Operation Blue Freedom: Team Of Special Forces Veterans, People With Disabilities To Scale Siachen Glacier

Source: The Hindu

What is the News?

The government of India has accorded sanction to Team CLAW to lead a team of people with disabilities to scale Siachen Glacier. It will be a new world record for the largest team of people with disabilities. This expedition is being undertaken as part of ‘Operation Blue Freedom’.

About Operation Blue Freedom:

• Operation Blue Freedom was launched in 2019 by CLAW Global, a team of former Special Forces Operatives of the Indian Army and the Indian Navy.
• The Operation is a social impact venture aimed at rehabilitating people with disabilities through adaptive adventure sports.
• It aims to shatter the common perception of pity, charity, and inability associated with people with disabilities and recreate it to one of dignity, freedom, and ability.
• Moreover, their focus is also to ‘design and implement sustainable large-scale employment solutions’ for people with disabilities, especially in the ‘Environment conservation and Sustainability’ space.

About Siachen Glacier:

• Siachen Glacier is the longest glacier in the Karakoram and the second-longest in the world’s non-polar areas.
• Location: The glacier is located in the Eastern Karakoram range in the Himalayas. It lies just northeast of Point NJ9842, where the Line of Control between India and Pakistan ends.
• The Siachen Glacier lies immediately south of the great drainage divide that separates the Eurasian Plate from the Indian subcontinent. It lies in the extensively glaciated portion of the Karakoram sometimes called the “Third Pole”.
• Significance: The Siachen has been an important bone of contention between India and Pakistan since 1984 when the Indian Army launched Operation Meghdoot to take control of the entire Siachen glacier.
• The glacier’s melting waters are the main source of the Nubra River in the Indian region of Ladakh which drains into the Shyok River. The Shyok in turn joins the Indus River, which flows through Pakistan.