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HIMALAYAN RIVERS: GEOPOLITICS AND STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVES*

Claude Arpi

On 7 October 1950, the Second Field Army of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China marched into eastern Tibet to ‘liberate’ the ‘roof of the world’. Several factors can explain this move.

A few days after the beginning of the invasion, China’s official Xinhua News Agency issued a communiqué that the PLA would soon achieve ‘the task of marching into Tibet to liberate the Tibetan people, to complete the important mission of unifying the motherland, to prevent imperialism from encroaching on even one inch of our sovereign territory and to protect and build the frontiers of the motherland.’¹ This enumerates some of Mao’s motivations.

The historian, Warren Smith (1997), has quoted a Scottish missionary, called Beatty, working in eastern Tibet, who was told by a PLA officer that ‘large numbers of yak, wild and domestic animals would be needed to feed the PLA troops [in Tibet]. The PLA officers and men talked of going on to India once Tibet was in their hands’.

Communist China had not only decided to establish its de facto suzerainty over Tibet (which had never really existed),² but this was also the first step towards the South, the opening of the gateway to India, and to other countries that China claimed as its own—Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, etc. Mao had termed Tibet as the palm of the hand with the five fingers being Ladakh, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan and the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), now Arunachal Pradesh.

Mao Zedong (1954) had repeatedly stated his objective: ‘There are two winds in the world, the East Wind and the West Wind … I think the characteristic of the current situation is that the East Wind prevails over the West Wind; that is, the strength of socialism exceeds the strength of imperialism.’ These words were pronounced in 1957, but even in 1950 ‘for China there was no question to let the West Wind prevail, it was the “sacred duty” of the Chinese to look which side the wind blows’ (Doak 1961). A ‘sacred duty’ to liberate Tibet, to make the East Wind prevail!

When I started getting acquainted with the history of modern Tibet in the early 1970s, I came across a book, Communist China and Tibet by Ginsburg and Mathos (1964). It pointed out: ‘He who holds Tibet dominates the Himalayan piedmont; he who dominates the Himalayan piedmont threatens the Indian subcontinent; and he who threatens the Indian subcontinent may well have all of South-East Asia within his reach, and all of Asia.’

This sounded right and logical. Mao, the strategist, knew this well, as did the British who had always manoeuvred to keep Tibet as an ‘autonomous’ buffer zone between their Indian colony and the Chinese and Russian empires. The government of independent India, upon inheriting the past treaties signed by the British, should have worn the British mantle, with its advantage, for Indian security and its sense of responsibility vis-à-vis Tibet. Unfortunately, due to the fear of appearing to be a neo-colonialist state, it failed to do this without giving any thought to the consequences that would follow.

The importance of the strategic position of Tibet became even more obvious when China joined the restricted circle of the nuclear nations. Is there a better location than the Tibetan high plateau to position Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) with nuclear warheads pointed towards India or elsewhere? Strategically and geographically, Tibet was the ideal place to locate testing sites and for storing nuclear missiles.³

The ‘coup’ of Tibetan ‘liberation’ was, therefore, a master-stroke. It was a well-planned affair. The Indian intelligence chief, B. N. Mullik, a Nehru loyalist, once wrote: ‘However, in everything that Mao Zedong does there is a purpose and a method, and whilst keeping the main aim always before him, he often makes compromises in the details to prepare conditions for the next step forward’ (Mullick 1971).

By colonising the ‘roof of the world’, Mao demonstrated to the world who the real leader of Asia was, while showing simultaneously that India was incapable of defending a smaller country; thus Nehru was exposed as a ‘paper tiger.’ From then onwards, the Government of India followed a strange policy of appeasement. The more virulent the attack or insult, the harder it tried to appease the Chinese, and become their ‘friends’. The ‘Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai slogan was the most visible outcome of this policy.

China’s Grand Projects

Let us for a moment consider China’s contemporary problems. Traditionally, the Chinese people’s respect for their emperor increases manifold when the monarch undertakes projects that no human mind can ever conceive. After all, the emperor is the ‘Son of Heaven,’ and only in heaven can projects such as the Grand Canal, the Great Wall or the Three Gorges Dam be envisioned.

