Jaishankar to meet Wang Yi: Afghanistan and Ladakh situation on the plate

While PLA wants to discuss disengagement and de-escalation from Gogra-Hot Springs only and leave Depsang as a 2013 legacy issue, the Indian side is clear that all issues are on the table.

Published on: Jul 13, 2021, 08:37:17 IST

By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will meet his Chinese counterpart and State Councilor Wang Yi on the sidelines of the SCO foreign ministers meeting in Dushanbe to discuss the unfolding security situation in Afghanistan and discuss the ways to fast track de-escalation and disengagement in East Ladakh. Jaishankar leaves for Dushanbe, Tajikistan, today and will also be attending an international meeting on connectivity between south and central Asia in Uzbekistan.

Foreign minister S Jaishankar will meet his Chinese counterpart and State Councilor Wang Yi on the sidelines of the SCO foreign ministers meeting.

The focus of SCO Dushanbe meeting will be Taliban offensive in Afghanistan with the fundamentalist force encircling the Afghan nation by capturing the two land routes to Tajikistan over Amu Darya and another one to Iran via Herat. It is quite evident that the largely Sunni Pashtun force will try and capture the land route from Mazar-e-Sharif to Termez in Uzbekistan too after which it will launch an offensive towards Kabul from all the directions forcing the Afghan Army to surrender or get killed. The brutal killing of surrendered Afghan Army commandoes, shown on western TV networks, shows that the fundamental nature of Taliban has not changed 20 years after it was evicted by the US forces in 2001.

While the agenda of the SCO ministerial meeting is the security situation in Afghanistan and its ramifications on neighbouring South and Central Asia, EAM Jaishankar will also discuss the East Ladakh situation with foreign minister Wang Yi as the PLA is dragging its feet on disengagement and de-escalation in East Ladakh. It is understood that the dates for the 12th round of senior military commanders meeting will be finalized after the two foreign ministers speak on the way forward.

The PLA wants the senior commanders to discuss on disengagement from Gogra-Hot Springs area near Kongka La and leave the Depsang Bulge to the local commanders as it claims that it is a 2013 legacy issue. However, the Modi government is very clear that the Depsang Bulge issue should also be discussed as the PLA is blocking the ingress route to the area and not allowing the Indian Army to patrol points 10 to 13 in the region. “As the Depsang and Gogra-Hot Springs situation has been created due to PLA transgressions, it is important that the military commanders find a resolution to the aggravated situation as armies on both sides are packed up on either side of Line of Actual Control in East Ladakh,” said a senior official. The Depsang Bulge area is south of Daulet Beg Oldi (DBO) area between the Indian Darbu-Shyok-DBO road and Chinese built Tainkong Highway on the other side.

India and China will also discuss the Afghanistan situation with the Taliban unilaterally giving assurances to Beijing that they will not allow Uighur militants territory to operate against “friend” China through the Wakhan Corridor.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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