Part 2 of 2
Other veterans who referred to the documents were similarly nonplussed. In Pokhara, Wangyal Lama explained, “our soldiers attacked Chinese trucks and seized some documents of the Chinese government. After that the Americans increased our pay scale. Nobody knew what the contents of those documents were. At that time, questions weren’t asked. If you asked too many questions, others would be suspicious of you.”58 Baba Yeshi, the general who was in charge of operations in Mustang, said that
a group of thirty Tibetans on horse traveled into Tibet. . . . Nine days later the group returned with uniforms, hats, diaries, Chinese government documents, and a lot of ammunition. . . . All that was captured resulted from the ambush of two Chinese convoys in western Tibet. [I] sent the diaries and government documents to Darjeeling. . . . [Later] four CIA officials congratulated me on overcoming such difficult initial conditions and praised me for our success in attacking the Chinese. As a reward the CIA gave me an Omega chronograph.59
Apparently, the Americans did not realize that the Tibetans had discriminating tastes in timepieces. Khampas had dominated the transnational Tibetan trade industry, and many of the resistance soldiers were former traders who possessed a sophisticated knowledge of the market value (and not just the use value) of international commodities. On this topic, Lobsang Jampa adds that at an earlier time “we were also given Omega wrist watches by the American instructors. They also gave us one trunk full of other watches. These watches were of cheap quality, and some of our soldiers did not want them.”60 What the soldiers did want was the restoration of Tibet to the rule of the Dalai Lama and the opportunity to return to their homes—that is, for life to return to “normal.” Captured documents of unknown importance were but a small victory and, at that particular moment, difficult to regard as a concrete step toward their goal. The marginality of the Tibetans to broader U.S. Cold War goals vis-à-vis China and beyond was the result of a larger set of discourses, institutions, and experiences. Yet, as Anna Tsing has shown in the case of the Meratus in Indonesia, people often engage and challenge their marginality.61 One way that Tibetan soldiers dealt with this marginality was by denying it. They placed the resistance, unlike the Omega watches, squarely within the realm of the valuable. Many of them were convinced that they would defeat China diplomatically if not militarily and return to Tibet well within their lifetimes.
The Mustang Generation: Tibetan Resistance Operations in South AsiaHope for Tibet was cultivated in action. As long as the Mustang army was actively engaged in strikes against China, the soldiers felt they were contributing to the collective project of regaining Tibet. Mustang’s geographic location made it a politically strategic, albeit geographically difficult, base for resistance operations in Tibet. Following the Gangtok resistance meeting, the men who were chosen as leaders were sent for training in the United States, and other recruits received training in India before heading to Mustang. In Mustang itself, CIA-trained graduates provided instruction to other soldiers. U.S. assistance to the Tibetans in Mustang began during the first year of operations, at a time when the guerrillas were in dire straits. Two airdrops of supplies (arms, ammunition, food, etc.) were made in 1962 and another in 1965. Through 1969, the CIA provided financial assistance to the Tibetan resistance movement via the intelligence headquarters in Delhi. Even after the CIA’s role ended, however, the Mustang-based operations continued for another five years.
The guerrillas referred to the Mustang force as the “Lo Army,” which was divided into battalions of approximately 100 men each.62 Each battalion conducted military exercises and received weaponry and warfare training. The battalions rotated in and out of Tibet, traveling at night and sleeping in the forest or in boulder fields during the day. Their activities in Tibet were a combination of guerrilla maneuvers and intelligence-gathering. They carried out raids in the summertime, when the mountain passes were still covered with snow but the danger of frostbite was less. Resistance life was not romantic and was plagued by the uncertainties of external support, by internal squabbles, and by changing relations with the local Mustang population. The resistance benefited not only from the support of the King of Mustang, but also from the silent consent of the Nepali government.
Nepali officials, including King Birendra himself, visited Mustang for discussions with resistance leaders, and Nepali intelligence officers were stationed in Mustang throughout the years of operations. Just as the government of Nepal was aware of the Tibetan presence in Mustang, so too was the government of India cognizant of Tibetan resistance activities originating in South Asia. The difference was that India not only knew about the revitalized Chushi Gangdrug activities but was also, along with the United States, a direct participant in them.
