India-china border bristles with more troops, weapons
When the snow melts on India’s mountainous border with China it usually reveals an empty landscape of sheer ridges and plunging valleys.
Border posts were once manned only by a handful of police armed with bats and clubs but this year satellites have been able to pick up a rapid military build-up on both sides of the frontier that threatens to pitch the two nuclear-armed neighbours into war.
India has deployed 60,000 troops and heavy artillery to reinforce the border following clashes last year with Chinese soldiers in the Galwan Valley, in Ladakh, that left at least 24 dead. China for its part has been conducting live-fire exercises with self-propelling mortars, chipping away at a 1996 agreement not to use guns or explosives near the border.
Analysts say that New Delhi now faces the unenviable situation of having to maintain a heavy troop presence on two fronts, amid a shaky ceasefire with Pakistan to the west.
“The Chinese threat has increased substantially and it is growing because of the capabilities that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is inducting in the theatre . . . right now there is no war but when you increase the threat, a war can never be ruled out,” said Pravin Sawhney, analyst and editor of the national security magazine Force.
Chinese troops crossed the 3800km border, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC), in May 2020 and set up new border posts.
In a series of bloody hand-to-hand clashes in Galwan Valley at least 20 Indian police were beaten to death and their bodies pushed down steep ravines. China later admitted four of its own soldiers were killed. Painstaking talks have since seen Chinese forces retreat from Pangong Lake but they remain at other border flashpoints, the Depsang Plains and Hot Springs, which India claims as its own. In reply, India has built a chain of roads and bridges around the LAC that would allow for large numbers of troops to be deployed at short notice to the border.
“The Galwan incident changed the whole face of the LAC. The mobilisation of troops by China needed counter mobilisation for which we needed infrastructure and roads,” a senior defence official said. “We pressed in
combat engineers to complete construction work planned for five years in just over five months.”.
Until last year’s fighting there was little concern and border posts along the LAC were left to the unarmed Indo-tibetan Border Police. The only war the two nations have fought, in 1962, ended in humiliation for India — leaving a steady truce. However, New Delhi has now sent two infantry divisions to Ladakh to reinforce an existing division of the army’s 14 Corps, diverting one from the frontier with Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. It has also added 10,000 troops to the Strike Corps, based in India’s plains, which trains to combat Pakistan and China.
General M M Navarane, India’s army chief, has warned the nation must be prepared for a prolonged stand-off with China. “We are very clear that no de-escalation can take
place before disengagement friction points.”
Frontier troops are now backed by India’s most advanced self-propelled howitzers, surface-to-air missiles, and 24 Rafale fighters purchased from France since last July. India is in the process of procuring lightweight Sprut SDM1 tanks that can function in the difficult terrain. Four Heron TP drones, purchased from Israel, will also be deployed soon for long surveillance missions.
China’s state-run Global Times reported that the PLA’S Xinjiang military command — which oversees the border — has received new longrange rocket launchers, howitzers and armoured vehicles.
“War remains unlikely,” Asian security analyst Arzan Tarapore said, “but the risk is significantly higher now than before the crisis began in May 2020.” — Telegraph Group Ltd
at
all