Satellite photos taken by US-based Maxar Technologies on January 30 show a number of Chinese deployments along Pangong Tso, a strategically important lake that runs across the de facto boundary of the two nuclear forces, known as the Line of Actual Control ( LAC). In new images taken Tuesday, dozens of vehicles and building structures that left empty ground were removed.
China announced on February 10 that both countries had agreed to disconnect along the south and north shores of the lake.
Images and footage released by the Indian Army on February 10 showed excavators and loaded convoys lying around, Chinese soldiers dismantling tents and carrying suitcases from the camp, and tanks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) en route.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Beijing hoped India would “work with China to meet halfway”.
Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told parliament on February 11 that both parties would remove the forward deployment in a phased, coordinated and verified manner.
Under the ‘reciprocal and reciprocal’ decoupling conditions, China will maintain troops in the northern bank area east of a deployment known as Finger 8, while Indian troops will maintain a permanent base near a deployment known as Finger 3, Defense Minister Singh said. , said. . Both parties will take a “similar action” in the southern shore, he added.
Any structures built on either side after April 2020 will be removed, and all military activities will temporarily stop on the north shore, including patrolling. Changes to the land, such as excavations and trenches, will also be removed, according to Joshi.
Once decoupling is completed, senior commanders from both sides will meet within 48 hours to discuss remaining issues, Singh said.
The border collision in 2020
India and China share a 2,100-kilometer (3,379-kilometer) border in the Himalayas, but both sides claim on either side of it.
Pangong Tso, about 4,267 meters above sea level, stretches over an area stretching from the Indian territory of Ladakh to the Chinese-controlled Tibet, in the greater Kashmir region where India, China and Pakistan all claim territory.
In 1962, India and China went to war over this remote, inhospitable piece of land and eventually established the LAC – but the two countries do not agree on its exact location and often accuse each other of exceeding it, or to try to expand their expansion. territory. Since then, they have had a history of mostly non-lethal disputes over the position of the border.
But violence erupted last June when at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash near Pangong Tso, marking the deadliest border conflict in more than 40 years. China has never acknowledged any casualties from the incident.
In September, China and India agreed to stop sending more troops to the border, following an increase in tensions between the two countries. The situation was temporarily resolved while the two parties held several rounds of talks.
The final round of talks, which led to the deal to decouple, came after the Indian military said there was a “minor” face last month between Indian soldiers and China’s PLA near the border. It has been “resolved by local commanders according to established protocols”, the Indian Army said in a statement, without giving details of injuries.
“Our aim is for there to be decoupling and stability at the LAC so that peace and tranquility can be properly established,” Singh said in his statement to parliament. “We hope it will restore the situation to the current situation before the start of the strike last year.”
“I do not think we are going to go back to the first one,” said Manoj Joshi of the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank in New Delhi. He added that there were ‘other’ strategic points’, such as the Galwan Valley in Ladakh, and that China was still aggressively building up its presence along various parts of the border.
“This decoupling is limited to the Pangong area,” he said. “But it’s about what we see in other areas. There are other strategic points … We have to be careful about how it plays out.”