Adventure or Tragedy

SWENSON, KAREN

Adventure or Tragedy Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival By John Kenneth Knaus Public Affairs. 416 pp. $27.50. Reviewed by Karen Swenson Author, "The...

...Knaus clearly delineates the relationship between Tibet and the powers who would have an effect on its future—the English eager to distance themselves, the Indians fearful of China's wrath but willing to use Tibetans against Pakistan, and the Americans who also used them for U. S. purposes in the Cold War...
...Those who were dropped had to walk to the Indian border to get out...
...Desmond FitzGerald, the new head of the Operations Directorate's Far East Division took a keen interest in the Tibetan insurgency, and the American government's willingness to back it was enhanced by what Knaus deems the "Shangri-la factor...
...Lacking ammunition and food, many rebels fled across the border...
...They would drink part of a shipment and urinate in the bottles to refill them, a practice that eventually killed the whiskey trade...
...That is all an old man can do now, pray...
...At the time of the invasion in 1950 the monks of Sera monastery, one of the country's most important, were for their own reasons discouraging resistance...
...The President's letter also presaged trouble: It addressed the Dalai Lama as a religious leader rather than as an independent sovereign, because the Nationalist Chinese had already stated their intent to bring the country under Chinese control...
...In any event, the CI A role was taken over by the Indians, who organized the Tibetans into the Special Frontier Force that they used to fight Pakistan...
...Beijing used aircraft and veterans of the Korean War against them...
...This also afforded him a line of communication both within and outside the country...
...The election of Richard M. Nixon terminated all military support...
...One of the great strengths of Orphans of the Cold War is the author's noting how parallel world events have affected the great powers' interest in Tibet's plight...
...He taught them the history of Communism and gave lessons in how to use a portable mimeograph machine to produce leaflets...
...By the end of 1960 this large camp—like so many others— was wiped out by the Chinese...
...That adventure had its roots in a 1942 OSS mission to Tibet led by Ilya Tolstoy, grandson of the novelist...
...Nevertheless, Knaus points out, the competing tribes were the backbone of the resistance...
...They made contact with units already organized by rival rebel leaders Gompo Tashi and Chushi Gangdruk...
...Its realization, he says, "would validate the more worthy motives of we [sic] who tried to help them achieve this goal over 40 years ago...
...Camp Hale's initial contingent was unable to rendezvous with the designated insurgents because they had been betrayed and were dispersed...
...Accompanying him were a monk and two laymen, one of whom was an aggressive wool merchant named Yangpel Pandatsang...
...Similarly, the first attempt to place Tibet on the United Nations' agenda fell victim to our fear that it might upset efforts to arrange a cease-fire in Korea...
...The U.S...
...Of 49 men dropped into Tibet between 1957 and 1961, 12 survived...
...Thondup financed his activities by running a booming business in tea and whiskey across the border to the Chinese Army...
...I pray for [those who did not...
...One man lost his voice after seeing his comrades killed, and was treated with acupuncture by the Chinese...
...Many rented their houses to them...
...For a period during 1958-59 these forces successfully engaged the Chinese and controlled large areas of central Tibet...
...The remaining resistance in Mustang crumpled under the clan favoritism of their leader...
...Knaus is less good at portraying some of the key Tibetan players...
...A year prior to the Camp Hale program's launching, two groups were dropped into Tibet...
...Although they insisted that the radio operators should be Tibetan, they had no one capable of understanding the technical details of the English instructions...
...added to these pressures by offering arms to the leader of Buddhism, whose faith is based on a loathing of violence...
...The U.S...
...Reviewed by Karen Swenson Author, "The Latitude of a Daughter: New and Selected Poems" At the end of his book, former CIA Tibetan Task Force chief John Kenneth Knaus writes of the obligation Americans feel toward the cause of Tibetan independence from China...
...Conflicts among internal factions further complicated the situation—and still do...
...It would also alleviate the guilt some of us feel over our participation in these efforts, which cost others their lives, but which were the prime adventure of our own...
...The muleteers who transported the whiskey, however, had a taste for the product too...
...Among other presents sent from President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the American people were six transmitters and receivers...
...In 1961 the CIA ceased its air operations there...
...The Dalai Lama's flight in 1959 was viewed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Administration "as a windfall for the U.S...
...By various wiles they eluded the Chinese, disposed of their Chinese passports and proceeded from Hong Kong to Washington on Tibetan documents, thus asserting their independence...
...As the Chinese Communists planned their invasion they, in turn, tried to persuade Topgay to join them and stage a rebellion against the Lhasa government in exchange for arms, ammunition and money...
...A second member of the Pandatsang family, for instance, exhibited a different kind of political opportunism...
...Later in the year three groups parachuted in along with ammunition, guns and radios...
...It was the outcome of these insurrections that led to the CIA's involvement in Tibet...
...Unable to meet with President Harry S. Truman under the existing circumstances, they met with Secretary of State George C. Marshall...
...The United States, for its part, was dropping ammunition, machine guns, hand grenades, and rifles—but not enough for both rebel camps...
...The Chinese, of course, also had the enormous advantage of control over both the air and the ground...
...Instead he retreated to his stronghold in Kham and attempted unsuccessfully to augment his own power by enlisting the English and the Americans in opposing the Chinese...
...The difficulties the Tibetans encountered in making these operational are symbolic of the difficulties they have continued to have with the outside world...