The most acute problems facing China today are food and water. The future of the Middle Kingdom depends on the success or failure of the present emperor(s) (read political leaders) to tackle these problems. The two issues are closely interlinked and, if not solved, are bound to have grave social, political and strategic consequences for the Chinese nation and, indirectly, for its neighbours, particularly India.

Some twenty years back, this was spelt out in a remarkable book written by one of the foremost world experts in agriculture, the American Lester Brown. His book, Who Will Feed China,⁴ forced the Chinese leadership to rethink their agricultural strategies. In the early 1980s, the conversion of agricultural land to other uses (factories, residential areas, airports, roads, flyovers, etc.) had triggered a loss of 52 per cent of Japan’s grain-harvested areas, 46 per cent in such areas in Korea and 42 per cent of Taiwan. China’s development being similar to these three countries, though it had started later, led Brown to conclude that China would ultimately be unable to feed its own people.

Lester Brown cited the examples of the industrialised Asian countries which, in spite of the best conditions, have become grain importers. He prophesied: ‘In an integrated world economy, China’s rising food prices will become the world’s rising food prices. China’s land scarcity will become everyone’s land scarcity. And water scarcity in China will affect the entire world … It could well lead us to redefine national security away from military preparedness and toward maintaining adequate food supplies.’

The role of today’s emperor(s) is, therefore, to find water to sustain agriculture and, ultimately, feed the people of China. But water is disappearing fast from the Middle Kingdom. To quote from another study of the World Watch Institute,⁵ in 1999, the water table under Beijing fell by 2.5 metres (8 feet). Since 1965, the water table under the city has fallen by about 59 metres, or nearly 200 feet, warning Chinese leaders of the shortages that lie ahead as the country’s aquifers get depleted.

The Strategic Importance of the Tibetan Rivers

One of the solutions for China is to divert the water from the south to the north. The water diversion project was an essential part of the tenth five- year plan. It was envisaged that water would be diverted from the south via three channels in the eastern, central and western regions respectively. The Western Route was to draw water to the upper reaches of the Yellow River to solve water shortage in the north-western regions. This is where the waters of Tibet are vital; this was another reason for Mao to ‘liberate’ Tibet.

Most of Asia’s waters flow from the Tibetan plateau, the principal watershed in Asia. The ‘roof of the world’ is the source of Asia’s ten major rivers. Tibet’s waters flow down to ten countries and are said to bring fresh water to over 85 per cent of Asia’s population, or approximately 50 per cent of the world’s population.

Four of the world’s ten major rivers—the Brahmaputra (or Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet), the Yangtze, the Mekong and the Huang Ho (or Yellow River) have their headwaters on the Plateau. Other major rivers originating in Tibet are: the Salween, the Irrawaddi, the Arun, the Karnali, the Sutlej and the Indus. About 90 per cent of their runoff flows downstream to China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

For us in South Asia, of main concern are the Brahmaputra, the Indus, the Sutlej, the Arun and the Karnali, whose waters give life to more than one billion people living downstream. It is roughly estimated that 10–20 per cent of the Himalayan region is covered by glacial ice, while an additional area ranging from 30 to 40 per cent has seasonal snow cover. Himalayan glaciers cover around 1,00,000 square kilometres and store about 12,000 cubic kilometres of fresh water, the most incredible water tank one can imagine.

The perennial run of the rivers originating from these glaciers also results in a stable flow of water to regions which are dominated by monsoon rainfalls (with rain falling only a few months of the year). Consequently, the Tibetan rivers, independent of seasonal precipitation patterns, are an important factor in sustaining the hydrological regimes of South Asia.

The Yarlung Tsangpo, or Brahmaputra in the Indian subcontinent, has an immense bearing on the life of hundreds of millions in the subcontinent. It is the largest river on the Tibetan plateau, originating from a glacier near Mount Kailash. It is considered to be the highest river on earth with an average altitude of 4,000 metres. It runs 2,057 km in Tibet before flowing into India, where it becomes the Brahmaputra. One of its interesting characteristics is the sharp ‘U’ turn that it takes at the proximity of Mount Namcha Barwa (7,782 metres) near the Indian border.

