Losing face to China: A setback to India at LAC
The verdict on the disengagement worked out between India and China on June 30 shows that India has lost territory and it is as a setback to India’s long-held claims in the Ladakh sector. India’s strategic community of military and intelligence professionals are now coming around to the view that China has the clear upper hand now.
For starters, India has to move back considerably from its perceived Line of Actual Control (LAC), so far seen as the de facto border ever since China captured large swathes of territory in the 1962 war. Worryingly, as multiple Indian Army and intelligence sources pointed out, the LAC is now all set to become a “hot border” like the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan in the Jammu and Kashmir sector. Not only did India lose territory, it now has to spend millions every day manning a large military formation to ensure that the LAC is not pushed back further.
Such a possibility, a senior military official said, would be “unthinkable” had this been the LoC with Pakistan. Unfortunately, the voices seen advocating a harder position with Pakistan have quietened down while the disengagement deal by Lt. Gen. Harinder Singh, commander of 14 Corps, and his Chinese counterpart, Maj. Gen. Liu Lin, head of China’s South Xinjiang military region, is underway. Losing territory: What has surprised many military commanders is that the Indian leadership agreed to China’s terms. A key loss is Patrolling Point 14 (PP-14), where a major clash took place on June 15 and claimed the lives of an Indian Army officer and 19 soldiers. An indeterminate number of Chinese soldiers are believed to have been killed in the clash, but no proof has emerged so far. This means the Indian Army and ITBP will move back considerably in the Galwan Valley sector. A similar position has been taken at PP-17A and on the mountain ridges known as Finger 2 to Finger 8, and India will no longer be allowed to move ahead either.
Effectively, China has managed to push India’s LAC further back and taken ground that was earlier in India’s possession.
Meanwhile, in other areas such as Hot Springs and Pangong Tso lake, the confrontation continues with Indian soldiers in an eyeball-toeyeball confrontation with the Chinese. Till a few months ago these were considered “settled areas” and bilateral agreements from 1993, 1996 and 2013 had protected them from any forcible change by either side. This has now happened, and India has agreed to push back its perception of the LAC without getting an opportunity to resort to the earlier bilateral agreements.
An indication of things to come was evident when both nations released their official statements on the talks between India’s national security adviser and China’s special representative and foreign minister Wang Yi on July 6. “The right and wrong of what recently happened at the Galwan Valley in the western sector of the China-India boundary is very clear. China will continue firmly safeguarding our territorial sovereignty as well as peace and tranquillity in the border areas,” the Chinese statement said. India’s official statement was completely silent on Galwan Valley and only mentioned that “peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas was essential”.
India also stated that both countries “should not take any unilateral action to alter the status quo and work together to avoid any incident in the future that could disturb peace and tranquillity in border areas”. But on June 19, China’s foreign ministry official spokesperson Zhao Lijian had explicitly stated that since May 6, India had made “an attempt to unilaterally change the status quo of control and management”. This, Zhao Lijian had said, resulted in the clash on June 15 when 20 Indian Army personnel were killed.
Clearly, the Chinese now say that the Galwan Valley, an area that has seen bitter fighting in 1962, is now claimed and virtually held by China. Indian troops will be at least 2 km away from this area and will not even send patrols up to PP-14. This is in keeping with the Chinese position it has explicitly stated several times publicly and on record.
A new kind of war: India has also been struggling
The latest crisis in the Ladakh sector and the agreed upon principles of disengagement has given the Chinese more territory in the Galwan Valley, Hot Springs and the ridgelines leading to the Pangong Tso lake
with its surveillance capabilities throughout the crisis. Its satellite imagery surveillance has taken a beating when the onboard camera of a key satellite started malfunctioning. The Indian government is now sourcing satellite images from private players, and this has proved to be a tactical setback. While senior Indian security officials say that this is nothing new, there are those who argue that India’s dependence on its satellites for imagery has been compromised ever since the onboard camera began to malfunction.
India is now dependent on a fleet of drones that fly from Srinagar to keep a watch on the area. With the patrols being pulled back, its ability to maintain a physical check on the area is also significantly reduced.
While India has retaliated by banning 59 apps made by Chinese companies, there has been a significant rise in cyberattacks on India’s critical information infrastructure. The kind of malwares that Indian cybersecurity experts are gathering indicates a major step up in Chinese cyber warfare operations.
Meanwhile, Indian security officials also agree that “salami slicing”, a known Chinese tactic to slowly expand its territory in disputed areas, is now working. The latest crisis in the Ladakh sector and the agreed upon principles of disengagement has given the Chinese more territory in the Galwan Valley, Hot Springs and the ridgelines leading to the Pangong Tso lake. A similar confrontation in the Depsang plains also continues. There is now a legitimate concern in the Indian security establishment that China has outplayed India on several fronts.
The writer is a journalist based in New Delhi and a founding partner of CSDR Consulting