FOR nearly six weeks, armed contingents of two of the biggest military forces in the world have faced off in a high-altitude game of chicken in the Himalayas. Roughly 300-400 Indian soldiers and an equal number of Chinese border guards are stuck glowering at one another over a scrubby patch of land at a “tri-junction”, where the two countries and the tiny kingdom of Bhutan all meet. Analysts cannot see how either side might easily stand down. Memories of a bloody border war fought between China and India in 1962 are all too easily evoked.
That war, which saw India humiliated, began after the Chinese built a road across disputed territory in the far west of the two countries’ 4,000km-long, disputed border. The latest problems began when Chinese border guards were spotted moving road-making equipment onto the Dolam plateau, a flat spot in the slightly larger region known as Doklam (or Donglang in Mandarin) which all three sides patrol. On June 18th Indian troops moved onto the plateau...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/2h5RcKZ
EmoticonEmoticon