Like the Nile in Egypt, the Yarlung Tsangpo has fed the Tibetan civilisation that flourished along its valleys, particularly in Central Tibet. The Yarlung Tsangpo enters India in Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. When it penetrates Assam, it is joined by two other rivers (the Dihang and Lohit). On entering Bangladesh, the river unites with the Ganga, and is known as the Padma, before becoming the Meghna-Brahmaputra after merging with the river Meghna. Finally, it forms a delta as it divides into hundreds of channels that flow into the Bay of Bengal. When the Tsangpo reaches its easternmost point in Tibet, it takes a sharp ‘U’ turn called the Great Bend.

In May 1994, the Xinhua News Agency pointed out: ‘Chinese geologists claim that a remote Tibetan Canyon is the world’s largest—bigger and deeper than the Grand Canyon. The Yarlung Zangbo Canyon, in the vast Himalayan range that encircles China, averages 3.1 miles (5 km) in depth and extends 198 miles (317 km) in length.’⁶ The Grand Canyon in Arizona (USA) is much smaller in comparison.

The Tsangpo Project

There are two versions of the Great Western Diversion. Let us look at the first one. The proposed Tsangpo project was to have two components: one is the construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric plant that would generate twice the electricity produced by the Three Gorges Dam. The hydroelectric plant of Yarlung Tsangpo on the Great Bend, with a planned capacity of 40,000 megawatts, would dwarf all those projects.

The second component of the project envisaged the diversion of the waters of the Tsangpo to be pumped northward across hundreds of kilometres of mountainous regions to China’s north-western provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu.

For South Asia, and more particularly for India, the enormity of the scheme and its closeness to the Indian border cannot be ignored. It is not only the sheer enormity of the project which has to be considered, but the fact that, if accomplished, it would have ominous consequences for millions of people downstream.⁷

A reservoir for a 40,000-megawatts-capacity dam would create a huge artificial lake inundating vast areas of virgin forest within the canyon and beyond. The reservoir would stretch hundreds of kilometres upstream the Yarlung Tsangpo into the Kongpo region. Rare species of flora and fauna within the canyon⁸ would be lost for scientific study. The Chinese authorities themselves admit that the (Yarlung Zangbo) canyon is home to more than 60 per cent of the biological resources on the Tibetan Plateau.

Although the population in the canyon is rather small, yet the indigenous people will suffer great hardship and be forced to leave their ancestral lands; of course, this may not be a problem for Beijing, which has ‘resettled’ more than one million Chinese Hans since the beginning of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Additionally, the water diversion scheme is likely to be a highly inefficient and wasteful exercise with billions of cubic metres of water being lost to evaporation, leakage, percolation, etc, along the proposed 800 km-long canals and aqueducts.

If the project was to come to fruition, Tibet and the world would have lost this virgin region and its canyon, a great ecological treasure.

India and Bangladesh would be at the mercy of China for adequate release of water during the dry season, and for protection from floods during the rainy season. India knows from its own internal problems how difficult it is to solve a water dispute. When it comes to a transboundary question (where the boundary is not even agreed upon), it seems practically impossible to find a workable understanding.

The Shuotian Canal

The second avatar of the project, which got a lot of media coverage in the recent years, is the Shuotian Canal. It is also linked with the Great Western Route. The project is the brainchild of Guo Kai, the Secretary-General of the Shuotian Canal Preparatory Committee. Guo Kai’s life-mission is to save China with Tibet’s waters. He calculated that if waters from the Salween, the Mekong, the Yangtse, the Yalong and the Dadu (last two are tributaries of Yangtse) were diverted and directed to the Ngawa prefecture of Amdo province (Qinghai), the problem of recurrent water shortage in north and north-west China could be solved. Let us not forget that, today, the Yellow River is dry for more than 250 days in a year.

Guo not only worked closely with experts from the Ministry of Water Resources and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), but he also made several on-the-spot investigations and surveys, before coming up with the details of his Pharaonic scheme.

According to him, the Great Western Route diversion could solve the water shortage in north China, bring drinking water to Tanjing, and even counter the on-going desertification in the north-northwest provinces. This is why it is considered so vital to the country’s strategic security.

