Armstrong
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Another of neighbors the Chinese can't live happily with.
Thankfully Bhutan is no Tibet.
Neither can India !
Its 3/10th of it !
With India backing , Bhutan PM says China Can’t bully us to settle border on their terms
- Thread starter INDIAPOSITIVE
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Neither can India !
Its 3/10th of it !
SarthakGanguly
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Sorry did not get you...Neither can India !
Its 3/10th of it !
Armstrong
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Sorry did not get you...
No Nation in South Asia has good relations with other Nations; heck you guys even have run-ins with Bangladesh - a country you created and which is effectively an Indian protectorate akin to what Sikkim was once !
Bhutan is pretty darn small in front of Tibet; if the Chinese didn't hesitate then and still don't do when it comes to what they think is their territory...do you think a country with what 1/14th the population of Lahore is going to stand up to them ?
What good is that for
Last edited:
SarthakGanguly
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1. Oh no - India has good relations with almost every nation other than Pakistan and China. Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives... Bangladesh is also cool.No Nation in South Asia has good relations with other Nations; heck you guys even have run-ins with Bangladesh - a country you created and which is effectively an Indian protectorate akin to what Sikkim was once !
Bhutan is pretty darn small in front of Tibet; if the Chinese didn't hesitate then and still don't do when it comes to what they think is their territory...do you think a country with what 1/14th the population of Lahore is going to stand up to them ?
2. Yes. There is a reason why Bhutan is still independent. Trust me - there are reasons.
Steakhouse
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Bhutan wedge between India and China, they seriously can't antagonize China as a common enemy that willingly serving as a canyon fodder for India, Bhutan PM stated Bhutan and China relationship on a good term, they rely on India to protect Bhutan national interest.
Armstrong
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1. Oh no - India has good relations with almost every nation other than Pakistan and China. Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives... Bangladesh is also cool.
2. Yes. There is a reason why Bhutan is still independent. Trust me - there are reasons.
(1) Ahhhh no it doesn't; the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the meddling in Maldives internal politics and the water-issue, cross-border raids and illegal immigrants with Bangladesh !
(2) Okay !
The Great One
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Bhutan: The Indian Army’s Front Line
In late October, on the dirt road that winds north from the Bhutanese town of Paro in the direction of the border with Chinese-controlled Tibet, I pass an Indian army base of more than 600 soldiers. They are packing up to return to India for the duration of Bhutan’s harsh winter months. On the same road just after sunrise, I encounter an Indian Army squad of special forces soldiers with Himalayan features running in formation, sandbags roped to their backs, with the squad’s commander shouting “No photos, sir!”
Adjoining the Indian Army base is a camp for approximately 120 Bhutanese soldiers who train with the Indians on joint exercises in the rugged mountains that rise up from the Paro Valley. Just another kilometer or so further up the road is a Bhutanese army camp of 24 soldiers and their families. The camp’s sole purpose is to maintain 80 horses to cart supplies to military units higher still on the trail to the Bhutan-Tibet border region.
Indian Army unit stationed in Bhutan, upper Paro Valley. Photo by Victor Robert Lee.
One of the horses’ former destinations, the Bhutanese army base at Gunitsawa, 14 kilometers further up the valley, was accessible only by mountain trail until a crude road was carved out in 2012, the year the base first received reliable electric power. Gunitsawa’s regiment of approximately 90 soldiers sends 15-man units on one-month rotations to three checkpoint huts higher in the mountains; supplying these forward checkpoints gives continuing employment to the army’s stable of horses.
The three checkpoint camps, Gyatsa, Soi Thangthangkha and Lingshi, are Bhutan’s only means of keeping an eye on its northwest border with China’s Tibet region. (Bhutan, a Switzerland-sized country of 740,000 inhabitants, famous for its emphasis on “Gross National Happiness,” has no air force; it relies on neighboring India and Nepal even for helicopter support in the event of emergencies in remote districts). The checkpoints are near a region of Bhutan that Beijing says is its territory, in addition to the claims it has made on Bhutan’s northern border. Bhutanese soldiers report that their usual task on the frontier is to intercept smugglers, but that the Chinese military sometimes crosses into Bhutanese territory via roads China has recently built all the way to the western Bhutanese border. “When they come in, it’s with 15 trucks or nothing,” says one Royal Bhutan Army officer.
Entrance to the Gunitsawa base of the Royal Bhutan Army, upper Paro Valley. Photo by Victor Robert Lee.
