In Exile From the Land of Snows

by John Avedon

  With the airdrops came almost forty graduates of Camp Hale. From them, the National Volunteer Defense Army received a badly needed education in modern combat. They brought M-1’s and Springfields, heavy 80-millimeter recoilless guns and 2-inch mortars as well as solar batteries to run hidden radio hookups, scramblers for coding messages, machine-gun silencers, “death pills” and miniature cameras for espionage. Under their instruction, khaki uniforms were adopted and daily life became more regimented with a 5:00 a.m. rising followed by calisthenics, singing of the Tibetan national anthem, farming, survival training and maneuvers in the hills. Their presence gave Tibet its first substantial military hope since the height of the revolt in 1958.

  Resuscitated, the NVDA struck out east, north and west from Mustang’s high plateau. An average raid consisted of a few dozen men penetrating Tibet for up to a month, ambushing a PLA convoy and then retreating. The country was so wild that, given a reasonable troop parity, the guerrillas were guaranteed success whenever they attacked. Some forays, though, were luckier than others. In 1966 a small party sent to disrupt transport along the Xinjiang-Lhasa road annihilated a Chinese convoy. It was not until the battle was over that the guerrillas discovered the head of the PLA’s western command in Tibet and his entire staff among the corpses. The party had been traveling with all of their records, which now proved a treasure trove, not just for the Tibetans but for the CIA as well. Through these, invaluable information on the recently begun Cultural Revolution was obtained as well as a remarkable document revealing that by China’s own count some 87,000 Tibetans had been killed in the 1959 revolt, an event which Peking had continued to portray as only a minor disturbance.

  Mustang’s greatest achievement lay in its espionage network. Within a short time the NVDA had succeeded in establishing underground links throughout Tibet, not only the scope but the quality of information retrieved making the operation immensely profitable. Though the Chinese were suspicious of all Tibetans, the regional CCP was compelled to employ a number of minority cadres for administrative tasks. Among these were many “sleepers,” Tibetans who appeared to be collaborators but in reality were, as they slowly ascended the local hierarchy, supplying the NVDA with information. NVDA couriers, traveling from place to place by night collected information from agents and were responsible for documenting not only China’s massive military buildup along the Himalayas but also the critical shifting of the PRC’s principal nuclear base from Lop Nor in Xinjiang to Nagchuka, 165 miles north of Lhasa.

  For all of its advantages Mustang proved to have one critical flaw. It was too remote from the main theater of Chinese operations—“an isolated army in an isolated territory,” as one guerrilla described the second stage of Tibetan resistance. In addition, Khampa fighters, raised for millennia as cavalry, were now denied the use of their mounts. Due to the difficulty of retreating up the treacherous passes which enclosed the plateau, only sixty Tibetan ponies were kept for the entire corps. Retreat itself inflicted the highest number of casualties. The wounded were generally left to die, Mustang’s headquarters, much less its front-line camps, had little medicine and no surgical equipment. Nevertheless, in time, age, not battle, caused the greatest loss of life. “It was pathetic,” recalled one of the younger guerrillas, a TYC recruit who was sent to Mustang to replace men entering their forties and fifties. “People didn’t die from bullets, but just by walking to a fight and back. Once they knew a raid was on, the Chinese would send patrols to cut off its retreat. The PLA were fresh and our men had been literally jogging night after night. So the old-timers would give out. They’d take a whole tin of coffee, mix it together with water and soup in their bowls and drink it. That kept them going. But after doing this kind of thing two or three times, their hearts would just pop.”

  As the 1970s began, a combination of external and internal pressures placed Mustang’s continued existence in jeopardy. Following Henry Kissinger’s secret flight to Peking, paving the way, in July of 1971, for a U.S.-Chinese rapprochement, the CIA suddenly cut off support to the Tibetan guerrillas. With the Special Frontier Force grown into a mature unit, India had no need to maintain on its own the previous level of aid. Even worse, Nepal, no longer fearful, as it had been in the early 1960s, of a Chinese attack, now wished to counter New Delhi’s influence in the region by furthering ties with Peking. Hence, in 1972 Katmandu, which had feigned ignorance of the Khampas’ presence for twelve years, took the first step toward expelling them by launching a propaganda attack accusing the Tibetans of banditry, rape, and murder.