In addition to the Mustang guerrilla force, the Chushi Gangdrug pursued a number of other efforts from exile. The CIA continued to parachute groups of Colorado-trained soldiers into Tibet for operations throughout the country.63 Tibetan guerrilla units also entered Tibet on foot from India for intelligence- gathering missions. Unlike in Nepal, however, the Tibetan units in India were not independent of local militias or government. Instead, they were incorporated into them. Tibetans were trained by the Indian Central Intelligence Bureau (CIB) and, after training, would either stay with the CIB or go on to a leadership post in a new Tibetan force in the Indian military. On 14 November 1962, in the midst of a Sino-Indian border war, the Special Frontier Force (SFF), an all-Tibetan force popularly known as “Establishment 22,” was formed.64
The Mustang Tibetans regarded the SFF as the Chushi Gangdrug branch in India. In addition to Establishment 22, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs set up an Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force (ITBF) under its auspices in October 1962. Both forces were stationed in border areas. As understood by the Tibetans, the ITBF included Tibetans in its ranks, whereas Establishment 22 was specifically created “to restore independence to Tibet.”65 Based in Dehra Dun, the SFF was initially trained by both U.S. and Indian officers but was led by four Tibetan commanders—Ratu Ngawang, Gyatso Dhondup, Jampa Kalden, and Jampa Wangdu. Both Ratu and Gyatso were from Lithang, Andrug Gompo Tashi’s district; Jampa Kalden was from Chamdo; and Jampa Wangdu was from Lhasa.66 The Americans pulled out of Establishment 22 after U.S. relations with India soured in the 1970s, and the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB) moved in. The trainers and equipment changed from American to Soviet.67 In 1971 the Tibetan force was used in India’s war with East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Fifty-six Tibetan SFF soldiers were killed in battle, and 580 Tibetan soldiers were decorated with medals for bravery by the Indian government.68
Although the withdrawal of American support did not stop activities in India, it did eventually stymie efforts in Nepal. Several years after U.S. funding was cut off, the Nepali government ended its policy of turning a blind eye to covert operations against the PRC from within its borders. Pressured by the Chinese authorities, the government of Nepal tried to force the guerrillas to shut things down, publicly calling them “bandits” and claiming not to have known that guerrillas were there in the first place. Not until 1974, however, did the Tibetan soldiers finally decide to call it quits. Even then, they did so only in deference to the pleas of the strongest unifying force in the Tibetan exile community, the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama’s brother-in-law carried a taped message from the Dalai Lama to the soldiers in Mustang by hand. The Tibetan spiritual leader urged the soldiers to surrender, saying that it would not be good for them to fight with the Nepalese army. Having received orders from the Dalai Lama himself, the guerrillas finally ended their operations and turned over their weapons to Nepali officials.
The resistance operation ended in drama and tragedy: splits within the organization, six-year-long jail terms in Nepal for a number of the leaders, the resettlement of many soldiers in lowland refugee camps, preferential treatment for those who cooperated with the Nepali government, and the daring attempt by one resistance leader and his men to escape to India, only to be ambushed and killed by the Nepali army. The dissolution of the Mustang force in 1974 left the Tibetan soldiers in grim circumstances. Many could not speak Nepali and had no money or obvious means of livelihood. Upon release from prison, most of them were resettled in refugee camps run by the Nepali government and the International Committee of the Red Cross. As a result of political splits within the resistance force, some of the veterans’ camps were dissociated from the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Nonetheless, even when the Mustang operation was terminated and the soldiers were scattered about, Chushi Gangdrug continued to operate. The head office in Darjeeling, and later Delhi and Dharamsala, maintained a political and social (and at times antagonistic) presence in the refugee community. In Nepal, Mustang veterans formed an organization called “Lo-thik” to address issues of social and economic welfare. Members of the group were from all regions of Tibet, and the Lo-thik provided (and still provides) a pension to veterans based on their years of service. Pension funds are generated through different Chushi Gangdrug business ventures in Nepal and India. No pension funds are given to the veterans by either the Tibetan government-in-exile or the U.S. government.
The end of the Mustang operations marked the close of a specific chapter in the history of the Tibetan resistance. The resistance continues in the form of Chushi Gangdrug, a social and political organization with a military past, and as a component of the Indian Army. Yet, the dissolution of the Mustang army signaled the end of an autonomous Tibetan military force. Although the U.S. government regarded the Mustang operation as primarily an intelligence- gathering force, the Tibetans themselves viewed their activities as part of a military battle, not just the gathering of information. For many of the veterans, the loss of U.S. support and the order from the Dalai Lama to leave Mustang made them pessimistic about what the future might hold. Nonetheless, the support provided by the United States and the close bonds between Tibetan trainees and CIA instructors sustained the former guerrillas’ belief that the West in general, and the United States in particular, might provide help to Tibet in the future. Many observers in the West, however, focused not so much on the plight of the Tibetan soldiers as on their connection to the CIA.
