A COLD START

Though disengagement has begun in Ladakh, de-escalation is a long way off. The lack of trust means that Indian soldiers will be forward-deployed for several months

- SANDEEP UNNITHAN

Five years ago, a committee of experts appointed to recommend reforms for the archaic defence ministry forecast the future conflicts the Indian armed forces would likely be involved in. Headed by Lt General D.B. Shekatkar, former Director General Military Operations, the committee said that future wars would likely break out in the mountains, where all of India’s contested borders with China and Pakistan lay, and that they would, in all probability, remain confined there. It estimated a low probability of conflict spilling out into the plains.

That prediction might have sounded prescient in May, as a series of events brought India and China closer to conflict than at any other point in over three decades. In response to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) largest military deployment along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) since the 1962 war, India surged two infantry divisions forward into Ladakh, backed by tanks, helicopter gunships and fighter jets. The bloody June 15 clashes, in which 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of their Chinese counterparts were killed, brought the two countries to the brink of war. It took a series of marathon meetings between the Indian and Chinese commanders to de-escalate, leading to the both sides stepping back from four ‘friction points’.