User:MBlaze Lightning/2022 Yangste clash

2022 Yangste clash
Part of the Sino-Indian border dispute
Date 9 December 2022 Location Line of Actual Control (LAC), Yangste region in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh Territorial changes none
Casualties and losses
40	40

The Yangste clash of 9 December 2022 occurred nocturnally between the troops of the Indian Army and the People's Liberation Army along the mutually contested Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Yangste region of Tawang in the border state of India's Arunachal Pradesh. The clashes ensued after the two armies confronted each other with nail-studded clubs and other anti-personnel weapons near positions on a 5180-metre mounting peak on the ridgeline south of the revered Buddhist site of Chumi Gyatse Falls, resulting in several casualties on both sides. [1]

India avowed that the incident was a Chinese enterprise, whose troops, equipped with spiked clubs with protruding nails, monkey fists and taser guns, nocturnally advanced upon its vantage military outpost manned by a force of about 50 on the peak with a force of over 300 soldiers with a view to capturing the high ground and alter the boundary in the area; they were then engaged by the Indian troops, until reinforcements arrived from the heights in the vicinity, and that in the ensuing violent clashes the Chinese were overwhelmed and beaten back. The Indian version of the chain of events was contested by the PLA, which imputed the transgression to the Indian troops at a time when its troops were performing customary patrol duty on its side of the border in the area.

The border incident marked the most serious clash between the two armies along the undemarcated border, since the Galwan valley clash in June 2020, which had led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of dead on the Chinese side.

Yangste was one of the twelve regions along the LAC that a Joint Working Committee in August, 1995 had recognised as disputed border area between India and China. It had been the site of several sproadic military skirmishes

Sino-Indian frontier and geography

The McMahon Line marks boundary between Chinese-held and Indian-held territory in the eastern Himalayan region. The line was the focus of a brief war in 1962, when Indian and Chinese forces struggled to control a disputed area (shown in red), much of which is a high altitude wasteland.

The Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the eastern sector of the border is broadly the McMahon Line agreed between British India and Tibet in 1914. Even though China regards the line as "illegal", on the grounds that Tibet was not an independent power, it agrees to abide by it as an LAC. However, the line has never been demarcated on the ground and the inadequate surveying of 1914 leaves several areas uncertain, open to dispute between the two sides. China also has an underlying claim to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls "South Tibet", and the claim is especially strong for the Tawang district, which was the birthplace of the 6th Dalai Lama of Tibet. The Tawang area was indeed under some form of suzerainty of Tibet at that time, but it was relinquished by Tibet in signing the agreement for the McMahon Line.

Yangtse, the region which was the site of the clash, is essentially a plateau that adjoins the LAC. It is part of a larger area called Mago-Chuna in the mountainous and thickly forested district of Tawang in India's border state of Arunachal Pradesh. Yangtse is bordered to the north by a continuous ridgeline of high mountain peaks that range in elevation from 14,000 feet (4,300 metres) to over 17,000 feet (5,200 metres) and traverse the LAC. The ridgeline, with its crest reaching an elevation of over 17,500 feet (5,300 metres), roughly runs in a northwest-southeast direction to the Tulung La mountain pass, and affords observation over much of the surrounding area, including the roads leading to the all-important Sela pass, which provides the only gateway to Tawang. The Nuranang river meanders through Cona County in southern Tibet before cutting through the Yangste plateau near the Chumi Gyatse Falls, and entering Tawang. As of December 2022, Yangtse is one of the 25 contested border regions between India and China, and is mutually recognised as such by the two countries.

The Chumi Gyatse Falls, at about 250 metres from the LAC, is the most prominent landmark in Yangtse, and marks the juncture between the two prominent ridgelines of the area; namely, the Bum La ridgeline to its southwest, and the Tulung La ridgeline to its southeast. The McMahon line at Yangtse is coterminous with the two foregoing ridgelines. It underwent a material deviation in Yangtse in 1986, when Indian troops, operating under the injunction of the then Indian army chief Krishnaswamy Sundarji, moved in Yangtse and occupied the stretch to the north of the hitherto prevailing line around Chumi Gyatse Falls, which had bifurcated it into two parts such that it was parcelled out between the two countries. The McMahon line in this area was thus altered, and all of the Falls fell on the Indian side of the border.

