[High in this corner of the Himalayas, an expanse of snowy peaks and glacier-fed rivers claimed by both China and India, a tense standoff between the two armies is spurring a flurry of infrastructure and military buildup that’s transforming one of the world’s most remote and inhospitable regions.]
By Shams
Irfan and Gerry
Shih
Harpal Singh gave the go-ahead. The
mountain was rocked by a thunderous explosion and, moments later, patriotic
cheers. India was one step closer to completing a top strategic priority: a
series of new tunnels and roads leading to the increasingly militarized border
with China.
The tunnel will “safeguard the territorial
integrity of our motherland,” said Singh, an engineer overseeing about 1,700
men racing to finish one stretch of the $600 million upgrade. Down the twisting
one-lane road from their work site were parked construction machinery, heavy
trucks hauling winter supplies for the army and armored vehicles under
camouflage-patterned tarp, all preparing to make an arduous drive to the border
that will become substantially shorter once the construction is finished.
“We understand the importance of
this project,” Singh said. “It’s the vital supply line to the border with
China.”
High in this corner of the
Himalayas, an expanse of snowy peaks and glacier-fed rivers claimed by both
China and India, a tense standoff between the two armies is spurring a flurry
of infrastructure and military buildup that’s transforming one of the world’s
most remote and inhospitable regions.
On the Chinese side of the unmarked
border, new helicopter pads, runways and railroads have been laid on the
Tibetan plateau, according to satellite images and state media reports. On the
Indian side, officials are rushing construction on the Zoji La tunnels,
upgrading several strategic roads and unveiling new cell towers and landing
strips. Both countries have deployed more military force to the border, with
India diverting nearly 50,000 mountainous warfare troops there, according to
current and former Indian military officials. In recent months, both militaries
have publicized combat readiness drills to practice airlifting thousands of
soldiers to the front lines at a moment’s notice.
Following 13 rounds of inconclusive
negotiations between military commanders since June 2020, the standoff is now
entering a second winter, an unprecedented development that is stretching
logistics and budgets — especially for India. But the result, observers say, is
a normalization of a hardened border and a fragile stalemate between two Asian
powers that could last for years.
Retired Lt. Gen. Deependra Hooda,
who served until 2016 as head of the Indian Army’s Northern Command, said India
last year assigned, for the first time, an offensively oriented mountain
warfare division to the China border.
“The thinking was always we could
handle China politically, diplomatically, but that feeling changed after 2020,”
said Hooda, who directs the Council for Strategic and Defense Research think
tank in New Delhi.
The deployed troops require “huge
infrastructure to support them, huge reserves to replace them,” he added. “But
even if there is a diplomatic process, the fact is that suspicions are going to
remain. There’s no way of returning to the status quo.”
The question of where India ends
and China begins has been the subject of negotiations by various parties —
including the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty, and an independent India
under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Communist China led by Mao Zedong.
The roughly 2,100-mile border does not cleave through significant natural
resources or population centers, but the dispute over where exactly it lies has
led to a bloody war and several skirmishes.
The current impasse began in May
2020, when Chinese patrols objected to Indian construction on a strategically
placed road in Ladakh, inside territory that China claimed. The faceoff
culminated in a brawl that killed scores of soldiers that June.
Infrastructure construction also
sparked earlier flare-ups. In 1957, China built a road linking the two vast and
restive regions of its western periphery — Tibet and Xinjiang — that
crisscrossed an expanse of salt flats that India claims to be part of Ladakh.
Tensions over the road simmered and contributed to the Sino-Indian War of 1962,
in which China attacked India and both sides saw thousands of men die in
freezing conditions.
In 2017, Chinese workers sought to
build roads near India’s Sikkim state before they were stopped by Indian
troops, creating a diplomatic crisis.
India needs to firm up its border
by building infrastructure not only for its military, but for its civilians,
said Sonam Tsering, a former village councilor from Chushul, which overlooks a
lake where new structures housing Chinese troops have materialized over the
past year.
Nearby Demchok village, which
didn’t have electricity a decade ago, only got its first cell tower in
November, Tsering said. Basic roads are still lacking in the region, and many
residents are simply moving away due to poor living conditions, which erodes
India’s territorial claims, he added. Last month, a village leader
wrote a letter to India’s defense minister pleading for reliable electricity,
basic hospitals and roads, and 4G cell towers for nine villages without
service.
“The Chinese villages across the
Indus River have had multiple cell towers for the last 15 years, with cable TV,
electricity lines, big concrete houses, wide, paved roads,” Tsering said.
“China gives citizens incentives to live in these forward villages because they
know civilians living there are the first line of defense.”
A Pentagon report in November said China has recently
built a small settlement in disputed territory on the eastern section of the
India-China border. Military infrastructure has also boomed: Satellite imagery
suggests that between 2019 and 2020, China had finished expansion projects on
about 20 helipads or airstrips bordering India, said Sim Tack, a former military
analyst for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm.
Both Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have equated infrastructure with national
security. After Indian and Chinese troops clashed last summer, Modi vowed to
triple spending on border infrastructure and assured troops in Ladakh that
India’s enemies had tasted its “fire and fury.” This year, Xi traveled to Tibet
for the first time to inspect a new railway leading to the Indian border, then
told People’s Liberation Army officers at a command center to “comprehensively
strengthen training and preparation work.”
Wang Xiaojian, spokesman for the
Chinese embassy in New Delhi, said China was committed to peace at the border
and considered the situation “stable and controllable,” while adding that China
would firmly safeguard its territorial sovereignty. Indian Ministry of External
Affairs spokesman Arindam Bagchi said the two countries’ foreign ministers met
most recently in September 2021 in Tajikistan and agreed to continue talks
between diplomats and military commanders to resolve the remaining issues.
Christopher Clary, an expert on
India-China military relations at the University of Albany, said the border
buildup has been “asymmetrically” more taxing for India than China, which has a
defense budget that is 3.5 times larger and a GDP six times greater. Chinese
leaders have historically been wary of antagonizing India, Clary said, but they
could afford to prolong the standoff as a way to punish India for its growing
closeness with the United States and its allies.
“There must be concern as India
increasingly takes part in the Quad, and other alignments perceived as
encircling China, and Beijing may want to use demonstrative force to show there
are red lines,” Clary said, noting that Mao attacked India in 1962 after
sensing Nehru’s closeness with his rival, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
In the decades following India’s
defeat in 1962, Nehru intentionally avoided building infrastructure in Ladakh,
fearing that roads might help the Chinese army descend the Himalayas and march
on the Indian capital, said Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor of Chinese studies
at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
But today, the thinking in New
Delhi has flipped. On the road to Ladakh on a recent afternoon before the start
of the snow season, dozens of heavy trucks painted with pictures of Sufi saints
idled at a weigh station, their drivers milling about.
“I have been traveling on this road
for the last 35 years but never seen it as busy as it is now,” said Nazir Ahmad
Wani, 65, a Kashmiri driver who was bringing machinery and winter supplies to
the border.
Wani recalled volunteering to
shuttle goods during the 1999 Kargil War, when Pakistan shelled the road. Now,
about 200 out of 500 trucks every day are again carrying military supplies,
Wani estimated. There’s no shooting, he said, but a familiar sense of tension.
“It’s scary to see lots of men and
weapons being ferried every day to Ladakh,” Wani said. “It’s as if something
big is about to happen.”
Shih reported from New Delhi. Pei
Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.
Read more:
20 Indian soldiers killed in first deadly clashes with Chinese troops
in 25 years
Shots fired on the India-China border for the first time
decades as tensions flare
China and India withdrew troops from contested border
