AMP – June 2, 2020
China-India standoff in Ladakh may drag on for months
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
The China-India standoff in Ladakh is likely to drag on through the summer as troops dig in on both sides, Times of India reported Tuesday.
At this point, the two sides are facing off at four points — three points in Galwan, and the fourth face-off point is at Pangong Tso, according to the paper.
The Times of India quoted Indian officials as saying that India will not climb down on its infrastructure build-up. With reinforcements in men and weapons, officials said India could match China in weapons, troops and strategy.
So far, the Indian government believes the issue of Chinese incursions can be resolved at the local level between military commanders, the paper said adding: India is also prepared for a longer standoff as Indian and Chinese officials have been in constant touch in New Delhi and Beijing.
India building infrastructure in Ladakh
Taylor Fravel, author of “Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949” told ThePrint the simplest explanation is that China viewed India’s road-building in the area, especially around Galwan and Pangong Lake, as changing (from its standpoint) the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
However, the scope, scale, and posture of China’s response is something that has not occurred for a very long time, he added.
“China is putting pressure on the LAC simultaneously in multiple areas across a large front in the western sector (of LAC). Although reports vary, in terms of scale, China may have placed an additional 5,000 soldiers along the LAC,” he said. “Finally, in several places, China appears to have crossed the LAC, where it was believed to have been ‘settled’, adopting an assertive posture in specific places.”
India has been catching up at building in road infrastructure at the line of actual control when compared to China. Border Road Organisation (BRO) has been given the task to build 61 strategic Indo China Border Roads (ICBRs) having a total length of 3,409 kilometers, according to Indian media.
Out of the 61 Indo China Border Roads, 28 roads of length 981.17 km were completed by 2018. In North East, among the crucial projects, BRO is currently working on the Sela Tunnel which will ensure all-weather connectivity between Guwahati in Assam and Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh.
Despite the Chinese army threat, India has decided to go ahead with the construction of roads at the line of actual control (LAC). Defense ministry has asked railways to provide it with 11 trains to send laborers to LAC for the road building activities, the Deccan Chronicle reported.
The Chinese army, which has entered 3-4 kilometres into Indian territory, at the Galwan area in Ladakh sector is unhappy with the 255 kilometer Darbuk-Shayok-Daulat Beg Oldie road, which connects to base of the Karakoram pass -- the last military post. This road is near Aksai Chin and the Chinese fear that this gives Indian army capability to threaten the Lhasa-Kashgar highway.
Chinese presence at Galwan is a threat to Darbuk-Shayok-Daulat Beg Oldie road as China can cut of this crucial road. With this road, which is at a height of 17,000 feet, it will take Indian army six hours to reach Daulat Beg Oldie from Leh against two days without it, the paper said.
India may lose vital link
In what the army is recognizing as a repeat of Pakistan’s 1999 Kargil intrusions, but this time by China in eastern Ladakh, troops of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continue consolidating their defences in the Galwan River and Pangong Lake areas, up to three km inside territory that the Indian Army has patrolled and claimed for decades, Ajai Shukla, a retired Colonel of Indian Army wrote in Business Standard Tuesday.
Just as the Kargil intrusions allowed Pakistani troops to dominate the Srinagar-Zojila-Kargil-Leh highway and threatened to cut off Ladakh from the north; the Chinese intrusion into the Galwan River valley allows PLA troops to overlook the strategic Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldi (DSDBO) highway and cut off the army’s lone year-round connection with its isolated “Sub-Sector North” (SSN), at the base of the Karakoram Pass.
PLA soldiers that have established themselves at the mouth of the Galwan River valley at its confluence with the Shyok River are just one-and-a-half kilometres from the DSDBO road.
The PLA apparently intends to dominate this road permanently. Even as top Chinese officials declare the issue can be resolved through dialogue, PLA intruders are building bunkers while PLA engineers are connecting their forward troops with China’s formidable road infrastructure on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), according to Shukla.
