New Delhi: Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Anil Chauhan Tuesday sought to underplay Chinese support to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, saying, “How much of State support is very difficult to define”.
His comments came just days after Deputy Chief of Army Staff (capability development & sustenance) Lt Gen. Rahul R. Singh made a candid assessment in public, saying there were multiple lessons to be learnt from the 87-hour conflict, the biggest lesson being that while it was just one border, India had a minimum of three adversaries.
At a Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry event on Friday, Singh said, “Pakistan was the front face. We had China providing all possible support. This is no surprise because if you look at statistics, in the last five years, 81 percent of the military hardware that Pakistan is getting is Chinese. China, of course—the good old dictum, killed by a borrowed knife … So, it would rather use the neighbour to cause pain than get involved in the mud-slinging match on the northern borders.”
Singh also said China was giving live updates of Indian military deployments to Pakistan.
“When DGMO-level talks were on, Pakistan actually was mentioning that we know that your such and such vector was primed and ready for action, and we would request you to—perhaps—pull it back. So, it was getting live inputs from China. That is one place we really need to move fast and take appropriate action,” he said.
However, speaking at an Observer Research Federation event in Delhi on Tuesday, Gen. Chauhan said that there was no unusual activity on the northern borders during the conflict with Pakistan.
“Maybe it was a short conflict, but it is a fact that there was no unusual activity. The second fact is that Pakistan imports most of its weapons from China. Chinese OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) have a number of liabilities, so there will be people attempting to service their liabilities, and they will be there. That happens everywhere,” he said.
“Third is information—there are a number of Chinese companies also doing work for commercial imagery. You have Maxar and Planet Labs. You can go to China or the US. How much of State support is very difficult to define,” he said.
China on Monday defended Beijing’s “traditional friendship” with Islamabad, saying that defence and security cooperation is part of the “normal cooperation” between them.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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1. Given the extremely short duration of the skirmish, there hardly was any time for China to actively involve herself.
2. Not to mention that India took great pains to tell one and all (likely incl China) well in advance that only ‘terrorist camps’ were targets. This ensured China would not react.
The moot point here is – if India were to walk into POK tomorrow with a view to free it of all terrorist camps and this action escalates into a 60 or 90-day war with Pak, will China remain a mute spectator? Or will she see this as an opportunity to ‘straighten’ the LAC in Ladakh & Arunachal? (That China will actively re arm/replenish Pak is beyond reasonable doubt.) Will China’s PLA take some active measures that force our Army to peel off urgently reqd fmns from the Western Front and move them to safeguard our Northern borders? Will Bangladesh sit tight and quietly mouth ‘Ami tomake bhalobashi’ to India?
If not, we had better be ready for 3 fronts (which can include a very restive population in the North East egged on by subversives in turn encouraged by BD and China) and not delude ourselves by mouthing platitudes or kicking the can down the road for someone else to sort out later saying ‘very difficult to define’.
Hi Snehesh – This is no contradiction; perhaps a strategic revision of Lft Singh’s view [that it is difficult to define support] particularly after Chinese responded to Lft Singh’s assertion!! ..And said that defence support is part of NORMAL cooperation that two friendly countries carry for each other!
After all, we do not want Chinese to be blatant / overt in their support’ isn’t it?
Can the government’s stand be consistent on any matter of national importance with international implications these days? I was genuinely impressed with the Deputy Chief’s briefing at FICCI event which gave a candid take on the conflict and its happenings and now the CDS comes out and contradicts him, Then there was the fiasco with supporting Dalai Lama’s succession plans with Kiren Rijiju coming out in support and then the MEA undermining him. Even with Op Sindoor, first it was dodging the question of losses, then it was a tacit admission of losses and now the Dassault CEO comes out and says that one aircraft was lost due to ‘technical failure’. Even though we defended ourselves against their loitering munitions and missiles well and inflicted serious strategic blows to their Air Force bases, our muddled messaging that is beginning to rival ‘A Comedy of Errors’ has led to a squandered PR op.