SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE – ESTABLISHMENT NUMBER 22 – THE FUTURE OF TIBET

SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE – THE FUTURE OF TIBET:

Special Frontier Force as a multinational military organization expresses the solidarity of the views shared by the United States, India, and Tibet in confronting the problem of Communist China’s expansionism. This policy has become less transparent when the United States began trade and commerce relationships with People’s Republic of China and had established full diplomatic relationships. India has also joined other nations seeking increased trade and commerce with Communist China while the issue of Tibet remains unsettled. India will never be able to resolve the border dispute with Communist China for we have taken a stand to defend the rights of Tibetan people to establish Freedom, Democracy, and Justice in the occupied territories of Tibet. During 1962, India paid a heavy price when China retaliated across the Himalayan frontier during October 1962. We must remember that China was forced to declare unilateral ceasefire on November 21, 1962 and withdrew from captured territory while holding Aksai Chin area of Ladakh region. China is now trying to capture the same territory that it had gained during its 1962 attack on India. China was forced to vacate its aggression because of a firm threat delivered by President John F. Kennedy and that threat is still a valid threat. China is taking a calculated risk to verify the strength of the US-India-Tibet military alliance/pact. India is able to show a sense of self-restraint as it knows that the frontier issue cannot be resolved without evicting the military occupier from Tibet. China has acquired great military capabilities. We have to remember as to how the Soviets had failed in Afghanistan despite their military power. To put China in its place, both India, the United States, and Europe must review their trade and commerce relationships with China and tell China that trade and commerce relationships will not continue without resolving the problem of Tibet’s future.

Rudra N Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162, USA
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Spirits-of-Special-Frontier-Force/362056613878227

SERVICE INFORMATION:

R. Rudra Narasimham, B.Sc., M.B.B.S.,
Personal Numbers:MS-8466/MR-03277K. Rank:Lieutenant/Captain/Major.
Branch:Army Medical Corps/Short Service Regular Commission(1969-1972); Direct Permanent Commission(1973-1984).
Designation:Medical Officer.
Unit:Establishment No.22(1971-1974)/South Column,Operation Eagle(1971-1972).
Organization: Special Frontier Force.

Living in denial is not how India should deal with China’s incursion

 

by Venky Vembu Apr 30, 2013
Any prospect of an early resolution of the stand-off in the high Himalayas between India and China may have been dashed by symptoms that suggest that the Chinese troops appear to be digging deeper into their trenches in the areas in Ladakh’s Depsang Valley, deep inside what India considers its territory.
The latest such provocation, in the form of a new tent that the Chinese troops have put up in Depsang Valley, puts paid to publicly articulated statements from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the tension was a “local issue” and would be resolved soon. External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid too claimed that the tension will likely have been resolved even before he leaves for Beijing to prepare for Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s upcoming visit to India. Hope, as has been famously said, isn’t a strategy, and the Indian leaders’ pronouncements only accentuate the sense that they are in public denial.
According to media reports, however, the Chinese troops have put up five tents so far, which suggests that they – and the military leadership under whose orders the troops on the ground are acting – are not making any effort to dial back the tension, and on the contrary are actively escalating it.

The Himalayas are no longer a high hurdle. Reuters
More provocatively, according to these reports, the Chinese troops are also waving banners establishing Chinese territorial rights to the area. “You are in (the) Chinese side,” proclaim these banners, which are evidently directed at the Indian troops that have set up camp nearby to keep watch on the Chinese soldiers.
The Indian government’s response to the crisis so far has been one of restraint in the face of public dares from the opposition to stand up for India’s territorial integrity. On Monday, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, who served as Defence Minister, called the UPA government an assortment of colourful names to draw attention to its placidity in the face of the grave Chinese provocation. His characterisation of China – not Pakistan – as India’s real enemy may have been overly simplistic, and made with political calculations in mind.
Opposition leaders, of course, have the luxury of shooting off their mouths with blustery talk, without bearing any of the responsibility that comes with actual decision-making. And yet the perception that the UPA government has been less than robust in protecting national interests, and not just vis-a-vis China, is of course more widely shared.
Evidently, the Indian Army has provided the political leadership with a range of options that are open to it if the Chinese don’t fold up their tents and leave anytime soon. Presumably these options would involve cutting off the supply lines to these troops, which would put a cap on the number of days they can hold out here. More extreme options – of forcibly evicting the 30-or-so Chinese troops – would also have been considered, perhaps as part of a scenario-building exercise to draw up contingency plans. But that would truly be the option of the last resort, given the very real risk of a heightened conflict that it comes with.
There’s very little percentage for the Indian side in being drawn by the nose into a border conflict with a much stronger China. After all, it was an adventurist ‘forward policy’ that Jawaharlal Nehru embraced that led to the 1962 war. At that time too, Nehru was at the receiving end of much pillorying in Parliament by the opposition for his government’s naive “bhai-bhai” approach to China despite ample evidence that brotherly sentiment was not reciprocated. And although both countries have come a long way away from 1962, the irony of today’s situation is that it is the Chinese troops that are testing Indian resolve with their own unstated “forward policy’.
But having considered all of the options that the Army put on the table, the political leadership appears to have opted to go out of its way to signal to the Chinese that they are keen to avoid an escalation in the level of tension. Key interlocutors, including national security advisor Shivshankar Menon, who knows a thing or two about dealing with the Chinese and has invested much effort in building up goodwill in Beijing, are also counselling restraint.
There isn’t much to be said in favour of public posturing and drawing a line in the Himalayan heights from which one might soon have to scurry back. But there’s more than ample space for conveying to the Chinese side in private that the case for an early resolution of the border dispute – which Chinese President Xi Jinping said China is keen to see – isn’t exactly advanced by China inflaming public sentiment in India by changing the de facto arrangement that has been faithfully adhered to for decades now.
Perhaps this incursion was intended by the new Chinese leadership to signal Chinese frustration at the lack of progress in the talks on the border dispute despite years of negotiations. If that is so, it reflects raw power, not sagacity, and is insensitive to the consideration that this brinkmanship game actually makes it harder for the Indian side to make any concession, even if it is on a reciprocal basis.

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