Secrets Told and UntoldThe story of the “Colorado Tibetans” that opened this article is an example of how the story of the resistance as a government secret dominates the literature on the CIA-Tibet connection. As words not quite “unspoken,” but spoken only to a select few, secrets have the freedom and the license to travel, circulating not just as acknowledged silences but also as truths to be pursued and revealed. Thus, although many Tibetans feel obliged not to divulge resistance secrets, outsiders are not bound by the same constraints.69 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, despite the best efforts of the U.S. and Tibetan governments to keep things under wraps, bits and pieces of what was going on began to slip out. A series of investigative and speculative articles appeared, some romanticizing the resistance and others criticizing the CIA, the Tibetan government, or both.70 Currently, the literature in both English and Tibetan on the resistance is growing, albeit along somewhat different tracks and in both cases giving away some secrets while still keeping others.71
Admittedly, guerrilla resistance and government intelligence work are, by their very nature, secretive enterprises. In this case, the history is doubly secret because of the international political climate at the time—the height of the Cold War—and because independence remains an elusive goal for the Tibetan resistance and exile community. Only recently did the U.S. government begin releasing information about its involvement with the Tibetan resistance. In Asia, even less official information is available. The Nepalese government publicly denied any knowledge, not to mention approval, of the Tibetans’ use of Nepalese territory for resistance operations. Privately, however, the King of Nepal had told the U.S. government as far back as 1950 that he was willing to aid the Tibetans.72 In India today, the public knows little about its government’s cooperation with the United States in aiding the Tibet resistance.
Indeed, not until April 1978, when rumors began to circulate that the Ganges, the most sacred river in India, had been polluted by the government, was there even the slightest public hint of India’s role vis-à-vis Tibet.73 The Indian government caused a stir when it acknowledged that the rumors might be true. It turned out that India and the United States had conducted a series of secret operations against China in 1965, including the installation of plutonium- 239 devices to monitor Chinese missile launches and nuclear explosions on the high reaches of the Himalayan peak of Nanda Devi. Later, when intelligence teams went to retrieve the sensors, a 33-pound pack containing two to three pounds of plutonium could not be found. Intelligence officials assumed—rightly, as it turned out—that the monitors had been swept away by an avalanche and had perhaps ended up in the Ganges River, which runs past Nanda Devi.
Other secrets are only beginning to come to light, such as the revelation that the Tibetan resistance provided key intelligence information to the U.S. government, including information about PLA military capacity, internal dissent in China during the Great Leap Forward, and information about the first Chinese nuclear tests at Lop Nor in northern Tibet.74 Secrets between governments persist and are a key part of the history of the resistance, yet what for India, Pakistan, Nepal, and the United States was an official secret, was for the Tibetans much more. For the Tibetan community, the story of the resistance is not just one of clandestine politics or government secrets; rather, it consists of multiple stories—personal tales of serving the nation and the Dalai Lama, accounts of the armed struggle for their country, and continuing debates over facets of communal identity in the exile community.
The resistance was ultimately unsuccessful in regaining Tibet, but that does not diminish its historical importance for the resistance movement. Many Chushi Gangdrug veterans consider the resistance a key part of recent Tibetan history and view their own combat experiences as defining moments in their lives. For veterans, the resistance was important in defending Tibet against the Chinese and in defending and protecting the Dalai Lama in his escape from Tibet. Although one might expect that the story of the popular armed struggle for Tibet would be at the center of national narratives of modern Tibet, it is not. Histories of the Tibetan resistance have not yet secured a place within state-sanctioned national history in exile. One of the reasons that stories of the Tibetan resistance are not a part of official Tibetan history is the Tibetan cultural practice that I call “historical arrest.”75
Set against the backdrop of forty-four years of exile, Chushi Gangdrug now stands for more than a guerrilla resistance army. Since 1974, Chushi Gangdrug has had a social and political, not just military, presence in the Tibetan community. Cutting across all of these organizational facets, however, is the predominantly Khampa nature of the organization. Although Tibetans from other regions participated in the resistance, Khampas still dominate the leadership posts and the membership, and Chushi Gangdrug is widely perceived as a Khampa organization. As such, the resistance does not easily fit into standard narratives of Tibetan struggles against China, which have been primarily celebrated as diplomatic or non-violent. The one exception is the holiday on 10 March commemorating a popular revolt in Lhasa in 1959. By contrast, there is no community-wide holiday in exile that commemorates the Chushi Gangdrug resistance. As with sectarian and other alternative histories of Tibet, the regional inflections of resistance histories are discouraged in favor of homogenized, and at times sanitized, histories of Tibet. The experiences of Tibetan soldiers, and resistance history in general, remain “subjugated knowledges” in the Foucaultian sense, having been “arrested” in favor of other ways of telling the story.76 The factors that determine what counts as history are themselves historical and political products rather than fixed cultural practices. Amid the social and political chaos of Tibetan geographic dislocation, the possibilities for telling resistance history are generated in and by local, national, and global forces at work both during and after the Cold War.
