Pakistan's glacier disaster: fallout yet to be felt

For the Pakistan Army, the high costs have to be borne and are worth it. The Army accords the highest priority to the civilian relatives of the soldiers posted in this area. As these people are essential to the morale in the armed forces, the Pakistan Army spares no effort to keep them happy.

The 6 NLI (Northern Light Infantry) of the Pakistani Army has many Shias from the Gilgit-Baltistan region and it played a key role in the Kargil War. Yet, despite everything that the NLI did in Kargil, the Pakistani Army sought to deny the involvement of this unit in the war. In order to support the fiction that Kargil was the work of Kashmiri separatists, the Pakistan Army initially refused to accept the bodies of dead NLI soldiers from India.

Quite naturally, there was great anger in the region and the Pakistan Army backpedalled. It converted the NLI into a regular infantry unit and awarded its war dead proper recognition by conferring posthumous gallantry awards and other honors. Because of this history, today, until the bodies of the buried NLI soldiers are found and returned with honour to the families, the animosity and latent hostility towards the Pakistan Army in the region will remain.

Usually, after a natural disaster in Pakistan, international donors pour in aid money. These funds are deftly sucked up by corrupt Army men and politicians. Unfortunately for Ghyari, there are no international donors. The only funds -- when provided -- are likely to come from the emergency funds in the Pakistani treasury. This is as bad an option, as Pakistan constantly risks defaulting on its international debt obligations. Digging into the civilian budget to respect General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s vow of recovering every body will make the politicians very unhappy and could lead to internal fights. The financial costs aren’t quite as acceptable to the civilians.

As the realisation that Pakistan spends a much higher fraction of its GDP on the Saltoro war than India slowly sinks into the public mind, a cascading blame-game will begin. At present, the Pakistan Army may come across as a more caring and sensitive entity than its civilian counterparts, but deeper questions about the exact nature of accountability in the country are likely to surface in the internal debate. Given the terrible state of the economy, it is only natural for the civilian leadership to ask whether or not to incur the costs of rebuilding the capacity lost at Ghyari -- and such a question will be the veritable red rag for the bruised Pakistan Army.

A bruised Pakistan Army ego may seek to redeem itself by resorting to intimidation and putting the civilian politicians in their place with a coup or pull another utterly unnecessary Kargil-style stunt on the Saltoro range. Either way this plays out, given the state of the Pakistani economy, it is difficult to a see a future where the Ghyari disaster does not exacerbate civil-military tensions in Pakistan and adversely affect the peace process with India.

New Delhi’s initiatives on Siachen should take Ghyari-related developments into account.

http://southasiamonitor.org/detail.php?type=sl&nid=2700