At Siachen, casualties come to all time low

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It is a sad day at the Siachen base camp. A soldier died at the Kaziranga post on the glacier two days ago and his body has still not been brought down due to bad weather and heavy snowfall.

A Cheetah helicopter has been flying daily from base camp to the post but has not been able to land and pick up the body. Despite a rigorous selection procedure and extensive medical examinations before the posting, the soldier suffered a heart attack. Another one, doctors say, of the unpredictables while serving at extreme altitudes.

While days like these bring out the cost India is paying for maintaining troops at the highest battlefield in the world, casualty rates at the Siachen glacier have come down to an all time low.

Csualties peaked to almost 70 per year during the 1999 Kargil war but the rate has come down to single digits in the past two years.

Till 2003, before the ceasefire agreement came into place, the army was losing close to 30 soldiers on the glacier every year. The figure went down to 10 a year after the agreement. However, heavy snowfall and the earthquake in 2006 brought up the casualties to 26 in 2006.

The past two years have, however, been stable. The army lost four men on the glacier in 2007 – two cases of medical complications and two pilots who died in a helicopter crash on the LoC. This year also, four soldiers have died on the glacier, again mainly due to medical complications.

The main reason, officers say, is the good quality of clothing and special equipment procured in recent years to equip men on the glacier. Most of the clothing - special down feather jackets, gloves, sleeping bags – has improved over the past two years and is being imported from Italy, France and Austria.

“We now have better medical facilities and equipment. Any case that looks bad is evacuated immediately. We don’t need to take any chances on the glacier anymore,” a medical officer says.