The control of the Tulung La ridge accrue an advantage of the military high ground to the Indian troops in Yangtse. Indians maintain a network of layered defences in the region, with a small detachment of forward troops maintaining a chain of six forward defensive outposts on the ridge. Although lightly held, these serve to establish the extent of its frontier with China. Complementing the outposts is an Indian forward base of about battalion strength, emplaced about 1.5 km (0.93 mi) south of the ridge. India also maintains a more significant military presence in valleys adjoining the Yangtse plateau, with precarious steep dirt tracks providing the only access to the higher ground. In contrast, the Chinese hold positions at lower elevations on the plateau, which places its troops at a tactical disadvantage. However, qualitative improvements to military infrastructure on the Chinese side of the border accruing from its investments has to a great extent enhanced its capacity to mobilize troops and send them to the disputed region.

Background and significance

The bilateral relations between India and China have for a long time been marred by considerable mistrust and suspicion, with the rancorous border dispute occupying the foreground. Whereas India has pushed for the delineation of the LAC, the Chinese have invariably demurred. Despite multiple rounds of negotiations, and an agreement in 2005 requisitioning the enunciation of parameters and principles for delineating and demarcating the LAC, the two sides have not made any tangible headway on the question.

While the McMahon line placed the border state of Arunachal Pradesh on the Indian side, China has staked formal claim to the entirety of the region, which it has esteemed as an extension of southern Tibet. The region of Tawang in particular has enticed Chinese interest for its politico-religious symbolism, besides its strategic significance.

Birthplace of the 6th Dalai Lama, Ugyenling Monastery, near Tawang.

The region is home to a significant ethnic Monpa population, who practise Tibetan Buddhism, without actually considering themselves ethnic Tibetans; it hosts the Galden Namgey Lhatse Monastery, which is India's largest, and Tibetan Buddhism's most important monastery after Lhasa's Potala Palace. It also boasts of the distinction of being the birthplace of Tsangyang Gyatso, the 6th Dalai Lama. The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, had also dwelled in Tawang, after the Chinese annexation of Tibet forced him to go into exile in 1959. India had extended its sovereignty over Tawang in February 1951. China believes that its control over Tawang would stiffen its control over the Tibet Autonomous Region, besides providing it with the gateway to the strategic Brahmaputra valley. India dismisses China's claim over Arunachal Pradesh as "non-substantial", and over Tawang as "only ecclesial".

In mid-2020, India accused China of precipitating the 2020–2021 military standoff at several locations along the LAC in Ladakh, giving rise to a series of clashes between the two belligerents. The Galwan Valley clash in June that same year, in particular, engendered the most serious border crisis since 1967, marking the first combat fatalities since 1975, with 20 dead on the Indian side and an unknown number of dead on the Chinese side. In January 2021, a face-off transpired between the two armies at Naku La in Sikkim that caused several non-fatal casualties on both sides.

An inquiry into the border incidents by CNN-News18 found that in the two decades preceding to the clash at Yangtse, border incidents between India and China had been becoming a frequent affair in the region, leading to instances of confrontations of varying severity. These typically recurred twice yearly in the periods preceding and following the onset of winter. It noted that the Chinese had, in recent years, turned to sending a large force of several hundred troops for incursions across the LAC at Yangste with a mix of many types of melee weapons and taser guns.

Yangtse was one of the twelve regions along the LAC that a Joint Working Committee in August 1995 had recognised as disputed border area between India and China. India had established military control over the area in 1986 in the wake of the Sumdorong Chu standoff. The region is home to the Chumi Gyatse Falls. The falls are a series of 108 waterfalls on the border, colloquially described as the Holy Waterfalls. The falls are esteemed as sacred and revered by the ethnic Monpas, who identify its genesis to a showdown between a "Bon Lama" (monk) and Padmasambhava, who is considered by the practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism to be the second Buddha. Indian officials say that the Chinese essay to disseminate erroneous notions about the birthplace of Padmasambhava, tracing it to Tibet, as against his actual birthplace Odisha, to justify their claims to the pastures in Yangtse.