  Internal disarray as well plagued the National Volunteer Defense Army. In 1969 Gyalo Thondup, acting on long-standing complaints of younger CIA-educated officers, had withdrawn General Baba Yeshi as commander, replacing him with a nephew of the late Gompo Tashi Andrugtsang, the sole survivor of the first group of Tibetans to be trained by the United States, General Gyato Wangdu. Baba Yeshi went peacefully at first, journeying to Dharamsala where he was offered as reparation the prestigious post of Chief of Security, holding a rank equivalent to that of deputy Cabinet minister. He declined the position, however, and within a short time was back in Mustang. Rallying almost two hundred of his tribesmen, Baba Yeshi broke from the NVDA, publicly accused Gyalo Thondup of misappropriating funds and occupied a guerrilla camp called Mamang east of Mustang from which he openly attacked the main body of soldiers, now, in effect, a rival faction. In return, General Wangdu laid siege to the splinter group’s holdout, until Katmandu, apprised of the internecine strife, compelled Baba Yeshi to present himself at the capital. Three months of personal negotiations, led by Nepal’s Home Secretary, followed. At their climax Baba Yeshi, according to one witness, burst into tears, pleaded for protection and then, in exchange for a grant of political asylum, gave the Nepalese a detailed account of the NVDA’s troop strength, supplies, weaponry and positions.

  By then, the trouble had already spread to the Tibetan communities in India. Prominent leaders in thirteen settlements, populated mainly by refugees from Kham and Amdo, sided with Baba Yeshi in the dispute, believing that his dismissal by Gyalo Thondup had been the result of a concerted effort on the part of the primarily Central Tibetan government in Dharamsala to disenfranchise them.

  In large part the opening of a regional fault line—always Tibet’s greatest internal threat—resulted from Kuomintang agitation. From the Tibetans’ earliest days in exile, KMT agents had attempted to win a faction of the refugees to their own cause. Their greatest success had been with some of the easterners in the so-called 13 camps, who, though they had no pro-Taiwanese sympathies, were happy to accept large financial contributions as an alternative to Dharamsala’s support. Exploiting the NVDA split, the KMT now sought to draw the 13 group further from Dharamsala and closer to itself by successfully fueling separatist sentiment. After a failed attempt at redress in Dharamsala, the 13 group’s relations with the exile administration soured and some of its members ceased to submit the one rupee a month contribution given by most refugees to their government.

  Early in 1974 the various pressures combined to destroy Mustang. In a November 1973 meeting in Peking, Mao Zedong personally threatened King Birendra of Nepal with direct action unless he shut down the Tibetan guerrilla base. Complying, Birendra declared all of northwestern Nepal a restricted zone and began flooding the area with 10,000 troops of the Royal Army, police and Gurkhas, summoned from duty abroad with UN peacekeeping forces. Given the single narrow track, carved into the sheer western face of the Kali Gandaki Gorge, leading north from Pokhara to Jomosom, it was a phenomenal exercise just to reach Mustang. Yet even though they outnumbered the Khampas two to one, the Nepalese, once in place, still had only a small hope of victory. After a decade and a half the Tibetans’ knowledge of the terrain was unsurpassable, their stores capable of supporting them for up to two years. Accordingly, Nepal secretly coordinated plans with China for a PLA drive on the Khampas’ northern flank should they attempt a retreat into Tibet.