Government sources conservatively estimate that the PLA has captured more than 60 square kilometres of Indian-patrolled territory in the last month – equally divided between the northern bank of the Pangong Lake and the Galwan River sectors, Shukla said adding:
Chinese troops now block access to several Indian “Patrolling Points” (PPs) along the LAC, which Indian army patrols have regularly visited for decades to assert their claim over the area.
After the Kargil intrusions of 1999, which an enquiry blamed on “intelligence failure”, not a single general lost his job or was replaced. The army pinned the entire blame on a single brigadier in Kargil, Shukla pointed out.
The Kargil conflict ended after then United States president Bill Clinton urged the Pakistani government to start pulling back from Kargil when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, announced a unilateral ceasefire on July 4, 1999.
An un-named retired defence intelligence chief was quoted as saying: “The Chinese have always been ultra-sensitive to India expanding its presence in northern Ladakh. That is because this adjoins the Aksai Chin, through which China has constructed its strategic Western Highway that connects Tibet with Xinjiang.”
Within the army, there is growing concern that New Delhi will allow the Chinese to retain the territory they have occupied in the last month, Shukla concluded and added: In public statements last week, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has already conceded that the alignment of the LAC, and therefore the ownership of territory, is unclear in this area.
Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com
Amid brewing boarder tension China briefly detains Indian soldiers
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Amid mounting tensions between India and China along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) some Indian troops were detained and later released by the Chines Army after a skirmish broke out between the two sides in Ladakh recently, according to Indian media report.
The NDTV reported that both the Indian and Chinese sides had a border meeting where the commanders of the two sides had a talk and the situation was brought under control.
“The situation became very volatile last Wednesday (May 20) when a scuffle between Indian jawans and the Chinese resulted in detention of some of our jawans but later they were released,” NDTV quoted a senior bureaucrat as saying.
The Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane had on Friday (May 22) visited Leh, the headquarters of 14 Corps in Ladakh to review the operational situation, a day after the Government on Thursday denied China’s claims that India is carrying out any activity in violation of the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh and Sikkim, according to the Statesman.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has erected a sizeable number of tents in the Galwan Valley of Ladakh – an area over which India is sensitive about since the showdown in the 1962 war.
More than 5,000 Chinese soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have intruded into five points in Ladakh – four along the Galwan River, and one near the Pangong Lake, the paper reported on Saturday, May 23, according to Business Standard.
Chinese intrusions took place at three places in the Galwan area, inside Indian territory, according to The Indian Express sources the Statesman said adding that Chinese troops have crossed the LAC at Hot Springs and in two locations 15-20 km to the north-west, Patrolling Point 14 (PP-14) and PP-15.
China has recently accused India of unilaterally attempting to change the status of the un-demarcated border in Ladakh after troops of the two countries were involved in scuffles at Ladakh and Sikkim in which more than ten of them were injured.
On May 21 India rejected Beijing’s allegation that Indian troops crossed over to the Chinese side of the frontier in Ladakh and Sikkim while claiming that it was, in fact, the Chinese side that had recently undertaken activity at the border hindering India’s normal patrolling pattern.
U.S. reaction
The United States said on Wednesday (May 20) that the tension on the border between India and China in Ladakh and Sikkim was a reminder of the fact that Chinese aggression can be real, not merely rhetorical. America’s remarks came after Indian and Chinese armies rushed in additional troops in areas around Pangong Tso and Galwan Valley in Ladakh, according to Press Trust of India.
“The flareups on the border, I think, are a reminder that Chinese aggression is not always just rhetorical,” Alice Wells, the head of the South and Central Asia bureau in the US Department of State, was quoted by PTI as saying. “And so whether it is the South China Sea or whether it is along the border with India, we continue to see provocations and disturbing behaviour by China.”
“That’s why you’ve seen a rallying of like-minded nations whether it is in ASEAN [Association of South East Asian Nations] or through other diplomatic groupings like the trilateral with the US, Japan and India, or the Quad,” Wells said. She added that these groups are attempting to “reinforce the principles of the post-World War II global order that supported free and open trade,” Alice Wells added.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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