...Knaus personally enters the story in 1958, when the CI A set up a training center at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado...
...As they did so, Ireland and Malaysia agreed to lead an appeal to the UN on their behalf...
...President John F. Kennedy was sympathetic to the Tibetans, but his Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, was strongly opposed to helping what he called "deeply unhygienic tribesmen...
...The fighting soon dwindled to few bands in the Mustang area of Nepal...
...Knaus appears to agree with two former rebels that the Tibetan insurgency failed for three reasons: the fighters either could not or would not fight in small bands...
...Antin, a Khampa fighter whose story is told in Warrior by Jamyang Norbu, remembers: "Of the 16 people who set out from my village, only four of us survived that long terrible journey...
...Retribution was swift in the form of air strikes on both towns and monasteries in the vicinity...
...These men did make contact and urged the rebels to break into small parties, but they couldn't do that because they traveled with their families and animals...
...Thus we never get a vivid picture of the Dalai Lama's older brother, Gyalo Thondup, although he is a very important figure...
...In 1974 the US...
...The Chinese, who have never missed an opportunity to manipulate Tibetan divisions, offered the Dalai Lama's elder brother the position of governor-general if he would assist them, suggesting this might be justified for the sake of socialism...
...He created an organization to discuss internal conditions and to lobby New Delhi...
...In 1959 the Goloks, a seminomadic group fissured by feuding clans but devoted to the Dalai Lama, massacred a Chinese garnson stationed at the town of Dzachuka...
...Others accepted official allowances...
...Two weeks before the Korean War broke out, for example, the State Department and the British Embassy in Washington held talks about supplying aid to Tibet's indigenous resistance...
...Knaus tells us his time in the CIA supporting Tibet was the great adventure of his life...
...This is usually a murky area that the Tibetans are at pains to conceal, but Knaus explains it in considerable detail...
...His students, though, were not interested in Platonic notions of justice and government...
...The arms drops, therefore, triggered disputes among the leaders...
...In addition, their young children were taken to be educated in China, their monasteries were desecrated, their men and teenage boys were deported, and their land was occupied by Han Chinese...
...And when a flood devastated the town of Gyantse, he not only raised money for food and other assistance but even got the Indian government to airdrop medicines...
...In 1947 Tibet sent a delegation to the United States headed by Tsipon Shakabpa, its chief financial officer...
...The Khams rose up against the Chinese that same year, only to be bombed, tortured and made to perform public acts of degradation...
...OnNovember 19, the government sent its first message to the State Department asking for help in combating a Chinese invasion...
...It is interesting to juxtapose the author's closing statement and the closing sentences of Warriors of Tibet...
...But almost immediately the tide began to turn...
...they could not live off the barren countryside...
...I request this boon of my readers, to join me in this prayer so that the sufferings of my people may soon end, and the ancient nation of Tibet become free once again....' There is an unbridgeable difference between the emotions of those who must live in peril and fear and, in the words of Graham Green, "the feeling of exhilaration which a measure of danger brings to a visitor with a return ticket...
...attempt to outflank Communism in Asia...
...Once the Chinese were established in Tibet, local aristocrats did not hesitate to profit from the invaders, who arrived with sacks full of silver dollars...
...He was the one who proposed that the U S. train Tibetans ready to return to their country and enlarge local pockets of resistance...
...Part of his job was to help the prospective returnees explain their objectives to their countrymen...
...He helped establish the Tibetan Mirror, a Tibetan language magazine...
...He attempted to short-circuit the appeal of Communism by instituting reforms on all of his family properties...
...In the 1940s Yangpel's brother, Topgay, was made a colonel by Chiang Kai-shek and assigned responsibility for the Kham region...
...and the Americans, fearing possible security breaches, wouldnotprovide enough communications equipment for close contact to be maintained...
...Once he recovered he was tortured...
...After Mao Zedong's 1949 victory over the Nationalists, Lhasa knew it would be Beijing's next target...
...In the period between the Chinese invasion and the insurrection against them in 1959 that culminated in the Dalai Lama's escape to India, the young prelate was himself constantly pulled in every conceivable direction by his family, his monastic ties, and the various tribal and social groups...
...Unfortunately, only toward the end of the book does the author manage to capture the character of a few of the nomad soldiers...
...The tales related by survivors are harrowing...
...Gompo Tashi's forces were overwhelmed by the Chinese, in part because they fought in large groups rather than small guerrilla bands...
...continued to subsidize the Dalai Lama and his entourage, at a cost of $ 15,000 a month, but President Lyndon B. Johnson's Administration became preoccupied with Vietnam...
...even rescinded the Dalai Lama's subsidy, although Knaus claims that it never entered into the Nixon Administration's negotiations with the Chinese...
...Conservative monastic elements had quashed all earlier British attempts to open schools or to educate young people abroad...
...Meanwhile the peasants were forced to labor and go hungry to support the invaders...
...He was assigned the task of developing a political program for insurgents who were to be parachuted back into Tibet, and he writes enthusiastically about them as well as the reactions they prompted from instructors...
...Developments in Korea had increased American interest in this task, but neither the U. S. nor Britain wanted to risk a rupture with then neutral New Delhi...

Vol. 82 • August 1999 • No. 9


 
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