Yesterday some 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a gunfight with Chinese soldiers in a remote area of Kashmir, in the Galwan valley, in the Ladakh region. They are the first deaths in the Himalayan disputed area for forty years among the Asian powers.
According to the Indian version, among the twenty fallen there is also an officer and the Chinese also suffered losses, it was not specified whether dead or injured. New Delhi says senior officials from both sides are now trying to calm the situation. Beijing does not confirm the victims and replies that the Indians have bounded and attacked the Chinese outpost twice.
India and China already fought in a blitzkrieg in 1962, and the Indian armed forces suffered a humiliating defeat. Since then the tension has remained strong, but it had only provoked skirmishes between advanced patrols. Yesterday's could have been much more: even the Chinese may have had losses they don't want to admit.
If there were not the highest mountain range in the world to separate them, Beijing and New Delhi would have already faced each other in a high intensity clash. If you take a look at the map, you get the impression that the two countries are very close, but on closer inspection, you can see that they are separated by 2.700 km of border.
There are old issues that continue to cause friction, first of all Tibet. China has occupied Tibet, both to prevent the Indians from invading it first and to prevent it from being permanently occupied by the armed forces of New Delhi, allowing India to have strategic control over the entire region.
India's response to the occupation of Tibet has been to host the Dalai Lama and the independence movement in Dharamsala, in the state of Himachal Pradesh.
At present, Tibet's independence appears highly unlikely.
As we said earlier, the Himalaya mountain range runs the entire length of the Sino-Indian border before turning south to become the Karakorum chain that runs along Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan: it separates the two most populous in the world, especially from the military point of view. The contrasts are certainly not few: Beijing claims the Indian province of Arunachal Pradesh, while India accuses the Chinese of occupying Aksai Chin militarily (in this area the respective artillery is aimed against each other).
If Beijing did not occupy Tibet, India would probably do so, consequently it would have the most important peaks, from a strategic point of view, of the entire mountainous plateau, a fundamental starting point for a possible invasion of the central Chinese plain, besides the ability to control the sources of three important Chinese rivers: the Yellow River, the Yangtze and the Mekong. If the Indians were to block these water resources they would cause the Chinese incalculable damage.
Photo: web / google maps
