New Delhi: On the world's highest battlefield, the war cry has been sounded, and it's not against Pakistan this time. It's the trash that needs to be tackled first.
Starting September 17, for the next 15 days, at least 4000 soldiers will go about picking up loads of garbage, including packing material, barrels, and perishables.
This exercise, as part of the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan, is being carried out both at the base camp and forward posts located at an altitude of 9500ft - 21000ft.
Siachen is the largest glacier after the north and south pole and is also one of the dirtiest. A mound of human waste, plastic sheets, empty artillery, ammunition boxes, parachutes and food packs have given the frozen frontier the moniker of 'the most polluted in the world'. Since October 2014, when the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan commenced, troops in Siachen have removed and sent back more than 63 tons of garbage to the base.
Snow-clad throughout the year, Siachen is a logistics nightmare. In a place where everything is ferried from the hinterland, the challenge is to move all types of waste so that it does not become an environmental hazard.
Every piece of trash is to be disposed of in a proper manner. First, it is segregated into biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste, and then through packed loads, porters, ponies and sometimes the returning helicopter ferries this trash to dispose of at pre-designated locations.
The easiest way would be to burn the waste, but keeping the fragile environment of the glacier in mind, it is not done. Instead, waste is buried in deep trenches, dug mechanically in areas which are not on run of river and where the landmass is not fragile.
Simultaneously, induction routes and the axis of maintenance will also be cleaned and the waste collected will be disposed of at pre-designated locations in Army Units.
Siachen is a place where the temperature drops to minus 45 degrees and one can loose a toe or a finger merely by touching his gun with bare hands.
But as the troops say in these parts, "We do difficult as a routine. The impossible may take a little longer."
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