It is a highly volatile and dangerous situation between two nationalistic, nuclear powers at a time when American influence has badly diminished (but this a good sign)!
by Anwar A. Khan
A spine-chilling tale, played out in pitch darkness on jagged precipices at 14,000 feet above the Galwan River valley at Ladakh between the foot-soldiers of two nuclear-armed regional superpowers, India and China on 15 June, 2020.
The worthwhile words of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam can be justified as a moral lesson, “War is never a lasting solution for any problem.” In our living lives, we have seen horrors of many wars during almost seven decenniums. The more money you spend on guns; the less money you spend on people! More weapons, less happiness; more guns, more misery! A country which prefers guns to flowers will live the beauty of the flowers only in its graveyards! The real and lasting victories are those of peace and not of war.
No more war, war never again! Peace, it is peace which must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind. No war has ever won in the history, because people died in every single war! Where there are deaths, there is no victory! It is in unity that we find strength, in unity we find hope, and in unity, we can stand firm as the darkness approaches. Let us stand together and stand firm against the many faces of hatred. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things.
China and India have accused each other of instigating deadly border clashes between their forces in the recent past, pledging to safeguard their territory, but also to try to end a standoff between soldiers from the two sides that began in the recent past in the disputed Himalayan frontier. Twenty Indian troops were reportedly killed in the clashes in the Ladakh region’s Galwan Valley, and China also suffered casualties.
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Indian Foreign Secretary Jaishankar, in turn, accused China of erecting a structure in the Galwan Valley, which he called a “premeditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties," according to a statement. He added that the incident would have “serious repercussions” on India's relationship with China, but that both sides were committed to further disengaging on the remote plateau of the Himalayan terrain.
It is a highly volatile and dangerous situation between two nationalistic, nuclear powers at a time when American influence has badly diminished (but this a good sign)!
It was the deadliest conflict between the sides in 45 years, and escalated a standoff in the disputed region that began in early May, when Indian officials said Chinese soldiers crossed the boundary at three different points, erecting tents and guard posts and ignoring verbal warnings to leave. That triggered shouting matches, stone-throwing and fistfights, much of it replayed on television news channels and social media.
China said it wanted to avoid further clashes with India along their border after the first deadly confrontation between the two nuclear powers in decades. But they added that the two sides "will continue to resolve this issue through dialogue and negotiations. We of course don't wish to see more clashes," Zhao on behalf of China said.
As India celebrated its 70th Independence Day, the Indian Army held a ceremonial Border Personal Meeting (BPM) with their Chinese counterparts in Jammu and Kashmir's Ladakh sector. A programme showcasing Indian culture was also presented with traditional grandeur to mark country's 70th Independence Day. The delegations of both interacted in a free, congenial and cordial environment. Both sides also sought to build on the mutual feeling of upholding the treaties and agreement signed between the governments of the two sides to maintain peace and tranquility along the LAC.
The United Nations urged both sides “to exercise maximum restraint.”
If we look back: ‘The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is a loose demarcation line that separates Indian-controlled territory from Chinese-controlled territory in the Sino-Indian border dispute. The term was first used by Zhou Enlai in a 1959 letter to Jawaharlal Nehru. It subsequently referred to the line formed after the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and is part of the Sino-Indian border dispute.
There are two common ways in which the term "Line of Actual Control" is used. In the narrow sense, it refers only to the line of control in the western sector of the borderland between the Indian union territory of Ladakh and Chinese Tibet Autonomous Region. In that sense, the LAC, together with a disputed border in the east (the McMahon Line for India and a line close to the McMahon Line for China) and a small undisputed section in between, forms the effective border between the two countries. In the wider sense, it can be used to refer to both the western line of control and the eastern line of control, in which sense it is the effective border between India and the People's Republic of China.’
The entire Sino-Indian border including the western LAC, the small undisputed section in the centre, and the McMahon Line in the east is 4,056 km (2,520 miles) long and traverses one Indian union territory, Ladakh, and four Indian states: Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. On the Chinese side, the line traverses the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The Indian government claims that Chinese troops continue to illegally enter the area hundreds of times every year. In 2013, there was a three-week standoff (2013 Daulat Beg Oldi incident) between Indian and Chinese troops 30 km southeast of Daulat Beg Oldi. It was resolved and both Chinese and Indian troops withdrew in exchange for a Chinese agreement to destroy some military structures over 250 km to the south near Chumar that the Indians perceived as threatening.
Later the same year, it was reported that Indian forces had already documented 329 sightings of unidentified objects over a lake in the border region, between the previous August and February. They recorded 155 such intrusions. Later some of the objects were identified as planets Venus and Jupiter by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, appearing brighter as a result of the different atmosphere at altitude and confusion due to the increased use of surveillance drones. In October 2013, India and China signed a border defence cooperation agreement to ensure that patrolling along the LAC does not escalate into armed conflict.
India says at least 20 of its soldiers were killed after hand-to-hand fighting with Chinese troops at a disputed border site on that night, in the deadliest clash between the two Asian giants in decades. China said its troops were engaged in a "violent physical confrontation" with Indian soldiers, but has given deliberately no details of those killed or wounded.
Both Indian and Chinese officials accuse each other of crossing the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border between the nuclear-armed Asian giants. The LAC is largely based on the ceasefire line after the war in 1962, but both sides disagree on where it lies.
The latest clashes took place at a disputed border site in the Galwan area of Ladakh, in the western Himalayas, an area at an altitude of around 14,000 feet where temperatures often fall below freezing.
The disputed site lies amid remote jagged mountains and fast-flowing rivers on the northern tip of India, abutting the Aksai Chin Plateau, which is claimed by India but administered by China.
Both countries claim vast swaths of each other's territory along the Himalayan border, with some disagreements rooted in demarcations by British colonial administrators of India. India and China fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962 and distrust has occasionally led to flare-ups ever since. Infrastructure building near or within disputed territories is often blamed for increases in tensions.
I quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.” (To be continued…)
-The End –
The writer is an independent political observer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.
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