  While the milita
ry geared up for a fight, the Nepalese government took its first political step in March 1974. Sending emissaries to General Wangdu, Katmandu offered a trade-off: almost half a million dollars in “rehabilitation” aid and the rights to land and buildings already developed in exchange for a full surrender and disbanding of the various camps. When the Khampas refused, Nepal attempted to force their hand. On April 19, Lhamo Tsering, the NVDA’s chief officer in New Delhi, was arrested in Pokhara while en route to Mustang. He was then held hostage to force a surrender. It was, however, a tentative move. Because the Nepalese were frightened that any greater show of force would provoke the Khampas (who were a week’s trek away) to descend and, as one observer put it, “massacre everyone,” Lhamo Tsering was only placed under house arrest. In addition, he was able to smuggle a message north, ordering that under no condition should the Mustang base yield to Nepalese demands. Nepal reluctantly completed positioning its troops and called for the Tibetans to agree to five-point surrender terms by July 30 or face expulsion. As the situation rapidly escalated to a confrontation, the Dalai Lama himself intervened. Tape-recording a twenty-minute message in which he requested the NVDA to disarm peacefully, he dispatched the Minister of Dharamsala’s Security Department, P. T. Takla, to Katmandu. Once there, Takla requested Nepal to free Lhamo Tsering and permit both him and the guerrilla leader to bring the tape to General Wangdu and his officers. Acceding in part to the proposal, the Nepalese allowed Takla to pick up Lhamo Tsering in Pokhara. From there the two flew in a helicopter to the Stol airstrip in Jomosom. Across from the strip stood a one-story Nepalese army post, around which thousands of troops were now massed. While Lhamo Tsering was held in a nearby building, Takla rode an hour and a half north to the NVDA command, where, apprised of his mission, a large coterie of Khampa officers was waiting.

  The scene that followed was tragic. P. T. Takla began his appeal for surrender by saying that the Nepalese had Lhamo Tsering in Jomosom; if the guerrillas wished him released they would have to disarm. After two decades of waging a forlorn guerrilla war against the largest nation on earth, the Khampa commanders greeted this line of reasoning as laughable. They joked that Takla had brought good, not bad news, as that very night they would raid the post and free their comrade. Only then did Takla play the Dalai Lama’s tape. There was immediate and anguished disorder. Pachen, head of the internal discipline department and one of the most respected and impassioned leaders, rose to speak, “How can I surrender to the Nepalese when I have never surrendered to the Chinese?” he said. “I’ll never give them my weapon. But at the same time I cannot disobey my lama’s orders. We should all return to Tibet this minute and die there fighting rather than live in shame.” Wangdu, though, in concert with other senior officers, decided to obey the Dalai Lama’s orders and surrender. A few days later Pachen slit his own throat. Two other officers followed his lead, preferring to take their own lives rather than accede to the contradictory terms of their failure.

  As the Dalai Lama’s message traveled from camp to camp, played over loudspeakers, columns of pack animals laden with weapons began heading south. Nonetheless, once apprised of the Khampas’ decision, Nepal reneged on its promise of a trade-off. Entering Mustang, it launched a “search and seizure” operation. All those guerrillas who had voluntarily disarmed were apprehended and marched into Jomosom while their land and property were confiscated. Word of the duplicity swiftly passed to General Wangdu.

  With an escort of forty select troops and the guerrillas’ documents, Wangdu fled. Riding west, he leapfrogged back and forth between Nepal and Tibet, attempting an end run for the Indian border 200 miles away. The PLA was already waiting for him. Over the course of a fortnight Chinese attacks twice pushed the Khampas into Nepal, while a Nepalese ambush sent them back to Tibet. And then, once more, treachery undermined the guerrillas. Early in the flight, during a night march, a mule carrying food was lost. General Wangdu sent two men to retrieve it, one of whom failed to return. Instead he went to Jomosom, and in an exchange for a reprieve reported the Tibetans’ escape route. Forty men of Baba Yeshi’s rival faction, already recruited by Nepal to guide its army into Mustang, were hurriedly put on Wangdu’s rear, while the Nepalese themselves set up a massive ambush twenty miles from the Indian border, at the guerrilla leader’s goal, a 17,800-foot pass in the Jumla District called Tinker.

