At Siachen, casualties come to all time low

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.

Casualties peaked to almost 70 per year during the 1999 Kargil war, but the rate has come down to single digit in the past two years. New equipment, better medical facilities, faster evacuations and the ceasefire agreement has brought down fatality rates in the glacier to about four a year.

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 2006 earthquake raised the casualties to 26 that year.

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, 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 — 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.