Bhutan – Anshuman Rawat

Doklam: China’s War Drums and the India-Bhutan Treaty

This article was first published on the Foreign Policy Association blogs here.

Summing up the general state of awareness in the world that we are living in, an overwhelming majority of the world seems to be either unaware of or unconcerned about the potentially catastrophic confrontation building up in the last two months in the Himalayas between India and China, the world’s two largest countries, which also happen to be the world’s second and the fourth largest economies, and, most worryingly, two nuclear armed nations that have the world’s most well-oiled defense apparatus.

The standoff, which is threatening to spiral out of control from the Chinese side, started when the one-party led Communist nation’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) started constructing a motorable road from Dokola in the Doklam area towards the Bhutan Army camp at Zompelri on June 16, 2017.

Bhutan, which believes the area is its territory, swiftly reacted, and in a press release issued on June 29, 2017, stated clearly that “the construction of the road inside Bhutanese territory is a direct violation of its agreements with China“.

The Bhutanese foreign ministry further said:

” Boundary talks are ongoing between Bhutan and China and we have written agreements of 1988 and 1998 stating that the two sides agree to maintain peace and tranquillity in their border areas pending a final settlement on the boundary question, and to maintain status quo on the boundary as before March 1959. The agreements also state that the two sides will refrain from taking unilateral action, or use of force, to change the status quo of the boundary. Bhutan hopes that the status quo in the Doklam area will be maintained as before 16 June 2017.”

At the core of the dispute is the question of where the final tri-boundary point — the point at which India, China, and Bhutan meet — lies.

China argues that the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction is at Mount Gipmochi (Gyemo Chen), much south of Batang la, the place that India and Bhutan consider as the tri-junction. China claims 89 sq km in Doklam (along Gamochen at the border, to the river divide at Batangla and Sinchela, and down to the Amo Chhu River) as its own.

But it is one of only four areas – as per Bhutan – over which China and Bhutan, who do not have diplomatic relations, have a dispute and have had 24 rounds of talks. China, however, claims much more than that and considers a total of seven areas as disputed areas.

China, it may be noted, has territorial disputes with virtually every neighbour of its. And if its conduct in the South China Sea and with Japan over Senkaku Islands is any indication, China does not really believe in giving in to other nation’s claims.

Therefore, much before the official press release by Bhutan, and just two days after the construction work by China began, on June 18, 2017, India sent around 270 troops, with weapons and two bulldozers and stopped the Chinese troops from constructing the road.

In a 15-page document released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on the same day, Beijing said that “over 270 Indian soldiers, carrying weapons and driving two bulldozers advanced more than 100 meters into the Chinese territory to obstruct the road building of the Chinese side, causing tension in the area.”

It further accused India of raising the number of Indian soldiers to 400.

India’s ministry of defence, however, brushed aside the Chinese accusation of escalation and said that India has been maintaining 350-400 troops at Doklam ever since the stand-off began.

The Indian action is in accordance with the India-Bhutan Treaty of Friendship of 1949, which advocated India’s guiding role in Bhutan’s diplomatic and defense affairs. Though the 1949 treaty was superseded by a new friendship treaty of 2007 that replaced the provision that made it mandatory for Bhutan to take India’s guidance on foreign policy.

The 2007 treaty provided broader sovereign rights to Bhutan by, for instance, not making it mandatory for Bhutan to take India’s permission in matters such as arms imports. But it did not alter much the inherent attached interests of the two nations.

Article 2 of the 2007 India-Bhutan Treaty says:

In keeping with the abiding ties of close friendship and cooperation between Bhutan and India, the Government of the Kingdom of Bhutan and the Government of the Republic of India shall cooperate closely with each other on issues relating to their national interests. Neither Government shall allow the use of its territory for activities harmful to the national security and interest of the other.

While sovereignty is the principal concern for Bhutan, the dispute for India beyond just the size of the territory in Doklam.

India is alarmed that if the Chinese do complete the motorable road in the Doklam area, it will give China an imposing access to India’s strategically vulnerable ‘chicken’s neck’ in the Siliguri Corridor, a 20km wide corridor that links India’s seven northeastern states to its mainland.

It may further be noted that Bhutan’s own administrative apparatus can get severely compromised if the Chinese inhabit Doklam as Bhutan’s communications network as it is connected through Siliguri in India.

At the moment, it is a stalemate. India is refusing to pull back its troops from the area that it says belongs to Bhutan. And China is threatening a bigger war every new day.

UPDATE:

As on August 28, 2017, India and China reached a consensus on disengagement of border personnel at the #Doklam faceoff site. A release by India’s ministry of external affairs said:

In recent weeks, India and China have maintained diplomatic communication in respect of the incident at Doklam. During these communications, we were able to express our views and convey our concerns and interests.

On this basis, expeditious disengagement of border personnel at the face-off site at Doklam has been agreed to and is on-going.

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India Just Scored a Self Goal

[The analysis was first published here on the Foreign Policy Association (FPA) blog network site]

Engineering of election results in Bhutan falls much short of a diplomatic victory of India

At the peak of campaigning by Bhutan’s two political parties for the recently concluded National Assembly (NA) elections, word spread that India was unhappy with the shrill nature of arguments – and their counters – related to India. Almost immediately, the said conversation was cooled down by both the parties and the campaigning from thereon stayed clear of it.