  Arriving at Tinker toward the end of August, Wangdu called a halt. Exhausted, his men dismounted and sat on a hillside within sight of a nearby PLA camp. When none volunteered to seek out forage and water for the horses, Wangdu personally led a party of five to reconnoiter up the track. In a short while, the general and his patrol disappeared into a small draw before the pass. A moment later those left behind heard a storm of rapid fire erupt from all directions. As they ran to their mounts, they beheld the advance group’s five ponies galloping, riderless, back toward them. Racing up to join the fight, they arrived just in time to see Wangdu gunned down while single-handedly charging Nepalese positions on an adjacent slope, the other men, save one, already dead. A fire fight then broke out, lasting the entire day and, according to one account, taking the lives of hundreds of Nepalese troops. Outnumbered, the Tibetans finally abandoned their horses and using ropes scaled the surrounding cliffs, outflanked the pass and escaped a few hours later over the border into the waiting arms of the Indian army.

  A day after the fight at Tinker Pass, Baba Yeshi flew by helicopter from Katmandu to identify Wangdu’s body. Following the confirmation, an official ceremony was held in the Royal Palace. King Birendra himself distributed prizes, promotions and cash rewards to scores of Nepalese soldiers who had taken part in the destruction of Mustang. Under a large tent in the Thundikhel field, at the city’s center, Wangdu’s amulet, wristwatch, rings, rifle and tea bowl were displayed to crowds of curious Nepalese who queued up for days to see the guerrilla leader’s remains. Beside them were exhibited a vast assortment of binoculars, radios and light arms from Mustang’s various camps. At the south side of the field, just beyond the central post office, Lhamo Tsering and the six Khampa leaders who had heeded the Dalai Lama’s order to surrender sat in Katmandu’s central jail, wherre they languished for seven years until, in a 1981 amnesty granted by the King, they were finally set free. While the NVDA’s New Delhi office survived the guerrilla’s rout, its clandestine network in Tibet, painstakingly built up since the late 1950s, was now blown by the Nepalese, who forwarded Baba Yeshi’s disclosures to the Chinese. A quarter century after China’s invasion, the fight for Tibet seemed to have collapsed overnight in a tragic debacle.

  But the Special Frontier Force remained. Informed that a secret regiment, independent of the guerrillas, was being created to fight for Tibetan independence, male refugees had flocked from road gangs to assembly points at train stations throughout the early sixties. Taken to Dehra Dun, the groups were ferried by army trucks to Establishment 22, 100 kilometers away at the Chakrata military base. Here they were inducted and put through six months of basic training. At first Americans conducted operations; then, after a disagreement over procedure, Indian officers took full charge. Regardless, below the highest ranks, an entirely Tibetan officer corps was developed, thus making 22—with a troop strength of 10,500—to all practical purposes a fully Tibetan army—the embryo, it was hoped, of the future army of a free Tibet.

  The first—and standing—objective of the Special Frontier Force was to scout the inhospitable terrain on “the Roof of the World.” Not only could Tibetans survive in the cold with far greater facility than the Indian Jawan; they proved immune to altitude sickness no matter how many years they had lived on the subcontinent. With them India was able to develop a network of bases spanning its Himalayan territories from Ladakh to Assam. The Frontier Force’s second objective was less docile than guard duty. Having determined that an independent Tibet, serving along the lines of an Asian Switzerland, as a neutral buffer state, would afford the best protection against China, New Delhi secretly decided that, in the
event of war, an attempt to wrest Tibet’s liberty could be made, 22 taking the lead. As such, the Frontier Force was trained not just to scout but also as high-altitude paratroops—commandos versed in the arts of ambush, demolition, survival and sabotage. Given the existence of numerous underground groups in Tibet, sustained by a virtually universal hatred of the Chinese, the men and women of 22 (two companies of female medics and communications specialists were enlisted to demonstrate Tibetan women’s willingness to fight for their country) were designated to be dropped behind Chinese lines. While India’s regular army would engage the Chinese head-on, the Tibetans would link up with the underground, raise pockets of resistance and disrupt the PLA’s flanks and rear.

  War with China, though, was not forthcoming. Impatient for contact, entire companies of Tibetan commandos periodically disobeyed Indian orders and crossed the border in secret to attack PLA outposts. Restraining 22 became such a problem that all of its bases had to be relocated twenty miles behind the front, and Indian troops posted between the Tibetans and their homeland. Not until a decade after its founding did the SFF have a chance to prove itself in sanctioned action—as the spearhead of India’s assault, late in October 1971, in the Bangladesh war.