Hemant Adlakha
On October 21, the governments of India and China announced that their four-year military stand-off at their disputed border along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh has ended. New Delhi claimed the agreement on patrolling and disengagement along the LAC was designed to lead to “disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020.” In Beijing, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson has confirmed that China and India had been in “close communication” and that both sides have arrived at “a resolution on the relevant matter, which China views favorably.”
In June 2020, Indian and Chinese troops clashed in the Galwan River Valley along the LAC in eastern Ladakh in the Himalayan region. In their worst fight in decades, at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed. The Chinese government denied reports in the Indian media that more than 40 Chinese soldiers had died. In 2021, the Chinese military’s official mouthpiece acknowledged four deaths, although doubts about the true death count remained. Since then, both countries have continuously deployed over 100,000 troops in testing weather conditions in the western Himalayan region along the disputed border.
Since the military standoff in Galwan, Indian and Chinese military officials at the senior level have held several rounds of deliberations to work out details of easing tensions in the region – especially troop disengagement plans leading to the withdrawal of forces from the tense area. Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in New Delhi on Monday that the agreement was the result of “patient and persistent diplomatic efforts.” Importantly, he said, the agreement would restore military patrol arrangements before the 2020 stand-off: “We will be able to do the patrolling which we were doing in 2020,” Jaishankar emphasized.
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