BRAWL ON THE ICE
Chinese incursions on the LAC in the Ladakh region have set alarm bells ringing in Delhi
Afew years back, the top brass of the Indian Army’s Northern Command decided to put a twist to a war game. The Udhampur-based command, which defends a 2,000-km-long horseshoe-like territory from the plains of Jammu to the rugged deserts near the border of Uttarakhand, was examining the possibility of war with Pakistan. That year, they decided to throw China into the mix—what if the command had to simultaneously battle two countries? The war game was played out, saw China going on the offensive in the first two days with Pakistan joining in. The conclusions, as one planner put it mildly, were worrying. The army, even with the support of the air force, would find the going extremely tough. In an off-the-record media interaction a few years ago, a senior member of the present security establishment dismissed a two-front war scenario as “improbable” because it did not factor in India’s not insignificant diplomatic heft.
War games are not definitive—they often play out worst-case scenarios and illustrate cold hard ground realities for commanders who fight on the ground. One such reality is currently in play in what the government calls the “western sector”, the eastern shoulder of its newly created Union territory of Ladakh. The Indian army faces off against the Chinese PLA (People’s
Pictures of the face-off between Indian troops and PLA soldiers in Galwan Valley