Bhutan shares a China problem with its neighbor and ally, India. The first foreign state visit by India’s newly elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was to Bhutan, underscoring the importance of Bhutan’s frontier with China, and the strategic vulnerability it represents if China and India were to go to war. From the disputed western China-Bhutan border, China could easily strike India’s geographic “chicken neck” – a narrow band of land, the Siliguri Corridor, that connects the main body of India with its northeastern states, home to 45 million people.
Modi’s June visit to Bhutan came one month before scheduled China-Bhutan border talks, an annual ritual for the past 22 years that has signally failed to resolve the territorial disputes. In the face of increasing Chinese pressure on Bhutan to open relations with Beijing, Modi announced a 50 percent increase in Indian aid to Bhutan, to approximately $970 million annually.
Bhutan was also the first international destination for India’s new army chief. From November 1 to 3, General Dalbir Singh Suhag visited senior officials in Bhutan on what was billed a “routine” visit. But coming on the heels of September’s large military incursion by China into the Ladakh border region controlled by India, even as Chinese President Xi Jinping was on a state visit to India, Singh’s Bhutan meetings are unlikely to have been routine, especially since he brings unusually relevant experience to the Himalayan brinksmanship that China is displaying: he has previously headed India’s Special Frontier Force, a covert “China-centric” unit of highly trained ethnic Tibetan soldiers.
Delhi’s full-court press for Bhutan’s allegiance will continue on November 7, with a two-day state visit to Bhutan by India’s President Pranab Mukherjee, accompanied by a large delegation – the first trip to Bhutan by an Indian president in 26 years.
Bhutanese soldiers at training camp in Paro Valley. Photo by Victor Robert Lee.
China, with its increasingly aggressive moves along its Himalayan borders, seems to be employing the same methodology it has used in its ongoing takeover of the near-entirety of the South China Sea. This gives the Indian government good reason to worry that Beijing might also muscle its way into its lands, just as it has annexed territory over the objections of South China Sea claimants Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and, most recently, Indonesia.
This probably explains why the road leading up from the Indian and Bhutanese military bases in the picturesque Paro Valley is rapidly being widened and paved, almost entirely by imported Indian laborers, often working by hand. Residents say the Indian government, for decades a protector of sorts for a deeply Buddhist Bhutan that sympathizes with Tibet, is paying for the road-building out of its worries about China. Locals expect that the road will soon be paved all the way to the rudimentary base at Gunitsawa, far up the valley. It is conceivable that next year the Indian army will also provide heavy-lift helicopters to supply the Bhutanese checkpoints high in the Himalayas, allowing the Bhutanese army to put its hard-working horses out to pasture, while increasing its vigilance on the border with China.
In late October, on the dirt road that winds north from the Bhutanese town of Paro in the direction of the border with Chinese-controlled Tibet, I pass an Indian army base of more than 600 soldiers. They are packing up to return to India for the duration of Bhutan’s harsh winter months. On the same road just after sunrise, I encounter an Indian Army squad of special forces soldiers with Himalayan features running in formation, sandbags roped to their backs, with the squad’s commander shouting “No photos, sir!”
Adjoining the Indian Army base is a camp for approximately 120 Bhutanese soldiers who train with the Indians on joint exercises in the rugged mountains that rise up from the Paro Valley. Just another kilometer or so further up the road is a Bhutanese army camp of 24 soldiers and their families. The camp’s sole purpose is to maintain 80 horses to cart supplies to military units higher still on the trail to the Bhutan-Tibet border region.
Indian Army unit stationed in Bhutan, upper Paro Valley. Photo by Victor Robert Lee.
One of the horses’ former destinations, the Bhutanese army base at Gunitsawa, 14 kilometers further up the valley, was accessible only by mountain trail until a crude road was carved out in 2012, the year the base first received reliable electric power. Gunitsawa’s regiment of approximately 90 soldiers sends 15-man units on one-month rotations to three checkpoint huts higher in the mountains; supplying these forward checkpoints gives continuing employment to the army’s stable of horses.
The three checkpoint camps, Gyatsa, Soi Thangthangkha and Lingshi, are Bhutan’s only means of keeping an eye on its northwest border with China’s Tibet region. (Bhutan, a Switzerland-sized country of 740,000 inhabitants, famous for its emphasis on “Gross National Happiness,” has no air force; it relies on neighboring India and Nepal even for helicopter support in the event of emergencies in remote districts). The checkpoints are near a region of Bhutan that Beijing says is its territory, in addition to the claims it has made on Bhutan’s northern border. Bhutanese soldiers report that their usual task on the frontier is to intercept smugglers, but that the Chinese military sometimes crosses into Bhutanese territory via roads China has recently built all the way to the western Bhutanese border. “When they come in, it’s with 15 trucks or nothing,” says one Royal Bhutan Army officer.
