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India takes the high ground against China
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - India has reopened its Daulat Beg Oldi airfield in Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir after a gap of more than four decades. Located a stone's throw from Aksai Chin - a part of Jammu and Kashmir province that has been under Chinese occupation since 1962 - the Daulat Beg Oldi airfield will improve India's logistical support to its troops deployed along its 4,057-kilometer disputed frontier with China.

The Daulat Beg Oldi airfield was set up in 1962 in the run-up to the brief but brutal Sino-Indian war. The Indian Air Force (IAF)operated American-supplied Fairchild Packets from this airfield between 1962 and 1965. Then in 1966 an earthquake in the region loosened the surface soil, making it unsuitable for fixed-wing aircraft to land on the airfield. It was subsequently shut down.

On May 31, for the first time in almost 43 years, an IAF AN-32 transport aircraft landed at the Daulat Beg Oldi airfield. Regular operations will begin in due course.

At a height of 4,960 meters (16,200 feet) the airfield is the world's highest. "The airfield can be used for touching down and dropping or picking up troops and supplies, not forward operations," said air commodore and former deputy director of the Delhi-based Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Prashant Dikshit. The IAF plans to reopen Chushul (located south of Pangong Lake and near a vital supply road to Leh) and Fukche airfields in eastern Ladakh, also along the Chinese border.

The Daulat Beg Oldi airfield is located a mere eight kilometers from Aksai Chin and the Sino-Indian Line of Actual Control in this sector. It overlooks China's Xinjiang province and more importantly, the strategic Karakoram Highway that links China with Pakistan. It is near the Karakoram Pass and lies east of the Siachen Glacier.

The airfield is "very critical to deal with incursions from China and Pakistan", Phunchok Stobdan, senior fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi, told Asia Times Online. "Besides, in the event of war, its proximity to the Karakoram Highway will give India a significant edge."

The reopening of Daulat Beg Oldi airfield has ruffled feathers in Beijing. China is reported to have expressed its "unhappiness" over the Indian move. "This is not surprising given the airfield's proximity to Aksai Chin," said an Indian intelligence official.

Roughly covering an area of 42,685 square kilometers, Aksai Chin is an icy, high-altitude desert in the extreme northeast of Jammu and Kashmir. In the late 1950s, India discovered that China had quietly constructed a road through this remote plateau. Then in the 1962 war, China occupied some 38,000 square kilometers of territory in Aksai Chin. This remains under Chinese occupation to date.

Aksai Chin's importance to China, especially in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, lay in the access it provided to Tibet. Of the three routes from China into Tibet, the westerly route from Kashgar into the Tibetan plateau via Aksai Chin was the best.

As John Garver points out in his book Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century, the western route via Aksai Chin "has a much more continuous rise in elevation than either the northern [via Qinghai] or the eastern route [via Sichuan]. On the western route, once you have climbed up to 4,600 meters (14,000 feet) or so, you more or less stay there and in any case do not have to descend back down to 2,400 meters [8,000 ft] elevation to start over, as with the Sichuan route".

Besides, although winters in the west are bitterly cold they have little snow. Of the three routes it is the route via Aksai Chin that is open year-round, throughout both the winter and the monsoon season. For China, which needed to send troops, officials and supplies to consolidate control over Tibet, Aksai Chin was a vital lifeline.

"Control of Aksai Chin was thus essential to Chinese control of western Tibet and very important to its control over all of Tibet," wrote Garver.

Indian troops stationed near the Line of Actual Control have hitherto depended largely on air-dropped supplies. That will now change with aircraft landing here.

According to the IAF, the Daulat Beg Oldi airfield has been reopened to facilitate rotation of troops stationed in the area and to provide then with regular supplies. "The temperature plummets in winter and all supply routes are cut. The only way out is through the air and helicopters can only service a little," said Air Marshal P K Barbora, Western Air Command's commander-in-chief.

"By reactivating the airfield, India would like to be seen as exercising a more assertive presence in this area. Most of all it will be a great morale booster for our troops positioned there. Landing at Daulat Beg Oldi airfield will enable India to induct troops swiftly, improve communication network and increase the air effort in the region substantially," Barbora added.

"The reopening of the field is a signal to China that India will take steps to protect its national interest," Dikshit told Asia Times Online.

IDSA's Stobdan said that India is trying to counter the "dozens of provocations from China". Earlier, there was a "general apathy in India's response to Chinese moves". Financial constraints and fear of China resulted in a more cautious response.

"That has been changing over the past two to three years," said Stobdan, pointing to Delhi's decisions to improve connectivity and road infrastructure along the Sino-Indian frontier. "Its level of confidence vis-a-vis China has gone up and it is showing that it will take steps to consolidate its position in its peripheries."

The decision to reopen Daulat Beg Oldi airfield is part of this larger effort to improve preparedness vis-a-vis China. "India is preparing for contingency," said Dikshit.

The reopening has come amid increasing Chinese incursions into Indian territory, especially over the past year. Concern is mounting in India over China's massive buildup of military infrastructure and its robust road-building activity along all sectors of the Sino-Indian border.

A month ago, bilateral tensions spiked when China laid claim to a 2.1 square kilometer tract of land called the "Finger Area" in the northern most tip of Sikkim, which overlooks the strategic Sora Funnel. Chinese troops threatened to demolish stone structures in the Finger Area and their threats were endorsed by officials, who reiterated the warning to Indian diplomats.

