By Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 19th July 17
What motives underlie the month-long
standoff between Indian Army troops and Chinese border guards in the Doklam
bowl, on the Sino-Indian border in Sikkim? What is at stake there for India and
China? How could this play out, and is there a real threat of war?
The confrontation began in mid-June, when the
Chinese entered the Doklam bowl, a picturesque, 89 square kilometre series of
meadows near the Nathu La border crossing between Sikkim and Tibet’s Chumbi
Valley. Doklam is claimed by both China and Bhutan; while China, India and Bhutan
do not agree where their borders meet. The Chinese and Bhutanese armies send occasional
patrols to Doklam in summer, while graziers from both sides herd their yaks
here – traditional ways of staking claim to Himalayan territory – but the patrols
and graziers are only temporary visitors.
Last month, however, Chinese road
construction crews, escorted by border guards, disturbed this delicate status
quo by attempting to consolidate permanent “facts on the ground”. Barging into
Doklam, they began extending a mud-surface road they had partly built more than
a decade ago. This rough track would connect Doklam to Highway S-204, a blacktop
Chinese road in the Chumbi Valley, theoretically allowing Chinese troops to
drive directly from the Tibetan city of Shigatse, through Yadong, across the
border into Doklam, and then south to China’s claimed border line at Gyemochen
(which the Chinese call Mount Gipmochi). A Chinese road in this disputed
territory would add weight to Beijing’s claim over it.
Since India does not claim the Doklam bowl,
China’s entry placed the ball squarely in Bhutan’s court. But Thimphu had not
objected forcefully when China had encroached into the Doklam bowl in 2003-07,
and it was – understandably, given Bhutan’s power differential with China –
reluctant to intervene now. Consequently, Indian troops in the vicinity, acting
in accordance with New Delhi’s foreign policy coordination treaty with Thimphu,
crossed on June 16 into Bhutanese-claimed territory and physically blocked the
movement of Chinese border guards. India also positioned two bulldozers in the
Doklam bowl to undo any road construction by the Chinese. Since then, several
hundred Indian soldiers and as many Chinese border guards (since their army
does not guard the border) have come face to face in Doklam in a testy
stalemate.
Backing up their soldiers on the ground,
foreign ministry spokespersons in Beijing, Thimphu and New Delhi have
rationalised their positions. On June 26, Beijing invoked an 1890 agreement
between China and Great Britain that specified Mount Gipmochi as the border
junction. Three days later, Thimphu cited agreements in 1988 and 1989 not to
disturb the status quo. The next day, New Delhi pointed out that Beijing had
agreed in 2012 to finalise the border tri-junction consultatively and that
“unilaterally determin[ing] tri-junction points is in violation of this
understanding.”
Threat
to the Siliguri corridor?
Indian commentators have claimed that New
Delhi’s unusual resoluteness in this confrontation stems from a threat to the
Siliguri corridor – a 23 kilometre-wide funnel of Indian territory that
squeezes between Nepal and Bangladesh, giving India access to its seven
north-eastern states. Siliguri is just 80 kilometres from the current border.
It is argued that allowing China to shift the border to Mount Gipmochi would
bring the threat even closer.
In fact, this danger is dramatically
overblown. A Chinese advance to Siliguri would require the mobilisation of large
numbers of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops from around Lhasa, and Mainland
China. Dennis Blasko, a leading expert on the Chinese military, says the PLA’s
on-going reorganisation aims to increase the “new-type combat forces”, which
are capable of being used anywhere in China or its borders, but there are not
enough of these forces in Tibet to break through India’s forward defences in Sikkim.
Bringing in sufficient numbers and acclimatising them to Tibet’s high altitudes
would take the PLA weeks, losing strategic surprise and allowing India to comfortably
reinforce its defences in Sikkim.
If moving appropriate
troops into the Chumbi Valley is a logistical challenge, shielding them from
Indian artillery, air and ground attacks in that bottleneck would be even more
difficult. Thereafter, the PLA would have to break through formidable Indian
defences, attacking mainly uphill, and then advance southward to Siliguri
across thickly forested hills, harried all the way by numerically superior
Indian forces. Such an advance, carried out cross-country, would inevitably leave
behind artillery and logistic support, rendering Chinese infantry spearheads
sitting ducks for Indian forces. If, miraculously, the Chinese still reach
Siliguri, they would be decimated in massed attacks from Indian reserves that could
be built up steadily.
“Sikkim is where India attacks China, not
the other way around”, say typically blunt planners in New Delhi. Lieutenant
General SL Narasimhan (Retired), who has commanded a brigade and a division in
Sikkim and now serves on India’s National Security Advisory Board has written
that concerns about Siliguri are overblown.
