South Asia and Beyond

As China Recruits Tibetan Youth For LAC Deployment, India Keeps Close Eye

 As China Recruits Tibetan Youth For LAC Deployment, India Keeps Close Eye

Members of Snow Hawk Air Patrol Team at a flag presentation ceremony for new militia units at the Militia Training Base in Lhasa Garrison. (Photo: Guo Weifeng; China Military Online)

NEW DELHI: Nearly six months after it first became public, Indian intelligence agencies and Army personnel are keeping a close watch on how a special recruitment drive undertaken by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is progressing in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India. Apart from the sustained pace of infrastructure building in Aksai Chin and areas close to Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, the focused attention in the PLA in the past couple of years to induct Tibetan youth into its various units has come under intense scrutiny of the Indian establishment dealing with China. Recent indications suggest that a Special Recruitment Drive (SDR) has been undertaken by the PLA to attract Tibetan youths into its fold. According to a March 2020 directive, every household in the Lhasa region has to send one youth to join the militia units that are being raised in Tibet. Majority of the Tibetans are reportedly part of the militia and the People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF)....Read More

Nitin A. Gokhale

Author, thought leader and one of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Nitin A. Gokhale has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, Editor, author and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates two important digital platforms, BharatShakti.in and StratNewsGlobal.com focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters. At the beginning of his long and distinguished career, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years, writing and analysing various insurgencies in the region, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 during the India-Pakistan war, and also brought live reports from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009. Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies and conflicts, Gokhale relocated to Delhi in 2006, was Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV, a leading Indian broadcaster for nine years, before launching in 2015 his own digital properties. An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, South and South-East Asia to speak at various international seminars and conferences. Gokhale also teaches at India’s Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the intelligence schools of both the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau. He tweets at @nitingokhale

Related

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *