Galwan Valley water turned China-India dispute fatal

The dispute between China and India turned fatal this week along one of the world’s most important water reservoirs.

5 min read

June 20, 2020 - 11:16AM

China-India border conflict: 20 Indian soldiers killed

What would drive the soldiers of two nuclear powers to kill each other with sticks and stones in the ice and snow of the Himalayas?

Water. And it’s likely to get much worse.

New Delhi and Beijing have been scuffling amid mountain peaks and valleys for more than four decades. This week, the dispute turned fatal.

Some 20 Indian troops died in a brawl with Chinese troops. Chinese casualties remain secret.

The proclaimed cause of the spat is the location of the de facto border between the two nations.

Known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC), it’s a poorly defined boundary that crosses the high Galwan Valley.

This cold and inhospitable place offers the only direct route between India and the disputed Aksai Chin region.

China occupies it, declaring it to be part of Xinjiang Province. India insists it is part of its Ladakh district.

Satellite shows the Galwan Valley, which lies between China’s Tibet and India’s Ladakh district. Picture: 2020 Planet Labs Inc/AFP

At some 4200m above sea level, altitude sickness is a fact of life.

This, and the inevitably freezing temperatures, will have contributed to the high death toll after the two sides took to each other with rocks and metal bars.

But there’s much more at stake for the two nations than a narrow mountain pass.

The border sits astride one of the world’s most important water reservoirs.

And it’s draining. Fast.

STRATEGIC RESERVE

The Siachen Glacier is the largest single source of fresh water on the Indian subcontinent.

It also happens to be situated high in the Himalayan Mountains, straddling an uncertain junction between Pakistan, India and China.

The Indian army occupied the glacier in 1984. At 7000m above sea level, it’s since been dubbed ‘the world’s highest battlefield’.

India, Pakistan and China now maintain a permanent military presence there.

From this particular glacier originates the Nubra River.

This joins with various tributaries – including that of the Galwan Valley – before merging with the Indus River.

More than 200 million people rely on water from this source. The Indus feeds the world’s most extensive system of irrigated agriculture. By the time the river reaches the sea, humans have tapped more than 95 per cent of its flow.

An Indian army convoy moves on the Srinagar-Ladakh highway at Gagangeer, northeast of Srinagar, in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Picture: AP

The Siachen is some 76km long and covers some 700 square kilometres. Together with some 18,000 other glaciers, it forms the heart of the Indus River Basin. Such is the extent of the ice that it is often called the Earth’s “Third Pole”.

Snow falls here. This settles into ice. The ice gradually melts over the following weeks, months and years.

The result is a steady flow of meltwater down the mountains – not the boom-bust of monsoonal floods.

On its eastern boundary is the Galwan Valley. This is where India and China have been fighting.

Precisely why Beijing has chosen to push hard on this portion of its de facto border is uncertain. But water is almost certainly an important consideration.

Like many of the glaciers around it, the Siachen Glacier is retreating at an alarming, accelerating rate. By 2035, it will be just one fifth the size it was in 2011.

Now everyone wants to secure their slice.

DIVERTING THE GALWAN

Unconfirmed Indian media reports claim Beijing has cut off the flow of the Galwan River.

“If not challenged immediately, this could lead to cutting off waters to other rivers with serious consequences for agriculture and potable water in India,” The Printdeclares.

It cites satellite photos as showing the river in full flow during the third week of May.

“However, by the fourth week, the flow had dried up completely, exposing the rocks in the river bed, indicating that the Chinese had stopped/diverted the waters.

“This is a serious breach of trust and runs contrary to the Chinese assurances at several international forums that it would not block or divert waters of south and westwards flowing rivers originating in the Tibet plateau.”

The images clearly show Chinese bulldozers in operation on their side of the LAC. The flow of the river perceptibly changes at the spot where the bulldozers are - from flowing blue waters to a small, muddy stream which becomes imperceptible when it crosses over to the Indian side pic.twitter.com/tdOI6Lf59B
— Indo-Pacific News (@IndoPac_Info) June 18, 2020

China annexed Tibet in the 1950s. From the high Tibetan Plateau springs all of Asia’s great river systems. The Ganges. The Indus. The Mekong. The Yangtse. The Yellow River.

This, The Print argues, is cause for serious concern.

“If it is allowed to do so … then China will in all likelihood start cutting off waters to other rivers flowing not just into India like the Brahmaputra but also Southeast Asia like the Mekong.”

But this is already happening.

The Mekong River snakes out of Chinese-controlled Tibetan glaciers for some 4350km, through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Last year, the mighty river fell to its lowest level in more than a century.

The glaciers which feed the Mekong have been shrinking. Climate change has been steadily eroding regional rains. But Beijing has also been busy building dams.

As a result, it now controls the entire river’s flow. And this gives it a chokehold on Southeast Asia’s economy. Some 66 million people are dependent on the Mekong’s water and fish.

In 2016, Vietnam had to beg Beijing to release water from its dams.

Next time, it fears it may have to pay a steep price.

India now shares those fears.

LIQUID LIFE

Researchers have been warning of the world’s rapidly diminishing supply of fresh water for decades.

It’s now crunch time.

“Demand for fresh water is expected to exceed supply by around 40 per cent by 2030,” wrote Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Connor Dilleen.

“New research indicating that 80 per cent of high-altitude snow and ice will be gone by 2100 if the world continues along its current path, affecting 1.9 billion people and half of the world’s biodiversity hot spots, suggests that the global problem of water scarcity is rapidly becoming more acute.”

Chinese #PLA recently conducted intensive drills in multiple dimensions, including high altitude tank drills in Tibet, large-scale, long-distance maneuver and nighttime parachuting, following clashes between #China and #India in border region. https://t.co/OA6WL1sJAx pic.twitter.com/3jnTpBmJ77
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) June 18, 2020

The Tibetan Plateau is now more important than ever. And one of the most acutely threatened ‘water towers’ is the Indus River Basin.

The 3000km-long Indus feeds India, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and Kashmir, along which 120 million people live.

“The Indus plain is like a desert,” said Walter Immerzeel, lead author of a recent study into mountain’ water towers’ published by the science journal Nature.

“It’s completely reliant on the water from the thick glaciers above.”

And that water source has long been a cause of dispute.

Pakistan is almost totally reliant on irrigation from the Indus.

And some 600 million people in India already face high water stress.

“By 2030, the country’s water demand is projected to be twice the available supply, implying severe water scarcity for hundreds of millions of people and an eventual 6 per cent loss in the country’s GDP,” an Indian government report has predicted.

New Delhi and Islamabad signed the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960 to protect this vital resource.

But India’s recent construction of dams in Kashmir has unsettled relations between the two nuclear powers.

But these were not the first threats to the arterial Indus.

Like the Mekong, China controls much of the Indus River’s headwaters high in the Himalayas.

In 2006, it dammed part of this without consulting either Pakistan or India.

With demand for water only set to increase and the size of the glacier diminishing fast, tensions in the area are only going to grow. This may not be the last loss of life we see in the region.

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel