Deep winter has arrived in the Karakoram range with icy winds blowing down the 25171 feet-high Saser Kangri to the Indian Army outpost of Daulet Beg Oldi (DBO) in the Ladakh sector.
In the easternmost end of the Himalayas, the 25531 feet-high Namcha Barwa in Tibet’s Nyingchi prefecture is doing the same, pretty much across the entire 1126 km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh.
Even in these frigid conditions, Indian Army troops are perched on the heights
Deep winter has arrived in the Karakoram range with icy winds blowing down the 25171 feet-high Saser Kangri to the Indian Army outpost of Daulet Beg Oldi (DBO) in the Ladakh sector.
In the easternmost end of the Himalayas, the 25531 feet-high Namcha Barwa in Tibet’s Nyingchi prefecture is doing the same, pretty much across the entire 1126 km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh.
Even in these frigid conditions, Indian Army troops are perched on the heights for the second winter running all along the 3488-kilometer-long LAC---from the Karakoram Pass to Kibithoo—to ensure that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army does not repeat the unilateral aggression of May 2020 on the north banks of Pangong Tso in a bid to impose an alignment of LAC as defined by Chinese Communist leaders in 1959.
While Indian and Chinese military commanders are looking forward to the 14th round of dialogue to ensure that PLA restores April 2020 status quo ante at Patrolling point 15 in the Hot Springs-Gogra-KongKa La area, the issue is no longer about troop disengagement from a certain patrolling point as Beijing is simply militarizing the entire LAC on its side.
For the past 19 months, India and China have been heavily deployed across the LAC in Ladakh sector with troop strength on both sides touching 50,000. Apart from the infantry, both the armies have deployed tanks, rockets, missiles, and drone regiments to deter the other side from initiating any unilateral action. Under the garb of Sinicization of Tibet and Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party headed by paramount leader Xi Jinping is converting the entire PLA Western Theatre Command to a fort with new dual use air bases coming up just across the LAC, such as the one in Burang county, north of Lipu Lekh Pass and mere 400 km from New Delhi. Blast pens and tunnels are being bored into the mountain in Tibet to keep PLA fighter aircraft safe and ready for action in sub-zero temperatures at Kashgar, Hotan, Yarkand, Ngari Gar Gunsa, Lhasa and Nyingchi air bases. Armed drones such as the Wing Loong II are being deployed just across the LAC in both Ngari Gar Gunsa and Nyingchi airbases as part of the PLA plan to hit Indian border radars in the worst-case scenario.
The India-China bilateral report card, after the May 2020 aggression in Ladakh, appears all red with the 1993-1996 border agreements designed to let peace and tranquility prevail at the LAC having been thrown out of the window by the PLA. Also dead are the spirits of Wuhan and Chennai understandings assiduously built by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with President Xi.
China’s footprint is rapidly expanding in the Afghanistan-Pak region with plans afoot for an oil pipeline from Gwadar port in Baluchistan to Urumqi in Xinjiang via Khunjerab pass to feed the massive energy needs of China without the fear of energy supplies being choked at the Malacca Straits on the mouth of South China Sea. Using its clout with Pakistan, China is now planning to extend its Belt-Road Initiative (BRI) to the Taliban ruled Afghanistan to evacuate heavy metals from the strife-torn country at dirt cheap rates and also to enter into Central Asian Republics across Amu Darya. Even though China realizes the economic viability of trade between India and Nepal, all-out efforts are being made by Beijing to sully the civilizational relationship between the two neighbors using pelf and power. The situation in Sri Lanka is no different with Colombo indebted to China and the latter using this leverage to extract contracts for road and port infrastructure projects.
Some may point to the 22% in trade volume even during the military stand-off, with bilateral trade touching $ 102.28 billion dollars in 10 months till October 2021 as a positive, but the balance of trade is heavily tilted towards Beijing. Imports from China stand at $78.33 billion as compared to India’s $ 23.96 billion exports to Beijing. It is no surprise that China always advocates parallel diplomacy with India so that resolution of border issue is a subject matter of endless and never-ending meetings between the two foreign ministries but bilateral trade grows to the benefit of China. China has not yielded an inch of land on the LAC to India; it has blocked entry of New Delhi into the Nuclear Suppliers Group for clean energy; and is an ally with Pakistan in all conspiracies to brand Indians as terrorists by the 1267 Committee of the UNSC and human rights violations in Kashmir. It is another matter that Pakistan is blind to Muslim concentration camps in Xinjiang and communist indoctrination centers in Tibet.
Given these, the prognosis for the India-China relationship is not all good and India is all set for tough times on its northern borders. The global worry may be about the imminent Chinese invasion of distant Taiwan in South China Sea — and justifiably so — but the threat to India is right on its doorstep.
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