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

As Tashi Angmo rolls dough to make a type of Tibetan bread, the bubbling sound of boiling water and the aroma of spinach dal fill the air in her home in Chusul, Ladakh, India.

As she prepares the steaming machine, she says, “This is a dish that we call timok in Ladakh and tingmo across the border in Tibet.” “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.

When I realized that my family and I lived very close to the Chinese border, I was about 11 years old. 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 laborer for the Border Roads Organisation, an initiative of the Indian Defence Ministry to maintain roads along the Indian border, helping with construction and cooking meals for other workers.

We even traded the Chinese shepherds’ apricots and barley, which were grown in our village. In return, we brought back chicken, some Chinese cookies and also teapots”! She yells and points to the teapots in her kitchen cabinet.

Even after New Delhi provided shelter to the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan refugees, the delicate balance was not broken by the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 over border and territorial disputes between the neighbours.

In the summer of 2020, there was a deadly conflict. Indian and Chinese soldiers battled with sticks, stones, and their bare hands along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh’s Galwan valley as the world became entangled in the COVID-19 pandemic. Each side claimed that the other’s troops had crossed into their territory. Twenty Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers died as a result of the close-quarter fighting. This was the first fatality along the border in a long time.

Both sides have since increased border patrols, relocated troops, and occasionally engaged in standoffs.

The Indian military has now restricted grazing and farming close to the border in many Ladakhi villages. Only military boats are permitted to paddle in the pristine Pangong Tso lake, which has been claimed by both Beijing and New Delhi.

“We can no longer trade with Chinese people or go near the border.” She claims that the Indian military, who are the majority of the herds, has also lost land close to the border.

The border’s rich pastureland, which extends for 2 km in either direction, is now a no-go zone for the herders, which has largely been absorbed by military buffer zones on both sides.

Farmers and nomads leaving the country

Kunjan Dolma, who is in her late 30s, wears a pink scarf and a gray sweater and is a member of the Changpa tribe, a semi-nomadic Tibetans who reside on the Changtang plateau in eastern Ladakh. She spends the winter months in Chushul, but throughout the year she practices nomadic behavior.

Dolma claims to Al Jazeera that their animals depend heavily on the land close to the Chinese border for winter. The military stops us and advises us to find grazing lands elsewhere, but if we bring our sheep and goats close to the Chinese border. She says as she milks her sheep in an open-air shed surrounded by the low-lying mountains that we have lost significant pastures in recent years.

“In a way, the military restrictions also make sense. They guard us from Chinese soldiers, who I fear might euthanize our sheep if we cross border crossing points very close to the border.

Dolma and her husband, who are both teenagers, raise about 200 sheep to produce pashmina shawls from sheep. It is an important source of income, she explains.

In the warmer months of the year, she spends days in the mountains to ensure that their yaks and sheep have access to the best grazing areas. In the winter, the Changpa community relocates to the villages in Ladakh’s lower-lying hills. She makes a living selling yak meat and milk, as well as pashmina wool.

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 young nomads are starting to reject this traditional way of life because of military restrictions on grazing land.

Dolma recalls her younger days when border tensions did not exist in their lands while sipping on a cup of warm water before heading to the mountains to make her cattle graze.

When there were no border restrictions, it was very simple for us to cross pastures with our cattle and we spent many joyous days there. She adds that she wishes her daughter could lead the same nomadic lifestyle and that nomads from China were very friendly as well.

Konchok Stanzin, 37, a councillor at the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), a body overseeing Leh, the union territory’s capital, works with Chushul’s village leaders to ensure smooth operation of local government.

Stanzin acknowledged the issues nomads in Ladakh have been dealing with as a result of border tensions, speaking to Al Jazeera at the LAHDC headquarters.

The buffer zone, which is currently no-man’s land, includes grazing 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. The Tibetan word for lake is Tso.

“]Young people] migrating out of their villages in search of work is a serious concern”, he noted. This is also causing nomadic customs like herding, which produce pashmina, to vanish. We are attempting to both improve the economic situation in border villages and educate the youth in order to carry on their traditions.

I can still recall 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.

Along this border, there was once a free trade route between China and India. Many of us will have a huge economic opportunity if that reopens, he claims.

“My grandfather made a good living trading with China after crossing the border. My mother used to trade with the Chinese by traveling near the border. She would bring home some Chinese cookies, and I can still recall those.

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

“Social media also contributes to spreading rumors about border tensions.” It is peaceful at the moment, not a war zone. On either side of the border, Angmo claims, there is a standoff between politicians and not those there.

India’s S. Jaishankar, the country’s minister of foreign affairs, addressed the situation in eastern Ladakh on the eve of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September, saying: “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.

Former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China’s retired senior officer Zhou Bo, an expert on China Forum policy and a senior fellow at Tsinghua University, 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.

In accordance with local media reports, China has denied Beijing access to significant patrolling locations in eastern Ladakh, claiming that Beijing controls these areas. According to New Delhi, this has made it more difficult for the Indian army to carry out regular border security operations there.

Senior Colonel Bo claims that despite the difficulty of resolving the border issue, both militaries have negotiated agreements in the past to maintain peace, and that negotiations are ongoing to resolve the military and political unrest.

Education can bring peace, according to the saying.

Kunze Dolma, 71, who survived the Sino-India war in Chushul at the age of nine, says she believes education is what can bring about peace by counting the beads on her Buddhist mala and chanting a prayer.

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

She tells Al Jazeera, “I now work as a cook in the village school. I hope the children are taught how to maintain peace along the border and how people on both sides of the border need to better understand one another.”

Tsringandhu, 26, teaches at the government middle school in Chushul. At this school, I teach children between the ages of three and ten. I impart the Tibetan language, Ladakhi Bhoti, to them. He told Al Jazeera, “I teach the students about the border in our village by explaining the history of this language to them and explaining that Tibet is now a part of China and is located across the border,” he said.

Source: Aljazeera