Bumpy Ride Ahead

Maj Gen. Rambir Mann (retd)

The year 2021 has seen new challenges emerge before the India and as the year comes to an end and the new year dawns, it is time to take stock. Not only have there been increased conventional threats on the borders but also new internal security challenges, both in J&K and the NE are emerging. These especially impact the Army being the first responder on land borders and in counter insurgency (CI) operations, at a time when the armed forces are undergoing major transformation. It would be befitting to examine these challenges through the prism of our major protagonists: China and Pakistan.

Chinese Checkers

The contours of the Chinese vision for South Asia have begun to manifest as it seeks to create new flashpoints along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) while attempting to encircle India with its initiatives in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Gwadar.

It would be relevant to quote from an article in a popular Chinese portal ‘Zhihu’ of the Beijing Municipality Communist party in October 2020, which talks about preventing India from competing with China for good, in the future, by cutting off the North Eastern States at the Siliguri Corridor and taking over Gilgit, Aksai Chin, POK, Baltistan and Ladakh, while assisting Pakistan in the taking over of Kashmir.

Hu Shisheng heads the South Asia division of China’s influential Institute of South and Southeast Asian and Oceanian Studies, which is directly under China’s external intelligence establishment. He has stated that India and China are doomed to continue to have clashes. Thus, the biggest challenge that the Indian Army faces in its different manifestations,