In the wake of the 2020 Galwan clash, Yangtse became a region of renewed Sino-Indian focus and witnessed extensive military activities from the two armies. The Chinese undertook work on developing a Xiaokang (a Chinese term signifying moderate prosperity) border village in Tangwu, Cona County, near to the LAC in the area, and followed it up with the construction of a sealed road connecting the village to its encampment within a hundred and fifty metres from the Tulung La ridgeline. The Indians, on their part, increased their military presence in the area, besides undertaking to augment its military infrastructure along the border, with a special focus on augmenting surveillance capabilities.

In October 2021, Indian media reported that Yangtse was the site of a brief altercation between the Chinese and Indian troops after a nigh company sized Chinese force was confronted by an Indian patrolling unit, leading to a physical brawl which was eventually defused by the intervention of local military commanders. The incident had coincided with the 13th rounds of talks at corps commander level which were to happen a few days later to find a resolution to the 2020–2021 military standoff. Writing in the wake of the altercation, The Tribune's correspondent reported that India and China had both deployed an overall strength of about 3,000-3,500 troops to the area, underscoring the strategic importance that the two sides attached to the region.

The Indian control over the Tulung La ridge has continued to be a bone of contention and a cause of periodic flare-ups along the frontier between the two armies.

Clash

The clash along the LAC in Yangtse sprang from the premeditated initiative of the Chinese PLA, which moved a large body of its ground troops in the time leading up to the incident from its lodgement in the newly constructed border village of Tangwu to along the road leading towards its encampment on the declivity of the Tulung La ridge. Once there, the Chinese, numbering about 300 men, and armed with spiked clubs with protruding nails, monkey fists and taser guns, advanced upon two of India's forward outposts spaced about a kilometer apart, and located at an elevation of about 4,700 metres (15,400 ft) along the ridgeline which formed its frontier with India. Independent researchers from the Canberra-based think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute, undertaking an analysis of satelite imagery of the area produced five days after the incident, found evidence of the Chinese advance towards the two Indian outposts in the form of well-trodden paths leading uphill off the road terminus to the ridgeline.

Chinese foray towards the Indian positions in the predawn hours of 9 December 2022 prompted a confrontation with the Indians manning their outpost line on the border ridgeline, and eventually touched off an engagement that saw both sides fight hand-to-hand with an array of melee weapons. Indian reinforcements had arrived from an adjacent forward base within the first half-hour, and the fighting lasted for an hour before troop disengagement defused the situation. With numerous injuries sustained by both sides in consequence of the fighting, the border incident marked the most serious clash between the Chinese and the Indian armies along their undemarcated frontier since the Galwan Valley clash in June 2020, which had led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of dead on the Chinese side.

Media accounts

A representational image of a nail-spiked club

Indian media accounts of the incident state that the allure of the high ground provided the animus for China's bellicose attempt to change the status-quo of the Sino-Indian frontier in Yangtse. Chinese amassed several hundred troops under the obscurity of darkness and the dense fog, and marched upon to confront a small detachment of Indian troops, who are reported to have numbered about 50, around their vantage high ground positions on the border ridgeline. Indians, who had been tracking the Chinese movement with thermal imaging devices, instinctively responded by forming a human chain to encumber Chinese advance. Verbal recriminations over the patrolling rights to the area soon followed when Chinese staked claim to the area and sought an Indian withdrawal from it; to no avail, however, as Indians held their ground. Matters soon turned to violence with stone-pelting and bodily encounters between them. Amidst this scuffle, a density of Chinese force that had hitherto postured behind the first lines and occluded from view came forth armed with improvised melee weapons and taser guns. Indian reinforcements that had been hurried up from their command post thereupon to augment the embattled frontline troops arrived soon, and a clash ensued with both sides becoming embroiled in a vicious hand to hand combat. The Chinese force was physically repelled and overwhelmed within a half-hour, and eventually retreated back to its encampment on the declivity of the ridge. The Print, citing Indian military sources, reported that while the Indians did not possess taser guns, they had "everything and more than what the Chinese had" for fighting.

The clash, which lasted for an hour, caused both sides numerous injuries, with one estimate being 34 injured on the Indian sides, and nearly 40 on the Chinese. At least 6 Indian soldiers sustained grievous wounds in combat and were flown to Guwahati for treatment. Indian estimates of the strength of the attacking Chinese force vary from a minimum of 200 to a higher count of about 600 troops. The border clash embroiled Indian troops from three discrete combat units; namely, the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles, Jat Regiment and Sikh Light Infantry. One of these units was in the process of being relieved, and replaced by another, before the clash intervened, embroiling all three of them.