Conclusion: Ethnography and Cold War StudiesHow should we tell Chushi Gangdrug history as part of Cold War history? More fundamentally, should we tell Tibetan resistance history as part of Cold War history? My work with Tibetan veterans suggests that they see their struggle as one of Tibetans against the Chinese, rather than a broader international effort against Communism. They do, however, regard their struggle as a joint one in which Tibetans worked with individuals from other countries, supported by foreign governments—the U.S. and Indian governments, among others. Although my field notes and interviews include numerous comments to the effect that “the Americans didn’t really want to help Tibet, they just wanted to bring down Communism,” overall I find that resistance veterans, regardless of their current political orientation, are supportive of the Dalai Lama (though not invariably of the Tibetan government-in-exile), grateful to the CIA for the help it provided, and proud of the resistance’s part in the quest for Tibetan independence. Tibetan views of the guerrilla movement are, in this sense, a part of Cold War history—that is, Tibetans were not just acted on; they were actors in Cold War struggles. Although in understanding the Tibetan resistance we must take account of cultural-historical aspects unrelated to Communism and global responses to it, we also need to pay attention to the constraints imposed by the Cold War on Tibetan actions and opportunities. Tibetan understandings of the military-political struggle of 1956–1974 need to be incorporated into our broader study of the United States and the Cold War in Asia.77
In fitting Tibet into broader macro-histories of the Cold War, I stress here the magnitude of understanding the resistance on its own terms before trying to understand it in relation to the United States. The cultural, historical, and political context of the resistance is undoubtedly linked at points to the United States, but resistance existed before the U.S. government got involved and exists beyond its connections to the United States. The connection to the United States, though important in its own right, should not obscure other, equally vital aspects of the resistance, such as the specifically Tibetan brand of organization and administration and the sociopolitical location of the resistance in the Tibetan exile community. We must, therefore, pursue both local and global levels of inquiry—local in the United States, India, and China, as well as in Tibet, and global in terms of the broader Cold War context.
In the Tibet-China conflict, securities and insecurities are intimately bound together. The PRC is fixed as an objective and external threat, but the social and cultural meanings associated with this threat are culturally subjective understandings of the conflict. As understood by the Tibetan guerrillas, for example, the threat was much more immediate and localized than the global spread of Communism, which was the main threat perceived by the U.S. government. Each bundle of insecurities reflects back on cultural imperatives and identities, often but not always put into operation through state institutions and technologies. In regard to the Tibetan resistance, the processes through which the resistance took place and was categorized were not inevitable or only internal. Rather, these processes were contingent on hegemonic geohistoric structures and typologies and remain so today.78 The local complexities of cross-cultural Cold War politics, argues anthropologist Joseph Masco, are to be found in “investigations of how people experience insecurities across a broader sphere of relationships.”79 In closing, I follow his advice in suggesting a different sort of Cold War intervention, one that will consider histories such as that of the Tibetan Chushi Gangdrug resistance not just at the level of the state but also at the ground level, looking at actors and institutions such as resistance battalions and CIA training teams. As research continues on this topic, we may begin to unravel not just the secrets of U.S.-Tibet relations but also the cultural logics behind them. Only through such collaborative scholarship will a full picture of the Tibetan resistance in all its endeavors, relations, and perspectives be possible.
AcknowledgmentsThe initial version of this article was prepared for “The Cold War and Its Legacy in Tibet: Great-Power Politics and Regional Security” conference at Harvard University. My thanks to Mark Kramer and all at the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University for organizing the conference, and to the participants and audience for their useful feedback. Thank you also to anonymous journal reviewers for comments and suggestions, as well as to John Collins, Eugene Mei, Ann Stoler, Lucien Taylor, and audiences in Berkeley, Boulder, Chapel Hill, Chicago, and Park City for constructive and critical engagement with earlier versions of the paper. Research support was provided by the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. Finally, thanks are owed to the many Tibetan veterans and retired U.S. intelligence officers who took the time to discuss their stories with me.
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Notes:1. David Wise, The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy, and Power (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 239–262, 557–559.
2. Georg Simmel, “The Secret and the Secret Society,” in Kurt H. Wolff, ed. and trans., The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: The Free Press, 1950), pp. 307–376;Michael Taussig, Defacements: Public Secrets and the Labor of the Historical Negative (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); and Stanton K. Tefft, ed., Secrecy: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1980).
3. Examples include Tsongkha Lhamo Tsering, Tsan rgol gyal skyob, Deb bzhi pa, Glo smon thang du bstan srung dang blangs dmag sgar chags tshul dang Bod nang gray dmar la phar rgol ‘thab ‘dzings ji byas dngos rjien lo rgyus deb phreng gnyis pa bzhugs [Resistance, Volume IV: An Account of the Establishment of the Tibetan National Volunteer Defense Force in Mustang and Operations against the Communist Chinese inside Tibet, Part II] (Dharamsala: Amnye Machen Institute, 2003); Tsongkha Lhamo Tsering, Tsan rgol rgyal skyob, Deb Gsum pa, Glo smon thang du bstan srung dang blangs dmag sgar chags tshul dang Bod nang rgya dmar la phar rgol ‘thab ‘dzings ji byas dngos rjien lo rgyus deb phreng dang po bzhugs [Resistance, Volume III: An Account of the Establishment of the Tibetan National Volunteer Defense Force in Mustang and Operations against the Communist Chinese inside Tibet, Part I] (Dharamsala: Amnye Machen Institute, 2002); Tsongkha Lhamo Tsering, Bstan rgol rgyal skyob, Deb gnyis pa, Bod nang du drag po’i ‘thab rstod byas skor, 1957 nas 1962 bar [Resistance, Volume II: The Secret Operations into Tibet (1957–1962)], Tashi Tsering, ed. (Dharamsala, India: Amnye Machen Institute, 1998); Tsongkha Lhamo Tsering, Bstan rgol rgyal skyob, Deb tang po, Sku’i gcen po llha sras rgya lo don grub mchog gi thog ma’i mdsad phyogs dang gus gnyis dbar chab srid ‘brel ba byung stang skor [Resistance, Volume I: The Early Political Activities of Gyalo Thondup, Older Brother of H. H. the Dalai Lama, and the Beginnings of My Political Involvement, 1945–1959], Tashi Tsering, ed. (Dharamsala, India: Amnye Machen Institute, 1992); Phuntsok Tashi Taklha (Stag llha phun tshogs bkra shis), Mi tshe’i byung ba brjod pa, 3 vols. (Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1995); and Phupa Tsering Tobgye (Phu pa Tse ring sTobs rgyas), Gangs can bstan srung dang blangs dmag: sMar khams sgang gi rgyal srung dmag ‘thab lo rgyus [The Tibetan Volunteer Army to Defend Buddhism: The History of Markham’s Battles to Defend Tibet] (Dharamsala, India: Narthang Press, 1998).
4. Gompo Tashi Andrugtsang, Four Rivers, Six Ranges: A True Account of Khampa Resistance to Chinese in Tibet (Dharamsala, India: Information and Publicity Office, 1973); Dawa Norbu, “The 1959 Tibetan Rebellion: An Interpretation,” China Quarterly, Vol. 77 (1979), pp. 74–93; Jamyang Norbu, Horseman in the Snow: The Story of Aten, an Old Khampa Warrior (Dharamsala, India: Information Office, Central Tibetan Secretariat, 1979); Jamyang Norbu, “The Tibetan Resistance Movement and the Role of the C.I.A.,” in Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner, eds., Resistance and Reform in Tibet (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 186–196; Kunga Samten Dewatshang, Flight at the Cuckoo’s Behest: The Life and Times of a Tibetan Freedom Fighter (As Told to His Son Dorjee Wangdi Dewatshang) (New Delhi: Paljor Publications, 1997); Brief Introduction of Chushi Gangdrug Defend Tibet Volunteer Force and Welfare Society of Central Dhokham Chushi Gangdrug of Tibet (Delhi:Welfare Society of Central Dhokham Chushi Gangdrug, 1998); Roger E. McCarthy, Tears of the Lotus: Accounts of Tibetan Resistance to the Chinese Invasion, 1950–1962 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co, 1997); John Kenneth Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival (New York: Public Affairs, 1999); Kenneth Conboy and JamesMorrison, The CIA’s SecretWar in Tibet (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002); andMikel Dunham, Buddha’s Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Communist Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet (New York: Penguin, 2004).
