China and India: are war clouds gathering over Doklam again?
A fresh Chinese build-up in the Himalayan area of a summer stand-off raises fears in Delhi that the August peace deal may be unravelling, paving the way for an even bigger confrontation
In graphic reports on the online publication ThePrint, Bhat has been detailing the heavy deployment of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) personnel close to last year’s site of confrontation and hectic build-up by the Chinese in North Doklam, including concrete posts, helipads, new trenches, and a concrete observation tower less than 10 metres from the Indian Army’s most forward trench. Fighting posts have been created on almost every hillock on the North Doklam plateau, according to his reports, confirming sporadic media reports of Chinese troops digging in rather than leaving the area.
“All these structures have come up only after June 16, according to satellite images,” the retired colonel, who served the Indian Army for 33 years, told This Week in Asia. “China is trying to change the status quo in North Doklam. India must object because the entire area is Bhutanese land occupied by China.”
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The Indian government is doing nothing of the sort and is, instead, insisting all is well. After the opposition Congress party last week cited the satellite images to accuse the government of misleading the country and “snoozing” while the Chinese plan “Doklam 2.0”, the government clarified that the status quo at the site of last year’s face-off still held. It dismissed news reports such as Bhat’s as “inaccurate and mischievous”, but added that it was using “established mechanisms” to resolve misunderstandings over Doklam.
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Addressing the same concerns, Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat said Chinese soldiers are still present in the area, “although not in numbers that we saw them in initially”, and that the PLA has “carried out some infrastructure development, which is mostly temporary in nature”. But while stressing that “bonhomie” (between India and China) had returned to pre-Doklam levels, Rawat also said it’s time for India to “shift focus” from its western border with Pakistan to its northern border with China, in what Chinese experts like Wang Dehua see as signs of “border aggression from India”.
In an editorial headlined “Time for clarity”, The Hindu newspaper this week noted that conflicting messages from the government pointed to an unravelling of the agreement announced in August, and demanded Delhi “drop the ambiguity” over Doklam and share details of just what’s going on there.
“The Chinese build-up appears to be of a different order of magnitude than anything seen in the past and therefore should be a source of concern,” opposition lawmaker Shashi Tharoor told This Week in Asia. “The government chose to spin the mutual disengagement from the face-off site as a major diplomatic victory. Its silence seems to have more to do with its reluctance to dilute that ‘triumph’ than with any realistic appreciation of the situation,” said Tharoor, who also heads India’s parliamentary standing committee on external affairs. The issue, he said, had come up “repeatedly” in the committee, but declined to elaborate on the “closed-door deliberations”.
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