At an altitude of almost 15,000 feet, the residents of the village of Chushul traverse the desolate and unforgiving territory of the Indian state of Ladakh.
With heavy and crammed duffel bags, sacks of rice, cans of heavy fuel and bamboo poles tied behind their backs, they trudge towards the peak of a Himalayan mountain known as Black Top, where hundreds of Indian army tents are stationed in The horizon.
The 100-plus young men, women, and children are not taking this arduous journey out of kindness. In the coming winter months, temperatures will drop to –40 ° C. Villagers fear that if they do not help the Indian army secure their positions along the mountain ridges that border China and help prepare troops for the harsh winter is coming, your village could soon be under Chinese control.
“We want to help the Indian army secure their positions immediately,” said Tsering, a 28-year-old volunteer from Chushul. “We are bringing supplies to them, doing several rounds in a day, to make sure the army does not face too much trouble.”
Chushal, a village of around 150 households, is one of the closest dwellings to India’s disputed border with China in eastern Ladakh. Since May, Indian and Chinese troops have engaged in an increasingly aggressive dispute over their poorly demarcated Himalayan border, known as the royal line of control (LAC).
In June, the situation escalated into a violent high-altitude confrontation in which 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers were killed in a hand-to-hand battle between the two sides, the worst loss of life in the country. border for more than four decades.
On August 29, a few miles from Chushul, another confrontation broke out between the Indian and Chinese troops. There were no casualties that night, but troops fired shots across the border for the first time in 45 years.
At a meeting in Moscow last week, the defense ministers of India and China issued a joint statement in which they agreed to “withdraw as soon as possible” along their border. It followed at least five rounds of high-level military negotiations that have gone nowhere, and both sides continue to insist that the other is violating sovereign territory.
But, according to the villagers, there is little evidence of a disconnect on the ground. During the past week, Indian troops continued to accumulate along the border. A convoy of Indian army vehicles has continued to bring supplies and ammunition to troops camped at posts along the border, and around 100 excavators have been brought in for road and building construction, to further secure the position of the India along the border.
“It is very clear that both parties plan to stay there for the winter; they seem to be anticipating that there will be no diplomatic outcome, ”said Manoj Joshi, a security expert at the Observer Research Foundation.
“The reality is that China does not want to solve this because it is a convenient way to keep India unstable and weakened, by entangling it in a costly military operation along the Himalayan border that is far beyond its means.”
This week, the people of Chushul have continued their continuous efforts to bring supplies to the troops in Black Top. There is no road access to the mountain ranges that have become the new front line. They spoke of their concerns about the next five months, when the entire area will be almost completely cut off by snow, ice and deadly avalanches.
“The area where the recent confrontation took place does not yet have a road, much less the infrastructure,” Tsering said. “How long will the army keep supplies this way?”
Konchak Tsepel, another villager, echoed it. “The new places where China has faced the Indian army do not have adequate living conditions. The army settles in tents. I don’t know how they are going to build an infrastructure good enough to live when there are no roads ”.
Experts say India was unprepared for a protracted battle along its mountainous border, which shows no signs of abating. He now has only a few weeks to ensure that the four divisions currently deployed in Ladakh, numbering around 40,000 troops, are prepared to hold their positions against China through the winter.
The Indian military has spent billions on defense along its border with China, including a new $ 400 million tunnel in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, but keeping the tens of thousands of troops in this high-altitude desert is a complex and expensive task. The region does not have adequate communication channels and electricity has not yet reached many villages. Meanwhile, China’s defense budget is three times that of India.
Tashi Chhepal, 60, a retired Indian Army captain who has served in the region for more than three decades, described how during the winter, “in some positions, our contact with the outside world was cut off even for five months at a time.” . .
He said: “Everything would freeze like a rock and we would have provisions for the whole winter. During those months we would depend on food packed in tin. Connectivity is still so bad. Nothing has changed much in years. “
Pravin Sawhney, a former Indian army officer, said India had been taken “completely by surprise” with recent Chinese aggressions along the border and was now in the rear. “China is far superior,” Sawhney added. “They have fiber optic internet to the edge of the battle space.”
An Indian Army Major General, Amrit Pal Singh, the former chief of operational logistics for the Leh region, said the logistics of moving troops and supplies to the area as winter rolls in was a challenge like no other for the Indian Army. “This is the most isolated battlefield in the world,” he said.
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