Preparations for the sacrifice have begun. One of the more interesting reactions to come out of Pakistan arrived courtesy General Hamid Gul, the former chief of the dreaded Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). ``If our boys hold on to Kargil, Siachen too shall be lost to India because the Indian supply line will be totally chopped up.'' That was the retired general's message.

Why I find this interesting is because it is utter hogwash. What is more, the facts of the case should be well known to anyone remotely acquainted with the geography of the Himalayas, leave alone a former chief of the ISI. Let me explain.

There are two, not just one, approach roads to Siachen. The first one is via Kargil,and it shall be very silly to send supplies on this road if the current situation continues. The second road, however, is the Manali route. It is more circuitous, so supplies take longer to reach. But it is also well beyond the reach of Pakistani artillery. Bombing the Manali road to Siachen would take a full-scale assault by Pakistani planes. Even granted that Pakistan is a rogue state, it would be insane to plunge into total war in that fashion.

The existence of the Manali road isn't exactly a state secret. So why on earth is Hamid Gul making an ass of himself by linking Siachen with Kargil? In fact, making the reconquest of Siachen conditional upon the ongoing Kargil operation?

Had the former ISI chief so desired he could have stated that, say, Leh is in danger. The road to Ladakh, the only navigable path at present, indeed runs through the Kargil and Drass sectors. But that is emphatically not what the right-wing element in Pakistan is shrieking.

The simple answer is that Siachen has assumed animportance in Pakistan out of all proportion to its possible strategic importance. What Pakistan cannot swallow is the fact that the heights in Siachen came under Indian control in the eighties. Not as a result of the wars of 1947, 1965, or 1971, but in atactical manoeuvre that caught Pakistan on the backfoot. Ever since, wresting back control has become an obsession with the Pakistani generals. And to justify the expense -- a major consideration in a nation on the verge of bankruptcy -- it was necessary to convince the Pakistani people of the importance of Siachen. One might almost believe that the gates of Islamabad would be open if Siachen were lost!

To digress a little, some have equated Pakistan's invasion of Kargil with the Indian Army's march into Siachen. I am afraid that this is not really a tenable argument. Kargil is, and has always been accepted as, Indian territory; Siachen on the other hand was a case of `finders keepers, losers weepers'. The confusion arises because there have been, and to anextent still are, several `boundaries' between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.

There was to begin with the international boundary of the 1947 vintage that was violated by Pakistan. (Then as now, the Pakistan government's first reaction that it was tribals/freedom-fighters who were battling it out. I am a bit surprised that they haven't been able to come out with a better lie in 50 years!) The second boundary, the `old UN line' as some refer to it, was the cease-fire line arranged under the auspices of the United Nations in 1949. The third was the `Line of Control' or LoC, which was delineated in immense detail and signed on December 12, 1972, by Lt. General P.C. Bhagat of India and Lt. General Hamid Khan of Pakistan -- old classmates as it happens.

The only relevant point as far as the current discussion is concerned is that the Kargil area has always been on the Indian side of the fence no matter which of the three boundaries you accept. Siachen, however, comes in a different category -- theLine of Actual Control or LAC. (Not to be confused with the LoC!) Anything beyond Point 9842 of the LoC falls under the LAC. And as far as the LAC is concerned, possession isn't just nine-tenths of the law, it is the law complete and whole.

Nevertheless, the Pakistan Army decided to sell the Siachen episode to its own citizens as an instance of Indian aggression. Civilian governments that popped up from time to time over the past decade played along with the generals. The result of ten years of conditioning is that anyone accused of `losing' Siachen will be immediately painted as a traitor. And that brings us right back to General Hamid Gul's wild accusation.

The Pakistani establishment, which means the generals for all practical purposes, is under a lot of pressure from the international community at large. While there has been no actual action taken, the United States has assumed an increasingly strident tone with Pakistan. Islamabad's hamhanded efforts at nuclear blackmail -- `Give us money or theTaliban take over/we sell arms!' -- have been met with equally tactless remarks from Washington. There has been talk of vetoing a U.S. $100 million loan, and even of bombing Osama bin Laden's hide-outs (which, of course, are shared by the militant mercenary contingent of the Kargil invaders).

But the Pakistani generals need some kind of a face-saving reason to explain why the Kargil invasion didn't end as planned. They cannot say they bowed to American pressure. They definitely cannot say India proved tougher than expected. But they can certainly say they were stabbed in the back.

General Parvez Musharraf, Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army, openly declared last week that any decision to withdraw from Kargil would have to be made by Nawaz Sharif. Now here comes Hamid Gul saying that losing Kargil is tantamount to losing all hope of getting to Siachen. In other words, Nawaz Sharif has betrayed Pakistan twice over!

Pakistan's generals may not have learned much from the debacles of 1965 and 1971; but theone lesson that has been imprinted on their minds is this -- in case of failure, blame the civilians!