5. Jennifer Milliken, “Intervention and Identity: Reconstructing the West in Korea,” in Jutta Weldes et al., eds., Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 91.
6. Melvyn Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State (Berkeley: University of California, 1989).
7. Examples include Joseph Masco, The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); David H. Price, Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); Laura Nader, “The Phantom Factor: Impact of the Cold War on Anthropology,” in Noam Chomsky et al., The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years (New York: The New Press, 1997), pp. 107–146; Eric Wakin, Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsurgency in Thailand (Madison: University of Wisconsin, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1992); and Hugh Gusterson, Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
8. On this point, see Pamela Ballinger, “The Politics of the Past: Redefining Insecurity along the ‘World’s Most Open Border,’” in Weldes et al., eds., Cultures of Insecurity, pp. 63–90.
9. “Introduction: Constructing Insecurity,” in Weldes et al., eds., Cultures of Insecurity, pp. 1–33.
10. On the concepts of difference and otherness in anthropology, see Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
11. John Borneman, “American Anthropology as Foreign Policy,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 97, No. 4 (1995), pp. 663–672.
12. Ibid., p. 667.
13. Ibid., p. 665. See also the articles in Talal Asad, ed., Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (London: Ithaca Press, 1973); Dell Hymes, ed., Reinventing Anthropology (New York: Pantheon Press, 1972); and George Stocking, ed., Colonial Situations: Essays in the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).
14. On failed attempts to teach nation-building to the Tibetans, see Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War.
15. On other special operations in Asia, see Richard J. Aldrich et al., eds., The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945–65: Western Intelligence, Propaganda, and Special Operations (London: Frank Cass, 2000).
16. Weldes et al., eds., Cultures of Insecurity.
17. George Marcus, “Foreword,” in Weldes et al, eds., Cultures of Insecurity, pp. vii-xix.
18. Gusterson, Nuclear Rites, p. 223.
19. Ibid.
20. Wise, The Politics of Lying; Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974); Chris Mullin, “Tibetan Conspiracy,” Far Eastern Economic Review, No. 32 (5 September 1975), pp. 30–34; and Christopher Robbins, Air America: The True Story of the CIA’s Mercenary Fliers in Covert Operations from Pre-war China to Present Day Nicaragua (London: Corgi Books, 1979).
21. Andrugtsang, Four Rivers, Six Ranges.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Brief Introduction, p. 3; and Tachen, interview, Kathmandu, 23 April 1998.
25. Lobsang Jampa, interview, Kathmandu, November 1997. See also Andrugtsang, Four Rivers, Six Ranges; and Thubten Khentsun (Thub bstan mKhas bstun), dKa’a sdug ‘og gi byung pa brjod pa [A Tale of Sorrow and Hardship] (Dharamsala, India: Sherig Pharkhang, 1998), p. 36. Lobsang Jampa also states that the Chinese would put Khampa clothing on dead Chinese soldiers and take photographs for propaganda purposes.
26. Lobsang Jampa, interview, Kathmandu, November 1997; and Tachen, interview, Kathmandu, November 1997. According to several resistance veterans, these rewards were hypothetical only.
27. Gyato Kelsang, interview, New York City, 12 April 2000. See also Alo Chhonzed, Bod kyi gnas lugs bden ‘dzin sgo phye ba’i lde mig zhes bya ba a lo chos mdzad kyi gdams, spyi lo 1920 nas 1982 bar [The Key That opens the Door of Truth to the Tibetan Situation: Materials on Modern Tibetan History] (Canberra: self-published, 1983); and Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947 (London: Pimlico, 1999), pp. 144–147.
28. Andrugtsang, Four Rivers, Six Ranges, p. 40.
29. Gyato Kelsang, interview; Lobsang Jampa, interview; and Ratu Ngawang, interview, Delhi, 5 December 1997. See also Andrugtsang, Four Rivers, Six Ranges.
