The Siachen Glacier lies deep in the Himalayas, near where the borders of India, Pakistan, and China meet. As journalist Myra MacDonald writes in Foreign Policy, this uninhabitable region is also the world's most senseless battleground, another flashpoint in the perennial war of hubris between India and Pakistan.
After their first war following partition in 1947, India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire line dividing the disputed territorities of Jammu and Kashmir, and demarcated their positions as far as map grid reference NJ9842, from where it was to be extended "thence north to the glaciers." It seemed almost a moot point; nobody ever expected to fight over Siachen.
An Indian army camp in July 1991, at 16,000 feet.
ANNIRUDHA MOOKERJEE/AFP/Getty Images
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