All of this was being observed by the Indian command post, which radioed multiple quick response teams for reinforcements. Indian troops managed to overwhelm the Chinese within 30 minutes. Soon, both parties disengaged and commanders from both sides held a flag meeting to defuse the situation.

Sources said that the clashes started with a verbal altercation between the two sides over the area of patrol. Chinese troops gathered in large numbers, around 300-400, and tried to force the Indian Army troops to leave the area, but Indian soldiers overpowered them with reinforcements. Chinese personnel tried to push the Indian Army troops, which was retaliated to by the Indian side. After an hours-long clash, when they failed to implement their motive, the Chinese troops left the area and went back to their base. The Indian army troops also moved from the clash site, said sources.

Official accounts

The news of a nocturnal clash having transpired between the troops of the Indian and Chinese armies on 9 December 2022 along the LAC in the Yangtse region of Arunachal Pradesh's Tawang district was formally disclosed by Indian officials only in the late evening of 12 December 2022, over three days after the clash had actually occurred. Indian security analysts point out that the Indian government deliberately withheld the news, with some imputing it to its apprehension that a border crisis could garner mainstream media attention, dwarfing interest in its electoral success in the recently concluded 2022 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election; while others imputed it to its predisposition to hush up reports of border clashes with China for fear of being construed politically weak or goaded by public frontlineinto an overreaction.

Indian officials operating under the injunctions of the government came out with a brief statement on the border incident, after an acquaintance of one of the injured soldiers had broken the news of the clash on Twitter, tagging Rahul Gandhi and other prominent opposition leaders, questioning the media's silence over it; the local revelation was followed soon afterwards by an article in The Tribune, which covered the story. Media queries a day before had met with a denial by the Indian government. The statement stated that the Chinese troops had "contacted the LAC" in Tawang, prompting a "firm and resolute" response by the Indian troops, resulting in a face-off that caused a few "minor" casualties on both sides, adding that troop disengagement eventually defused the military situation, and that a flag meeting was held in its aftermath.

While addressing the lawmakers in Parliament a day later on the issue, India's defence minister Rajnath Singh stated that the clash broke out after Chinese troops essayed to change the status quo of the disputed border in Yangtse by encroaching on Indian territory, and that this had been confounded by the Indian troops. Without disclosing all the details of the incident, Singh added that the physical brawl did not result in any fatal or grievous injury to any Indian soldier, and that his government had reached out to Chinese officials on the issue through diplomatic channels.

The PLA's Western Theatre Command spokesman, Colonel Long Shaohua, gave a diverging account of the chain of events that had transpired, saying that its troops had been undertaking normal patrol duties on its side of the LAC, in the Dongzhang area, when Indian troops crossing the border intercepted them. "Our response was professional, standardized and powerful, and we have stabilized the situation on the ground," he said, adding that troop disengagement has since ensued.

Commenting on the incident at a daily press briefing, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin stated that "the present situation on the China-India border is peaceful and stable overall," and that the two sides "maintained unobstructed dialogue on the border issue through diplomatic and military channels", while enjoining the Indian government to "earnestly implement the important consensus reached by both leaders, strictly abide by the spirit of the agreements and accords signed by both sides, and together uphold the peace and tranquility of the China-India border region."

Analyses and aftermath

https://thediplomat.com/2023/01/the-tawang-effect-forecasting-china-india-relations-in-2023/

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-china-talk-ladakh-days-after-tawang-clash-101671733584283.html

https://thediplomat.com/2023/01/the-true-significance-of-the-china-india-yangtse-clash/

International reaction

The incident came days after China expressed objection to Operation Yudhabhyas, an India-US joint military exercise at Auli in the Uttarakhand hills, claiming it was a violation of 1993 and 1996 border agreements.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the government was keeping an eye on the clash.

“We do strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to advance territorial claims by incursions, military or civilian, across the border at the established Line of Actual Control and we encourage India and China to utilize existing bilateral channels to discuss disputed boundaries,” Price told reporters Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/indian-army-indian-chinese-troops-clash-at-disputed-border/2022/12/12/84c99e50-7a31-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html