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Vikas Battalion and Election Day
The last several months have seen rising tension between India and the PRC over their disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh. In June, during an attempted “de-escalation,” there was an incident in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed. Just Monday, reports came out of a counter-offensive from the Indian Army, sending their Special Frontier Forces, the Vikas Battalion, to capture important strategic high ground in the dispute.
The use of SFF was deliberate by the Indian Army. SFF was formed in 1962 of Tibetan soldiers whose mission was to conduct covert operations behind Chinese lines. Today, Vikas Battalion is composed of mostly Tibetan and Gorkha soldiers. Tibetans have no reason to love the People’s Liberation Army, and of Gorkhas it was once said, “If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gorkha.”
The Red Chinese claim that they have never violated any border in an aggressive manner, which in their minds is true because when they have a problem with the border, they simply move the border (see the South China Sea and the Nine-Dash Line) and then accuse others of violating it.
In case you missed it, two 
So far, 
2002 was not a good year for India. Trouble that had been brewing for a while (some say since 1993, some say for much longer) erupted, and almost 60 Hindu Nationalist workers were 
It’s a measure of the world’s instability that this story isn’t leading headlines everywhere. In a normal world, cross-border violence between hostile, nuclear-armed nations would merit the front page. India and Pakistan have already fought three wars over Kashmir, so the prospect of escalation to full-scale war isn’t at all beyond imagination.
This caught my eye