Caught in India-China clashes, Ladakh’s nomadic herders fear for future

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Chushul, Ladakh, India – The bubbling sound of water boiling on the stove and the aroma of spinach dal fill the air in Tashi Angmo’s kitchen as she rolls dough to make a type of Tibetan bread.

“This is a dish which we call timok in Ladakh and tingmo across the border in Tibet,” she says as she prepares the apparatus to steam the dough she has rolled into balls resembling dumplings. “It’s a delicious meal after a hard day’s work.”

Angmo, 51, lives in Chushul, a village which sits at an altitude of 4,350 metres (14,270 feet) in India’s Ladakh, one of the highest regions in the world, known for its pristine rivers and lakes, high valleys and mountains and clear skies. Chushul also lies about 8 kilometres (5 miles) from India’s Line of Actual Control with China, the disputed, de facto border between the two countries.

“I was around 11 years old when I realised that my family and I lived very close to the Chinese border. Back then, we used to be a family of shepherds, and I often went near the border with my father, to take our sheep herding,” Angmo says.

She now works as a labourer doing a variety of tasks from cleaning roads to helping with construction and cooking meals for other workers, for the Border Roads Organisation – the Indian Defence Ministry’s initiative to maintain roads in the subcontinent’s border areas.

“We even used to trade apricots and barley which grew in our village with the Chinese shepherds. In return, we brought back chicken, some Chinese cookies and also teapots!” she exclaims and points to the teapots which she still keeps in her kitchen cabinet.

Even the Sino-India war in 1962 over border and territorial disputes between the neighbours, after New Delhi had given shelter to the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan refugees, did not undo that delicate balance.

What did was a deadly clash in the summer of 2020. As the world was absorbed in its battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, Indian and Chinese soldiers fought with sticks, stones and their bare hands along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh’s Galwan valley. Each side claimed that the other’s troops had crossed into their territory. The close combat fighting led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers. These were the first deaths along the border in decades.

Since then, both sides have stepped up border patrols and moved troops to the region, and their troops have occasionally engaged in standoffs.

In many Ladakhi villages bordering China, grazing and farming close to the frontier has now been restricted by the Indian military. Boating in the pristine Pangong Tso lake, parts of which are claimed by both New Delhi and Beijing, has also been restricted to only military boats.

“We can’t go near the border any more or trade with Chinese people. Shepherds – most of whom are nomads – have also lost land close to the border since the Indian military oversees the area,” she says.

The land has largely been swallowed by military buffer zones on both sides of the border, with rich pasture land for 2km in either direction now a no-go zone for the herders.

Interactive_India-China_border_Galwan valley_October 10, 2024

Young nomads and farmers moving away

Donning a pink scarf and a grey sweater, Kunjan Dolma, who is in her late 30s, belongs to the Changpa community – seminomadic Tibetan people who live in the Changtang plateau in eastern Ladakh. She lives in Chushul during the winter months and is nomadic throughout the rest of the year.

Dolma tells Al Jazeera that the land near the Chinese border is an important winter pasture for their animals. “But if we take our sheep and goats near the Chinese border, the military stops us and advises us to find grazing lands elsewhere. We have lost important pastures in recent years, but we have begun adjusting to the restrictions,” she says as she milks her sheep in an open-air shed built with stones and surrounded by the low-lying mountains.

“In a way, the military restrictions also make sense. They protect us from the Chinese soldiers who I fear might take away our sheep in case we go very close to the border.”

Dolma lives with her husband and teenage daughter and the family has about 200 sheep whose wool they sell to make pashmina shawls. It is an important source of income, she explains.

She spends days in the mountains to ensure their yaks and sheep have access to the best grazing lands during the warmer months of the year. The Changpa community retreats to the villages in the lower-lying hills of Ladakh during winter. She earns her living selling pashmina wool, and yak meat and milk.

But Dolma’s daughter, like many young people from the nomadic families of the Changtang plateau, has begun turning to other professions to earn a living. Dolma added that military restrictions on grazing land have also increased the momentum of young nomads turning away from this traditional way of life.

