Islamabad, Pakistan – Deep in the Karakoram range, where the borders of India, Pakistan and China meet at altitudes the human body can barely endure, lies a glacier that the people of Baltistan and Ladakh have long called Siachen: “the land of wild roses.”
The frozen river of more than one trillion cubic feet of pristine ice, stretching over 70 kilometers, has been a battlefield since April 1984. India and Pakistan have fought over it ever since.
This is no ordinary disputed territory. For 42 years, the two nations have waged fierce mountain warfare, exchanging deadly fire along the de facto border in Kashmir. A major conflict erupted in 1999 at Kargil, some 100 kilometers southwest of Siachen.
In May 2025, they launched missiles and drones for four days – the worst military confrontation since Kargil – after 26 civilians died in an attack at Pahalgam, a resort town in Indian-controlled Kashmir. India accused Pakistan-backed armed groups; Islamabad denied the charge.
Through each crisis, silence has enveloped the Saltoro Ridge – the 110-kilometer jagged crest west of Siachen where the two armies have faced off since 1984. Not a single shot was fired.
Yet peace has not returned to the glacier. When a ceasefire was announced on May 10, 2025, after the brief war, Indian and Pakistani soldiers remained entrenched on Siachen.
The fight for Siachen is not merely a frozen conflict. It is one that, over time, has developed its own logic of survival.