The
Bhutan factor
With Siliguri not a major concern, New
Delhi’s purposefulness at Doklam stems, more likely, from the belief that
Beijing is testing India’s commitment to Bhutan. China has always been galled
by this close relationship, which has withstood sustained Chinese pressure to
divide it. At Doklam, military pressure and Beijing’s unprecedented rhetoric
have been reinforced by diatribes from Chinese and China-friendly media, alleging
India’s colonial exploitation of Bhutan.
Neville Maxwell, as always in lockstep with
Chinese propaganda, writes in the South China Morning Post: “The Indian attempt
to depict this confrontation as tripartite should be disregarded. Bhutan is not
an independent actor [but] rather an Indian glove-puppet.”
Maxwell makes the outrageous assertion that
New Delhi keeps Thimphu in line by permanently stationing an army brigade group
(3,500-5,000 troops) in Bhutan. Numerous Indian and international commentators
too have incorrectly cited similar numbers. In fact, India’s military presence in
Bhutan is restricted to 800 trainers for the Royal Bhutan Army, and about 100
soldiers with the Border Roads Organisation, which builds and maintains several
Bhutanese roads, using civilian hired labour.
New Delhi understands that backing off
would amount to throwing Bhutan under the Chinese bus, allowing Beijing to
dictate a border settlement with Thimphu. On the other hand, Beijing
understands that allowing India to intervene militarily on behalf of Bhutan
would send an undesirable message to other regional states that China seeks to
keep divided and mindful of its status as the next global superpower.
New Delhi remains firm about its support to
Bhutan. Says former national security advisor, Shivshankar Menon, in a media
interview: “[W]e have a certain relationship and certain obligations to Bhutan.
In this case, China’s actions have disturbed the status quo, and that needs to
be addressed.”
How
much of a flashpoint?
The Doklam confrontation does not yet appear
a flashpoint that could trigger open hostilities. No shots have been exchanged,
in contrast to the 1967 gun battles at Nathu La and Cho La, just kilometres
from Doklam, in which 88 Indian soldiers were killed and 163 wounded; and an
estimated 340 Chinese soldiers died and 450 were wounded. Nor is this the
longest or most tense face-off ever. That dubious distinction goes to the 1986-87
crisis on the Sumdorong Chu (rivulet) near Tawang, after China occupied the
disputed Wangdung grazing ground and the Indian Army responded with a months-long
build-up of tens of thousands of troops along the McMahon Line. Beijing quickly
understood that New Delhi had abandoned its post-1962 defensive mind set and
the crisis was resolved, leading on to the Peace and Tranquillity Agreement of
1993 and the Confidence Building Measures of 1996 that have kept the peace on
the border ever since.
But this equilibrium has now been
disturbed, and both sides have played roles in it. American sinologist, John Garver,
writing in the South China Morning Post, says a rising and assertive China,
looking to be the paramount power in Asia, wants to serve up a public lesson to
India – which it sees as the weakest link in a chain of states, including the
US, Japan and Australia, that are trying to contain China. Supporting this
rationale for Beijing’s shrill aggression over Doklam, other commentators have
pointed to China’s opposition to India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers
Group, its blocking of a UN resolution to declare Pakistan-based Azhar Masood a
global terrorist, New Delhi’s unapologetic backing of the Dalai Lama, including
a government sponsored visit to Tawang, and the Indian government’s forthright
rejection of China’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative. In the Indian Ocean too
New Delhi is lining up more visibly against China, with its navy cooperating
and training regularly with the American and Japanese navies in exercises like
the recently concluded “Exercise Malabar”.
While deteriorating Sino-Indian relations
are a reality, there is insufficient recognition of the fact that border
incidents are increasingly triggered by India’s increasing military strength
and an increasingly assertive posture on the border. Over the last decade,
India has strengthened its defences in Arunachal Pradesh by adding two
divisions (35,000 – 40,000 troops), and is raising a mountain strike corps
(60,000 troops) that can operate in Ladakh, Sikkim or Arunachal Pradesh.
Besides these, India has moved more than two brigades (7,000 – 10,000 troops)
from Kashmir to Ladakh and strengthened defences further with the induction of
tank and armoured infantry units. The little-known upshot is that India’s
military posture has become significantly stronger than China’s on the
3,500-kilometre Line of Actual Control (LAC).
This is enhancing confrontation between the
two sides. For decades, India maintained an insignificant military presence in
Daulet Beg Oldi, in Ladakh, ceding the run of the place to China. But, when
India’s thickening troop presence blocked Chinese patrols into the area, a
prolonged confrontation ensued in 2013. One general involved in that standoff
says: “The Chinese demanded to know why we were blocking them now, when they
had been patrolling that area for years.”
A similar confrontation took place in
Chumar, in Ladakh, in 2014. Now, in Doklam, Chinese anger stems from being
blocked in 2017, after facing no resistance between 2003-2007, when they tested
the waters by building the existing track. Furthermore, a more active media in
both countries is bringing confrontations to public attention, forcing both
governments into harder-line stances and depicting as surrender the
give-and-take that must necessarily accompany the resolution of each incident.
