Thursday, July 2, 2020

PLA using Tibetans against India

Recruitment of PLA Militia
My article PLA using Tibetans against India appeared in Rediff.com


Tibetans will participate in future conflicts with India (in all probability, some were already present in Galwan).
'As nobody in India would like to have a deadly fight with Tibetan soldiers and officers, the issue needs to be closely followed,' observes Claude Arpi.

Recently, a message circulated on Twitter with the names of the 38 Chinese soldiers who would have died in the Galwan incident on June 15 ('coincidentally', Chinese Communist party Generak Secretary Xi Jinping's 67th birth anniversary).
The tweet has not been confirmed; it might well be one of the hundreds of Information Warfare unverified information going around since the beginning of the standoff between India and China and Ladakh.
What was interesting is that the message also provided the regions from where the purported casualties had come from.
Among them, eight were from Tibet and their names tallied more or less with Tibetan names transliterated in Pinyin (Lakpa, Tsering, Kalsang, etc.).
Once again it could not be verified (something very difficult, next to impossible to do), but the fact that Tibetans are involved near the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh is beyond doubt.
Some knowledgeable sources put the percentage of local Tibetans as high as 10% of the People's Liberation Army soldiers stationed in the Tibet Military District or the Southern Xinjiang Military District. The present 'hot' spots in Ladakh -- Galwan, Hot Springs, Fingers, Depsang -- are under the command of the Southern Xinjiang Military District.

No comments: