Disengagement at the border

More clarity needs to emerge on specifics of infrastructure creation activities, patrolling, buffer zones and status quo ante in Eastern Ladakh

- AJAI SHUKLA

In May and June 2020, thousands of China's border guards and soldiers of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) emerged from the winter freeze in Tibet and Xinjiang and crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) into Eastern Ladakh, capturing Indian territory along five separate axes. From north to south, these axes were the Depsang plain, Galwan River valley, Gogra - Hot Springs, Pangong Tso and Demchok. Indian Army units and formations in Ladakh were taken by surprise, each having suspended its own patrolling due to the risk of spreading the coronavirus contagion, Covid-19, which had emerged in China the previous year. But that tactical misjudgement left open for the Chinese the doors of Ladakh.

By the time India's Northern Command could mobilise its reserves and pump troops into Ladakh to block further PLA intrusions, large numbers of Chinese soldiers had taken up positions within Indian territory, their forward defences supported from the rear by artillery and tanks. Indian patrols found the Chinese blocking them with unusual violence. On June 15, 2020, the most egregious of these clashes resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and an indeterminate number of Chinese - marking the first combat fatalities on the Sino-Indian border since 1975. The inevitable Indian counter build-up took its time, given the mammoth logistics involved in airlifting 42-tonne T-90 tanks and artillery guns to support the Indian Army's forward positions, where they were, in many cases, eyeball-to-eyeball with the PLA.

These events must be seen in the context of Ladakh's geography. Some of the untutored press headlines of the day, such as "Sino-India confrontation in the Himalaya," are unaware that the forward Indian posts involved are part of the Karakoram range, not the Himalayas. Similarly, the Chinese troops' intrusion into Ladakh took place on India's little part of the Tibetan plateau.