- A Fake War in the Himalayas?
by Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI (IPS) – This week’s stunning confessions by two Indian soldiers that they helped stage fake encounters with Pakistani troops on Siachen, often called the world’s highest, coldest and costliest battlefield, has renewed calls for demilitarizing the Himalayan glacier.
On Monday, rifleman Shyam Bahadur Thapa told a military court that he not only demolished a fake “enemy-held” objective with a rocket launcher in August 2003 but also acted the part of a Pakistani soldier killed in the action as video cameras whirred away.
Thapa said he did this at the behest of a company commander, Maj. Surinder Singh. “He asked me to remove my jacket and cap and lie there (near the demolished objective).”
Thapa is one of four soldiers who have testified before a court of inquiry to say that they had been forced by their officers, including a colonel and two majors, to participate in fake military encounters on Siachen in August and September 2003.
“Obviously this scandal involves the top brass, perhaps even generals – there is no use victimizing middle-ranking officers and ordinary soldiers,” a well-known writer on military affairs, N. Kunju, told IPS in an interview.
Kunju, a former army man himself, is among analysts who believe that the whole Siachen conflict, now running into its 20th year, is actually a huge fraud being played on the Indian people by successive governments and one mirrored by the generals in military-dominated Pakistan.
Read the whole thing, but by no means ever doubt that your own government — wherever you may live — is on the up and up. Don’t be paranoid.