The Southern Weekend,⁹ China’s largest circulation weekly, is very popular for its investigative journalism. On 27 July 2006, the magazine reported some of Guo’s remarks, that the completion of the railway line to Lhasa meant that the 2,30,000 engineering staff, attached to the project, could now be transferred to work on the Shuotian Canal. The name Shuotian comes from the contraction of the origin of the canal near Shuomatan on the Yarlung Tsangpo (near the town of Tsetang) and the city of Tianjing at the end.

An interesting aspect of Guo’s Great Western Route is that from the very start, the Chinese military has shown a lot of interest in it. At the end of the 1990s, Zhang Jinong, the Minister of Water Resources, formed the Shuotian Canal Preparatory Committee. It was packed with army generals such as Xu Guangyi, Gao Cunxin and Wang Dinglie. This clearly indicates the strategic implications of the scheme.

According to the Southern Weekend, the project had the support of 118 generals and the backing of a large number of members (at least those with a military background) of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Guo estimated the total investment of the project at around US $ 25 billion.

In November 2005, the Great Western Route project got a boost with the publication of a book entitled Save China Through Water From Tibet, written by Li Ling. The writer used Guo s theme and arguments. It appears that more than 10,000 copies were ordered by various central government ministries and commissions, including the Ministry of Water Resources. Some observers can say that the project is a figment of the imagination of a few old retired generals (with the backing of journalists looking for scoops), but it is not the case. The fact is that the project has been widely read, studied and commented upon by government officials, scientists and NGOs in China. It was reported that in August 2005, Guo Kai was called to Zhongnanhai, the central government enclave in Beijing, where top members of the Politburo reside. He was asked to make a presentation of his concept at the Policy Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Already in 1999, an official field survey of the proposed canal was made by experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the State Development Planning Commission and representatives from the ministries of water resources, railways, forestry and land resources. The report indicated that 600 billion cubic metres of water (equivalent to 12 Yellow Rivers) was being wasted annually in Tibet (probably meaning going to India). A dam at Shuomatan in Central Tibet,¹⁰ could divert some 200 billion cubic metres of water to the Yellow River. Later it could flow to inner Mongolia to eventually reach its final destination, Tianjin.

According to the report, one of the main problems was that the influx of water was too significant for the Yellow River to absorb. A reservoir would have to be built near the Lajia Gorge in Machen county of Qinghai province (South of Qinghai Lake). The idea was to use this reservoir to send water to the desert areas of northern China while simply increasing the flow of the Yellow River during the dry season. For the purpose, a canal between the Lajia reservoir and the freshwater Erhai Lake (near the Qinghai or Kokoonor Lake) would have to be built. About 60 per cent of the water would be sent to the north. Guo calculated that the areas around the Erhai/Qinghai Lake have a much higher elevation than neighbouring areas in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. It would, therefore, be easy to push down the waters into the three proposed diversions starting from the Erhai Lake.

One would link up with the Gaxan Lake in inner Mongolia turning the Badain Jaran desert into an oasis. This desert is one of the main sources of the recurrent sandstorms affecting Beijing. The second link could take the waters to the Junggar Basin, in the northwest and would supply Urumqi and Karamay in Xinjiang Province. The last link would irrigate the arid Qaidam and Tarim basins and the Lop Nur, where the first Chinese nuclear test was conducted sometime in the 1960s.

In 2000, several individuals and organisations already started protesting in China. The Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) published ‘Strategic Study on Sustainable Development of China’s Water Resources in the 21st Century’. Academicians Qian Zhengying and Zhang Guangdou, who had worked on the proposed diversion, pointed out at least two potential wrongs. First, the scheme plans to divert water only into the Yellow River, forgetting other rivers in the north and north-west China; and, second, to force the lush southern scenery on the north-west would ‘violate the laws of nature.’¹¹

Since then, other objections have come up. One is that the cost has greatly been underestimated; another is ‘solving western China’s water problem by means of a man-made eco-environment is impossible and will only lead to increased trouble in the future’. It was pointed out that the water of the reservoir at the Erhai Lake could easily be polluted by the salt water of the nearby Qinghai Lake. The conclusion was: ‘The project has shortcomings in its theory, and will not work in reality.’ But the old generals are insistent. General Zhao Nanqi declared in 2000: ‘Even if we do not begin this water diversion project, the next generation will. Sooner or later it will be done.’