But the mood of the electorate was already set by opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which spearheaded a pitched call to bring Bhutan deeper into India’s political sphere of influence, for the sake of India’s strategic and financial support.

The ruling Druk Phuensum Tshogpa Party (DPT), on the other hand, struggled to dispel the PDP charge that the closeness of the previous prime minister Jigme Thinley with China was pushing India towards withdrawing economic oxygen to Thimpu.

India’s stalling of kerosene and cooking gas subsidy grants to Bhutan on July 1, just weeks before the election date, which pushed up prices by three times, was seen by most ordinary Bhutanese affected by the price rise as an argument in favour of the PDP charge.

It did not matter that India officially dubbed the subsidy reduction as a “procedural issue” and that some Bhutanese thinkers equated the Indian action with a business tit-for-tat against revised power export rate from Bhutan.”

PDP won 32 seats in the 47-member NA in the July 13 elections – up exponentially from a mere two seats in the previous assembly.

It was the result that India wanted, except that it may not have factored in the long-term cost of the “perceived means” to the end.

The subsidy issue right ahead of elections invited accusations from certain sections of India’s dishonesty, manipulation and gross interference in Bhutan’s election process.

Speaking, perhaps for a growing community in his nation, Wangcha Sangey, a legal consultant based in capital Thimpu, wrote in his blog: “National interests of Bhutan have to rise over and above the politics of always playing the Indian tune. […] Bhutan and Bhutanese are sovereignty unto our self. Therefore Bhutan’s paramount national interests and affairs just cannot be only pleasing India. We have to please ourselves too!”

Reflecting the extent of his anger at India’s perceived high-handedness, he then went on to write: “We are not paid sex workers that benefactors need to know when our eyelashes and asses move and in which direction.”

By “national interest” and “the direction” in which Bhutan needs to move, he was alluding to the furor caused by Thinley’s May 2012 meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Rio de Janeiro at the sidelines of Rio+20 summit in Brazil.

While on one hand abuse was heaped upon him by fellow Bhutanese for “endangering historical ties with India” by being cordial with the latter’s bitter rival, India saw Thinley government’s import order of 20 buses from China during the Rio meeting as strengthening of Thimpu’s commercial relationship with China at the cost of India.

More than that one meeting, India’s heightened sensitivity rested on Thinley government’s decision to go on a diplomatic overdrive and establish diplomatic relations with a whopping 32 countries during its five-year reign – up to 53 countries in 2013 from the 21 that existed in 2008.

Indians saw the frenzy as undue haste in acting upon a 2007 revision of the 1949 India-Bhutan Treaty of Friendship, which till then allowed India to “guide” Bhutan’s foreign policy, and had a provision wherein both nations needed to consult each other closely on foreign and defence affairs.

The new treaty replaced the provision requiring Bhutan to take India’s “guidance” on foreign policy with broader “sovereignty” and enabled Bhutan to not require India’s permission over arms imports.

Already uncomfortable with Bhutan’s urgency in spreading out, what got India’s goat eventually were reports that Bhutan was preparing to establish diplomatic relations with the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – including, and most worryingly, China.

Bhutan remains the only one of China’s 14 neighbors with which the dragon doesn’t have diplomatic relations. In the long-drawn battle for supremacy between China and India, New Delhi has always suspected Beijing of trying to win over Bhutan from India’s ambit.

But the big questions doing round in Bhutan and amidst many policy corners of India is whether that fear of India should be reason enough for India to go for the sledgehammer – especially against the backdrop of historical and geopolitical realities.

Bhutan shares a 605-kilometer (376-mile) border with India, which is its largest trading partner, accounting for 98 percent of its exports and 90 percent of its imports. Also, Bhutan’s only means of doing trade with the rest of the world so far is via 16 entry and exit points that India allows.

Against the seemingly claustrophobic arrangement, India has invested over $1 billion on the construction of three hydropower projects in Bhutan and has agreed to import at least 5,000 megawatts of electricity from Bhutan by 2020. Sale of electricity to India is one of the major exchange earners for Bhutan.

Bhutan also hosts an estimated 200,000 Indians – including Indian troops, which help Bhutan stay clear of and secure from terrorism and sectarian extremism.

It is because of this intertwined nature of relations that even at this discomforting hour writers like Kinley Dorji, the managing editor of Bhutan’s news daily Kuensel, argue: “Sovereignty – which India’s critics in the kingdom cite – works not in the abstract, but in daily lives as well. Bhutan and India, he notes, share a symbiotic relationship and it is in Bhutan’s interests to have closer relations with India than with China.”

Of course, and reflecting the general mood, he also carried on and advised in the same vein that it is in India’s interest to offer financial and technical help to Bhutan.

One of Sangey’s angry posts was titled: “India-Bhutan: Friend or Master.” Unless India begins to come across as the former – again – in the eyes of the hurting Bhutanese, it may not be able to hold on to its geopolitical need to be the latter.