty artillery shells and even discarded parachutes that have built up since the 1980s when Indian troops took up strategic positions high in the Himalayas. "Now about 4,000 to 5,000 of our troops based in Siachen are collecting biodegradable and non-biodegradable material," said Colonel Anil Mathur, spokesman for the Indian army in the disputed Kashmir region. "It will be airlifted out by the Indian Air Force." The glacier reaches an altitude of 18,000 feet (5,500 metres), making it one of the highest rubbish dumps in the world. Thousands of soldiers from both India and Pakistan have died on Siachen over the last two decades -- more due to altitude sickness, freezing temperatures and avalanches than enemy fire. Nearly 80-km (50-miles) long the glacier was once an icy wasteland so desolate the two countries had not even bothered to mark their frontier there. But in 1984 India grew worried over what it said was new Pakistani interest in the area and occupied the glacier. It has since held the heights, with Pakistani troops stationed at lower altitudes. Talks between the two nuclear-armed rivals over the withdrawal of troops remain deadlocked. Mountaineers who have managed to climb in the region -- where temperatures drop to minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit) -- say they have seen piles of rubbish on the glacier. "There is a lot of garbage there -- food packets, empty shells, human excrement, plastic sheets, tins, jerry cans and even parachutes, which the army used for air dropping supplies," said Mohammed Ashraf of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation.