After a meeting in June 2006 in Beijing, Guo said that Jampa Phunsok, the chairman of Tibet Autonomous Region, believed that the project could benefit rather than harm the plateau’s ecological environment. During the same meeting, Wang Hao of the CAE said that trans-provincial water diversion should be the last choice as it may also trigger ecological and relocation problems: ‘We are now conducting the South-to- North Water Diversion Project simply because we have no alternative, but we should bear in mind the lessons of the past and learn to avoid water diversion as we have learnt to avoid war.’ His conclusion was thus: ‘Grand as Guo’s scheme sounds, it may prove to be a castle in the sky.’

The generals consider the Great Western Route scheme as a relatively easy project compared to the railway engineering feat which laid tracks at altitudes above 5,000 metres. They believe: ‘We have gained a great deal of experience in building dams, digging tunnels, protecting local ecology.’ The conclusion of the Southern Weekend was, ‘A strategic perspective, the Great Western Route offers a tentative plan for the solution of the water shortage problem. However, neither side is able to present convincing data based on meticulous field surveys.’

A day after President Hu Jintao left India after his state visit in November 2006, the Chinese Minister for Water Resources, Wang Shucheng, declared that the proposal was ‘unnecessary, unfeasible and unscientific’. He added that it had no government backing: ‘There is no need for such dramatic and unscientific projects.’ He, however, admitted: ‘There may be some retired officials that support the plan, but they’re not the experts advising the government.’ For the first time, it was not a point-blank denial.

The main issue that remains, even if the project is not undertaken in its present form, is the problem of silting and pollution of the Yellow River. On 30 June 2005, CAS academician Ma Zongjin had already called a meeting of 40 experts and officials in Xiangshan (Fragrant Hill) to assess the scheme. There was only one point to which everyone agreed: ‘All attendees agreed that water shortage is fast becoming an issue of national security, requiring urgent and immediate action.’

How China will solve this problem depends on the political and economic situation in the country, and on its relations with its neighbours. Today the slogan is ‘the peaceful rise of China’. Development is the first priority, but this very development depends on water and also on the ability of the leadership to feed its people. It is a tough proposition. But in ancient China, did not the term ‘Zhi mean both ‘to regulate waters’ and ‘to rule?

The Arunachal Floods

An event which occurred in June 2000 could be an illustration, at a very reduced scale, of what could happen if the Tsangpo project is completed some day. At that time, the breach of a natural dam in Tibet led to severe floods and left over a hundred people dead or missing in Arunachal Pradesh. It is not difficult to understand that areas downstream in Arunachal or Assam are extremely vulnerable to what takes place upstream in Tibet.¹² At the time of the incident, rediff.com reported: ‘The flash floods that hit the border state of Arunachal Pradesh in June has made officials at the Central Water Commission sit up and take notice. As officials pour over the technical data, a new dimension that the Chinese Army in Tibet, as part of an experiment, may have deliberately blasted the dam has been added to the already hazy picture.’

A few weeks later, a similar mishap took place at the other end of the Himalayas. The Tribune in Chandigarh reported this strange event:¹³ ‘Even three days after the disaster, the mystery of the flash floods in the Sutlej, which wreaked havoc along its 200-km length in the state, remains unresolved.’ It added: ‘Experts are at a loss to understand where the huge mass of water came from.’ Imagine a 50-ft high wall of water descending into the gorges of Kinnaur in Himachal Pradesh! In a few hours, more than 100 people died, 120 km of a strategic highway (Chini sector) was washed away and 98 bridges destroyed.¹⁴ The details of this incident were similar to the one in Arunachal Pradesh.

A detailed study carried out a few months later by scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) confirmed that the release of excess water accumulated in the Sutlej and the Siang River (the Tsangpo) basins in Tibet had led to the flooding. Nearly a year later, the India Today magazine commented:¹⁵ ‘While the satellite images remain classified, officials of the Ministry of Water Resources indicate that these pictures show the presence of huge water bodies or lakes upstream in Sutlej and Siang river basins before the flash floods took place. However, these lakes disappeared soon after the disaster struck Indian territory. This probably means that the Chinese had breached these water bodies as a result of which lakhs of cusecs of water were released into the Sutlej and Siang river basins.’ I remember some Indian ‘experts’ telling me at that time that ‘natural’ landslides happened everywhere; that it was no big deal.

Four years later, the ‘natural’ process occurred again. In August 2004, as India and China were celebrating 50 years of the Panchsheel, an artificial lake on the Pareechu River appeared in Tibet. According to the Chinese authorities, it had been created by seasonal landslides. The Survey of India Institute at Dehra Dun estimated that the lake was 60 metres deep on a total area of 230 hectares. With thousands of human and animal lives under threat with a breach of the Tibetan dam, a red alert was issued by the Himachal government, and armed and paramilitary forces were deployed on a war footing. The Rs 8,500 crore (Rs 85 billion) Nathpa-Jhakri project employing more than 1,000 people had to be shut down.

The matter had another aspect: national security. Would one of the most strategic roads on the Indo-China border again be washed away? Although this time the Chinese government informed the Indian Government about the impeding mishap, Beijing remained completely mum to New Delhi’s request to send a fact-finding team to Tibet. Asked about the steps Beijing had taken to address New Delhi’s concerns, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said: ‘According to information available from the Tibet Autonomous Region, we know that landslides in surrounding hills caused clogging of the course of a river.’ Kong refused to answer if China would give its clearance for the trip to Tibet of four Indian experts.

One cannot help thinking that in 1960, when tensions between India and Pakistan were high, the two nations found the wisdom and the courage to sign the Indus Water Treaty. Some may say it was not an ideal document, but at least it had the merit of simply being in existence. Why can’t India and China sign a similar comprehensive treaty? The Sutlej, like the Indus or the Brahmaputra, does not belong to China alone. There are hundreds of millions of stakeholders in South Asia who should also have a say. One of the problems is that Indian officials never dare to speak up for fear of ‘jeopardising’ the ‘warming up’, or ‘the border talks’, with contentious issues.

Why cannot a river water treaty between China, India and Bangladesh, be signed to assure a decent life for all in the region?

Joint Declarations: The First Move

In 2002, India and China agreed to exchange data on the trans-border rivers. In April 2005, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, signed a Joint Declaration with his Indian counterpart. One article mentions the water issue: ‘In response to concerns expressed by the Indian side, the Chinese side agreed to take measures for controlled release of accumulated water of the landslide dam on the river Pareechu, as soon as conditions permit. It was noted with satisfaction that an agreement concerning the provision of hydrological data on Sutlej was concluded during the visit and that the two sides had also agreed to continue bilateral discussions to finalise at an early date similar arrangements for the Parlung Zangbo and Lohit Rivers.’

In November 2006, the Chinese President Hu Jintao confirmed the above statement and further agreed that ‘the two sides (India and China) will set up an expert-level mechanism to discuss interaction and cooperation on the provision of flood season hydrological data, emergency management and other issues regarding trans-border rivers as agreed between them’.

In the ‘Shared Vision for the 21st Century’, signed in January 2008 on the occasion of the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to China, it is mentioned: ‘The Indian side highly appreciates the assistance extended by China on the provision of flood season hydrological data which has assisted India in ensuring the safety and security of its population in regions along these rivers.’ Delhi says that it has achieved a ‘mutual understanding’. But is it enough to dissipate the doubt in the public’s mind? And, has the goal of equitable sharing of information as well as water resources been achieved?

Ten Thousand Methods Combined as One

In the book Unrestricted Warfare written by two senior colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, they argue that China should start surveying ways to counter new forms of war as Sun Tzu did in his ‘Art of Warfare’ over 2000 years ago. One chapter speaks of ‘Ten Thousand Methods Combined as One: Combinations That Transcend Boundaries’. It is the art of combining different elements of these various forms of warfare. One of the many ways of unconventional warfare identified by the colonels is ‘environmental warfare’. India should certainly remain vigilant.

References

Brown, Lester R. (1995), Who will Feed China? New York: Worldwatch Institute.

Doak, Barnett (1961), Communist China and Asia, New York: Harper, p. 106.

Ginsburg, George and Michael Mathos (1964), Communist China and Tibet, The Hague: Martinul Nijhoff.

Mullik, B. N. (1971), My Years with Nehru—The Chinese Betrayal, New Delhi: Allied Publishers.

Zedong, Mao (1954), Problems of War and Strategy, Peking: Foreign Language Press, p. 18.