Sikkim's boundary with Tibet, which falls within the middle sector of the Line of Actual Control, was considered to be the least complicated of the three sectors. This is the only part of the Sino-Indian frontier that China had accepted as settled; this is the only sector where the two sides have exchanged maps. But this did not prevent Beijing from dragging it back into the border dispute.

Indian analysts are of the opinion that the Chinese claims over the Finger Area together with earlier incidents of Chinese troops destroying Indian bunkers near the Sino-Sikkim-Bhutan tri-junction and its objections to India beefing up its troops in the Siliguri Corridor indicate China's hardening stance on the border issue.

There is growing impatience in India with what is seen as the government's weak response to persistent Chinese bullying and arm-twisting on the border issue and its unsubtle pressure on India to clamp down on Tibetan protests.

While the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has accused the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)government of going soft on China because of its dependence on support from the left parties. Analysts have castigated the government for its "lamb-like approach" and for sweeping crucial issues under the carpet, while newspaper editorials have pointed to the UPA government losing momentum on the border negotiations and "in danger of yielding ground on the Sino-Indian frontier".

"No doubt, the two countries have to work closely and avoid potential points of conflict, but it is meaningless and short-sighted to ignore the differences," observed the Times of India.

Stobdan points out that in the runup to the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in August, China is vulnerable: "This provides India with a window of opportunity to assert itself. But this window will close soon."

China can be expected "to up the ante after the Olympic games in August 2008", warned Shantonu Choudhry, a former vice chief of army staff, in an article in the Indian Express. "The probability of an all-out border war is low, [but] a series of border skirmishes is a distinct possibility," he writes, adding that the "attempt will be more flagrant if India's political center is perceived as weak and pusillanimous".

India will have to learn to stand firm against China, without being seen as confrontational. Is the re-opening of Daulat Beg Oldi a step in that direction?

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.

atimes.com


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Construction of Highest Air Strip in the World



The air strips at Daulat Beg Oldi and Leh, in Ladakh Region of Jammu & Kashmir, were constructed by The Bengal Sappers at altitudes of 7,490 feet and 11,100 feet respectively.

bsoaroorkee.org


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Mr. John Pike's Global Security Website gives a view of the Leh Valley and the orientation of the air field in the Tactical Pilotage Chart (left) . On the right can be seen the Runway for Ladakh.






globalsecurity.org


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"...Colonel Howe ... made a pioneering flight up into the rugged mountains of Ladakh....Howe probed his way down through thin air, descending at 2000 feet per minute, dodging peaks and abutments with 90 degree turns , then - after a 270 degree turn into the approach - slammed down on the PSP Steel plating on the Landing strip of Leh...."

A Veteran recollects: Flying the An-12 into Ladakh.

__________________
"Keeping quiet while monks and other peaceful protesters are murdered and jailed is not evidence of constructive engagement." - Arvind Ganesan, Human Rights Watch.

"I think...I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check" - M.C. Escher

thehighlander959

Not the kind of landing you pass on to your First Officer. I bet your ass puckers on this approach. This is when you find out adrenalin is really yellow.

FayeQuarry

This is a very interesting re-assertion of Indian power on the important border with China. India is signaling it is ready to challenge China perhaps with this move.

A number of Indian Defense advocates have long maintained that China was a threat and has now become a even bigger threat. They assert that China's involvement in the North East is provable, and China is trying its best to sustain, arm and train separatists against India. Chinese policy towards india has remained the same for decades...keep India engaged in a conflict with pakistan and continuosly bleed India.

Interesting to watch.

Mid

India Air Force activates Nyoma airfield close to China border

New Delhi, Sep 18 : The Indian Air Force in a significant move today activated its Nyoma Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) to support the Army in carrying out operations in the inhospitable terrain.

An IAF AN-32 aircraft landed at Nyoma ALG, which is located at an altitude of 13,300 feet in Leh district of Jammu and Kashmir, at 6:25 a.m. today. It is located 23 kms from the Line of Actual Control. (LAC).

The successful landing of a fixed wing aircraft at Nyoma marks the culmination of joint effort by the IAF and Indian Army to enable the IAF to operate in the inhospitable terrain of Leh-Ladakh region in support of the Army.

The landing comes just fifteen months after an AN-32 landed at Daulat-Beg-Oldie (DBO), the highest airfield in the world situated at an altitude of 16,200 feet.

Group Captain SC Chafekar touched down on the Nyoma airstrip. Air Marshal NAK Browne, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Air Command and Lieutenant General PC Bharadwaj, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Northern Command on board.

Though helicopters have been landing at this ALG, this is for the first time that a fixed wing aircraft has landed at the compact airstrip of Nyoma.

After deliberating on all aspects and carrying out aerial and ground inspection, it was concluded that Nyoma could be developed for fixed wing operations as well.

The Engineer Regiments of 14 Corps undertook the herculean task of developing the ALG to the standards required for fixed wing operations.

Joint development of Nyoma braving the extremely difficult working conditions and hostile weather is yet another step towards enhanced joint partnership between the two services.

Nyoma has been developed with an aim to connect the remote areas of Ladakh region to the mainland. This would also ensure movements in the area when the road traffic gets affected, during the harsh winters besides enabling improved communication network in the region.