NEW DELHI: While disengagement of Indian and Chinese troops in the Gogra-Hot Springs stand-off area along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh is on, retired Army officers on Friday warned not to read too much into it. It is disengagement, not de-escalation, they pointed out, adding the trust deficit created by Chinese action in Ladakh will take years before it can be bridged.
They saw an element of geopolitics in the development as also an attempt to create a conducive situation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet at the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit.SCO SSCO
The disengagement process started at 8.30 am on Thursday and will be over by Monday. “We shouldn’t take it as done deal; at the most it’s half done as forces remain in the area,” a source said.
"While troops and equipment are being pulled back from their eyeball-to-eyeball positions, they will be stationed at a mutually agreed safe distance away from the LAC like it happened at Pangong Tso. It is not de-escalation," sources said.
“Yet, the pullback is better as it reduces the possibility of clashes,” the source added.
Defence analyst Maj Gen S B Asthana (Retd) said, “It is meant to lower the temperature to ensure the SCO meeting goes through. We should not be reading too much into it.”
There is no official word yet on a Modi-Xi bilateral. India showed a fair amount of strength by refusing to normalise ties before the stand-off is addressed, he said.
“China wants to show that Asians are okay with each other. They don’t want to give the impression that the situation could escalate,” he added.
Lt Gen D S Hooda (Retd) opined that “old confidence building measures have been breached, which will require revisiting them to build some kind of trust... I don’t see a thinning of troops as nobody will take the chance of getting surprised again.”
He also cautioned about China’s game on the economic and digital domains. “Land encroachment is visible, but economic and digital are not even being contested, and are more dangerous. They follow a strategy of incremental encroachment even there.”
Lt Gen P J S Pannu (Retd) said “China would not want to push us into the US fold.”
Foreign minister S Jaishankar had in June ticked off Europe, saying India is capable of handling its relations with China.