"The region's geography is against humans," an Indian army brigadier told AFP. Nearby military outposts can be cut off from the outside world for entire weeks in the winter. Temperatures around the remote strategic hamlet of Tawang - one of the closest towns to Tibet, and a potential chokepoint for any advancing forces - often drop below zero and the thin mountain air is starved of oxygen. Officers in the region say last year's clash highlighted the urgent need to fortify the military's frontier presence, after fruitless talks with Beijing to ease the border build-up on both sides. New Delhi has responded by scaling up its defences in Arunachal Pradesh, deploying cruise missiles, howitzers, US-made Chinook transport choppers and drones built in Israel. "That has led to (a higher) number of troops that are now located or placed there." "We have observed some infrastructure development on the Chinese side," Lieutenant General Manoj Pande told journalists during a rare press tour through the region last month. Tensions have flared again since mid-2020 when troops from both nations fought a hand-to-hand battle further west along their shared frontier in Ladakh, leaving at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead.Įach side routinely sends patrols into areas claimed or controlled by the other, and India has also accused China of establishing permanent settlements near the border. The Dalai Lama fled through the state in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in his homeland and has lived in India ever since.īeijing also claims ownership of Arunachal Pradesh - which it refers to as South Tibet - and briefly occupied most of the territory, three years after the Buddhist leader's flight, in a short but bloody war.
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