Entrance to the Gunitsawa base of the Royal Bhutan Army, upper Paro Valley. Photo by Victor Robert Lee.
Bhutan shares a China problem with its neighbor and ally, India. The first foreign state visit by India’s newly elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was to Bhutan, underscoring the importance of Bhutan’s frontier with China, and the strategic vulnerability it represents if China and India were to go to war. From the disputed western China-Bhutan border, China could easily strike India’s geographic “chicken neck” – a narrow band of land, the Siliguri Corridor, that connects the main body of India with its northeastern states, home to 45 million people.
Modi’s June visit to Bhutan came one month before scheduled China-Bhutan border talks, an annual ritual for the past 22 years that has signally failed to resolve the territorial disputes. In the face of increasing Chinese pressure on Bhutan to open relations with Beijing, Modi announced a 50 percent increase in Indian aid to Bhutan, to approximately $970 million annually.
Bhutan was also the first international destination for India’s new army chief. From November 1 to 3, General Dalbir Singh Suhag visited senior officials in Bhutan on what was billed a “routine” visit. But coming on the heels of September’s large military incursion by China into the Ladakh border region controlled by India, even as Chinese President Xi Jinping was on a state visit to India, Singh’s Bhutan meetings are unlikely to have been routine, especially since he brings unusually relevant experience to the Himalayan brinksmanship that China is displaying: he has previously headed India’s Special Frontier Force, a covert “China-centric” unit of highly trained ethnic Tibetan soldiers.
Delhi’s full-court press for Bhutan’s allegiance will continue on November 7, with a two-day state visit to Bhutan by India’s President Pranab Mukherjee, accompanied by a large delegation – the first trip to Bhutan by an Indian president in 26 years.
Bhutanese soldiers at training camp in Paro Valley. Photo by Victor Robert Lee.
China, with its increasingly aggressive moves along its Himalayan borders, seems to be employing the same methodology it has used in its ongoing takeover of the near-entirety of the South China Sea. This gives the Indian government good reason to worry that Beijing might also muscle its way into its lands, just as it has annexed territory over the objections of South China Sea claimants Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and, most recently, Indonesia.
This probably explains why the road leading up from the Indian and Bhutanese military bases in the picturesque Paro Valley is rapidly being widened and paved, almost entirely by imported Indian laborers, often working by hand. Residents say the Indian government, for decades a protector of sorts for a deeply Buddhist Bhutan that sympathizes with Tibet, is paying for the road-building out of its worries about China. Locals expect that the road will soon be paved all the way to the rudimentary base at Gunitsawa, far up the valley. It is conceivable that next year the Indian army will also provide heavy-lift helicopters to supply the Bhutanese checkpoints high in the Himalayas, allowing the Bhutanese army to put its hard-working horses out to pasture, while increasing its vigilance on the border with China.
OrionHunter
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So let's see what we have here...Another of neighbors the Chinese can't live happily with.
India
Bhutan
Philippines
Indonesia
Malaysia
Brunei
Taiwan
Japan
Vietnam
USA
South Korea
Australia
and now trouble brewing in Hong Kong!
Wow! The Chinese seem to have their hands full!
Old Chinese saying: What's ours is ours. What's yours is negotiable!
More the merrier for us
$@rJen
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2. Yes. There is a reason why Bhutan is still independent. Trust me - there are reasons.
Bhutan is under Indian Military protection ????!!! is that it??
danish_vij
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mujhaidind
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What a joke! Chinese have no respect for Hindu India. If they want bhutan they can easily conquer it.
RKO
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Are you always this stupid or are you making a special effort today!!!!!
Bhutan needs to say something to placate China as well. We do the same thing as well. Imbibed 'baniya mentality'.
China is more than 250 times bigger than Bhutan (9,596,961 km² vs 38,394 km²) but wants its land just like it wants land of Nepal and every Mongoloid country like Mongolia and even North Korea. But they do not want land of Islamist countries like Pakistan. Why????? Will the greed and future wealth of Chinese Maoists be built on the blood and sacrifices of Chinese soldiers???
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