Sipping on a cup of warm water before she heads to the mountains to make her cattle graze, Dolma reminisces about her younger days when border tensions did not exist in their lands.

“I’ve spent many joyful days in these mountains with my sheep and when there were no border restrictions, it was very easy for us to take our cattle across pastures. We would also interact with nomads from China who were very friendly,” she says, adding that she wishes her daughter could experience that same nomadic lifestyle.

At the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), an administrative body in the union territory’s capital of Leh, Konchok Stanzin, 37, is a councillor working with the village leaders in Chushul to ensure local governance runs smoothly.

Speaking to Al Jazeera at the LAHDC headquarters, Stanzin acknowledges the issues nomads in Ladakh have been enduring due to border tensions.

“Grazing land comes under the buffer zone which is currently no-man’s land. So, nomads face a challenging situation, trying to figure out where to take their yaks and sheep. Besides land, we also face difficulties in Pangong Tso where military border controls continue,” Stanzin explains. Tso is the Tibetan word for lake.

“[Young people] migrating out of their villages in search of work is a serious concern,” he noted. “This is also leading to the disappearance of nomadic traditions like herding which enable the production of pashmina. So we are trying to educate the youth to continue their traditions while also working on improving the economic situation in border villages.”

‘I still remember the Chinese cookies’

As he enjoys a cup of Ladakhi staple butter tea in his mother Tashi Angmo’s kitchen, Tsering Stopgais, 25, notes that generating jobs is the biggest challenge for the region.

“There once was an open trading route between India and China along this border. If that opens again, it will be a huge economic opportunity for many of us,” he says.

“My grandfather has crossed the border to trade with China and earned well. My mother used to also go near the border and trade with the Chinese. I still remember the Chinese cookies she would bring home.”

Angmo chimes in, saying the border clashes are all political.

“Social media also plays a role in spreading rumours about border tensions. In reality, it is not an active war zone and it is peaceful right now. It is a standoff between politicians and not people on either side of the border,” Angmo says.

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in September, India’s Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar addressed the situation in eastern Ladakh and said: “Right now, both sides have troops who are deployed forward.”

At an event organised by the Asia Society Policy Institute, a think tank in New York, he continued: “Some of the (border) patrolling issues need to be resolved,” highlighting that this aspect would solve the dispute.

Retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, who was in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China and is now a senior fellow of the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a China Forum expert, told Al Jazeera that border patrols continue because “each side has its own perception about where the border lies”.

“So sometimes, for example, the Chinese patrolling troops patrol in areas which are considered by Indians as Indian territory. And likewise,” he says.

According to local media reports, China has denied Indian troops access to key patrolling points in eastern Ladakh, claiming these regions belong to Beijing. New Delhi says this has made it harder for the Indian army to carry out its regular border security activities in the region.

Senior Colonel Bo says that while the border issue is difficult to solve, both militaries have signed agreements in the past to maintain peace and talks are continuing to find a solution to solve the military and political discord.

‘Education can bring peace’

Counting the beads on her Buddhist mala and chanting a prayer, 71-year old Kunze Dolma, who lived through the 1962 Sino-India war in Chushul when she was about nine years old, says she thinks education is what can bring about peace.

“I just remember how scared I was during that war as a little girl. I thought the Chinese army would enter our school,” she tells Al Jazeera.

“I now work as a cook in the village school and hope the children are educated about maintaining peace along the border and how people on both sides of the border need to understand each other better,” she tells Al Jazeera.

Tsringandhu, 26, teaches at the government middle school in Chushul. “I teach children aged three to 10 years at this school. I teach them the Ladakhi Bhoti language which is an offshoot of the Tibetan language. I teach the students about the border in our village by telling them the history of this language and explain to them that Tibet is now a part of China and is across the border,” he told Al Jazeera.

“When we educate children, we just tell them that the land across the border is China and not an enemy country. I look at education as a way to bring peace. If a teacher educates children about places and cultures in the right manner, hostilities will not exist and peace will prevail,” he says.

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