White As Shroud

Between South and Central Asia | in the high mountains and cold deserts | India | Pakistan and China have fought brutal wars over barren | uninhabited territory in a bid for control over their national peripheries | including Xinjiang and Tibet in China | and Jammu and Kashmir on the Indian subcontinent.White as the Shroud explores this broader story through the most surreal of such conflicts: the Siachen war | fought between India and Pakistan for control of the eponymous glacier. The tale of Siachen highlights the absurdity of seeking hard borders in such desolate mountains | as well as the brutality of high-altitude warfare - more soldiers were killed by the weather and terrain than by the fighting.As one of the few people to have visited both sides of the glacier | Indian and Pakistani | Myra MacDonald provides a first-hand view of the battlefield and a wealth of eyewitness testimony from combatants. She sets this account in the overarching narrative of the Kashmir conflict | India's defeat by China in 1962 | and the 1999 India-Pakistan Kargil war. White as the Shroud brings a fresh perspective to one of the most volatile corners of the world | raising questions about borders and the wars fought to defend them.