30. Gyalo Thondup, interview, Kalimpong, June 1999. See also Tsering, Bstan rgol rgyal skyob, pp. 25–31.
31. Paljor Jigme Namling (rNam gling dPal ‘byor ‘Jig med), Mi tshe’i lo rgyus dang ‘bril yod sna tshogs [My Life History and Other Stories] (Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1998). See also Khentsun, dKa’a sdug ‘og gi byung pa brjod pa.
32. The early history of U.S.-Tibet relations remains murky. Journalist Tom Laird contends that in the 1940s U.S. nuclear weapons intelligence operations in Asia involved Tibet, a factor that might help explain why such secrecy shrouds U.S.-Tibetan affairs. See Thomas Laird, Into Tibet: The CIA’s First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa (New York: Grove Press, 2002).
33. S. Mahmud Ali, Cold War in the High Himalayas: The USA, China, and South Asia in the 1950s (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); and Albert Siegfried Willner, “The Eisenhower Administration and Tibet, 1953–1961: Influence and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1995.
34. Premen Addy, Tibet on the Imperial Chessboard (New Delhi: Academic Publishers, 1984).
35. Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War.
36. Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
37. Ali, Cold War in the High Himalaya, provides the most comprehensive view of the Cold War in South Asia with relation to Tibet.
38. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet; TseponW. D. Shakabpa, Tibet: A Political History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); and Tsepon W. D. Shakabpa, Bod kyi srid don rgyal rabs [Political History of Tibet], 2 vols. (Kalimpong, India: Shakabpa House, n.d.).
39. Dawa Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2001).
40. Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows; Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy; and Warren S. Smith, Tibetan Nation: A History of Tibetan Nationalism and Sino-Tibetan Relations (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996).
41. Tony Poe, interview, San Francisco, 17 December 1999.
42. For example, Baba Yeshi, the chief leader in Mustang through the early 1970s, states: “In the beginning, I thought that the Americans were helping us, really helping us, to regain our country and our freedom. But, later, after many things, seeing what they gave, what they asked for, I realized they were only looking for their own benefit.” Baba Yeshi, interview by Thomas Laird, Kathmandu, December 1993.
43. This was Bruce Walker, who, posing as a member of the U.S. Air Force, studied Tibetan at the University of Washington in Seattle. His classmates included two now prominent Tibetologists— E. Gene Smith and Melvyn Goldstein. Bruce Walker, interview, San Francisco, 7 January 2000.
44. This story has been told to me several times. A written version is available in Tsering, Bstan rgol rgyal skyob, deb gnyis pa.
45. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet; and Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).
46. For a brief review of Khampa social, religious, and political organization by district, see Samuel, Civilized Shamans, pp. 64–86. On the political status of Kham in the early twentieth century, see Carole McGranahan, “Empire and the Status of Tibet: British, Chinese, and Tibetan Negotiations, 1913–1934,” in Alex McKay, ed., The History of Tibet, Vol. 3: The Tibetan Encounter with Modernity (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2003), pp. 267–295.
47. Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War.
48. Namling, Mi tshe’i lo rgyus dang ‘bril yod sna tshogs; and Sonam Tashi, Bod dmag gcig gi mi tshe [Life of a Tibetan Army Soldier] (Dharamsala, India: Sherig Pharkang, 1997).
49. The “5412 Special Group” was a secret group focusing on covert activities under National Security Council Directive 5412. Its members were the national security adviser; the deputy secretaries of state and defense; and one staff member, an assistant to CIA Director Allen Dulles. Unlike the NSC itself, the Special Group “was usually able to decide and coordinate the government’s covert programs on the spot without its members having to check with their principals.” Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War, p. 351 n. 46.
50. Ibid., p. 249; and McCarthy, Tears of the Lotus, p. 236.
51. Tibet was, of course, linked to China in U.S. policymaking. On U.S. policy toward China during the Cold War, albeit without reference to Tibet, see the collected essays in Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin, eds., Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001).
52. One of the most vocal opponents of the Tibet operation was John Kenneth Galbraith, the ambassador to India under President John F. Kennedy. For a discussion of Tibetan policy under Dwight Eisenhower, see Willner, “The Eisenhower Administration and Tibet.”
53.Walter Benjamin, “The Story-Teller,” in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. by Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), p. 89.
54. Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War, pp. 249–250; and McCarthy, Tears of the Lotus, pp. 231–236.
55. The documents were released to the Library of Congress in 1963 and were published as J. Chester Cheng, ed., The Politics of the Chinese Red Army: A Translation of the Bulletin of Activities of the People’s Liberation Army (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1966).
56. Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama (New York: Harper Collins, 1990), p. 148.
57. Lobsang Jampa, interview.
58. Wangyal Lama, interview, Pokhara, Nepal, April 1998.
59. Robert Ragis Smith, “A History of Baba Yeshe’s Role in the Tibetan Resistance,” B.A. thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 1998. I thank General Baba Yeshi, his son Lobsang Palden, and his daughter-inlaw Dolma for sharing this manuscript with me. As it is a direct translation of Baba Yeshi’s own autobiography, I have changed the pronouns from “he” to “I.”
60. Lobsang Jampa, interview.
61. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
62. Tibetans commonly refer to Mustang as “Lo,” after the name of the kingdom’s capital, Lo Monthang.
63. See Tsering, Bstan rgol rgyal skyob.
64. The most detailed history of the Special Frontier Force is found in Conboy and Morrison, The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet.
65. Ratu Ngawang, interview, Delhi, 5 December 1997.
66. Jampa Kalden, interview, Dharamsala, 22 June 1999.
67. Ibid.
68. Brief Introduction, p. 21.
69. Georg Simmel, “The Stranger,” in Wolff, ed. and trans., The Sociology of Georg Simmel, pp. 402– 408.
70. George Patterson, A Fool at Forty (Waco, TX:Word Books, 1970); George Patterson, “Ambush on the Roof of the World,” Reader’s Digest, March 1968, pp. 59–64; Adrian Cowell, “I Saw the Secret Shooting War with China,” Argosy, Vol. 364, No. 5 (1967), pp. 29–33, 96–97; and Michel Peissel, The Secret War in Tibet (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972).
71. Jeff Long, “Going After Wangdu: The Search for a Tibetan Guerrilla Leads to Colorado’s Secret CIA Camp,” in Michael Tobias, ed., Mountain People (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), pp. 112–118; Hugh Deane, “History Repeats Itself: The Cold War in Tibet,” CovertAction, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1987), pp. 48–50; Fred Lane, “The Warrior Tribes of Kham,” Asiaweek, 2 March 1994, p. 17; William M. Leary, “Secret Mission to Tibet,” Air and Space, Vol. 12, No. 1 (December 1997/January 1998), pp. 62–71; Melinda Liu, “When Heaven Shed Blood,” Newsweek, 19 April 1999, p. 27; John B. Roberts III, “The Dalai Lama’s Great Escape,” George, October 1997, pp. 130– 133; John B. Roberts III, “The Secret War over Tibet,” The American Spectator, December 1997, pp. 31–35, 85; and Paul Salopek, “How the CIA Helped Tibet Fight Their Chinese Invaders,” The Chicago Tribune, 25 January 1997, p. 4. On the Tibetan side, see the film The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet, directed by Ritu Sarin and Tenzin Soman (White Crane Productions, 1999).
72. “Mis. Dev. Relating to Tibet,” Cable No. 683, from New Delhi to Department of State, 30 March 1950, in U.S. National Archives.
73. See Ali, Cold War in the High Himalaya, pp. 1–3.
74. Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War; and Liu, “When Heaven Shed Blood.”
75. Carole McGranahan, “Truth, Fear, and Lies: Exile Politics and Arrested Histories of the Tibetan Resistance,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 20, No. 4 (November 2005), pp. 570–600.
76. Foucault describes “subjugated knowledges” in two ways: first, as “historical contents that have been buried and disguised in a functionalist coherence or formal systematization”; and second, as “a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated.” Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” in Colin Gordon, ed., Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 34, 38.
77. CaroleMcGranahan, “Empire Out of Bounds: Tibet in the Era of Decolonization,” in Ann Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter Perdue, eds., Imperial Formations and Their Discontents (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, forthcoming).
78. On geohistoric categories in the international realm, see Fernando Coronil, “Beyond Occidentalism: Towards Post-Imperial Geohistoric Categories,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1996), pp. 51–87.
79. Joseph Masco, “States of Insecurity: Plutonium and Post–Cold War Anxiety in New Mexico, 1992–96,” in Weldes et al., eds., Cultures of Insecurity, p. 226.