CIA activities in Tibet

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Traditional Kham houses

The CIA's first attempt at manipulating world politics was fruitless for the entire length of its operation. After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in October 1950, the CIA inserted SAD paramilitary teams into Tibet to train and lead Tibetan resistance fighters against the People's Liberation Army of China; selected Tibetan soldiers were trained in the Rocky Mountains of the United States.

SAD Paramilitary Officers were responsible for the Dalai Lama's clandestine escape to India, narrowly escaping capture and chance of execution by the Chinese government.

The Dalai Lama's administration acknowledged, in October 1998, that it received $1.7 million a year in the 1960s from the US government through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and also trained a resistance movement in Colorado (USA).

U.S. assistance to the Tibetan resistance ceased after the 1972 Nixon visit to China, after which the U.S. and Communist China normalized relations.

The 14th (and current) Dalai Lama was asked by CIA officer John Kenneth Knaus in 1995 whether the organisation did a good or bad thing in providing its support. The Dalai Lama replied that though it helped the morale of those resisting the Chinese, that "thousands of lives were lost in the resistance" and further, that "the US Government had involved itself in his country's affairs not to help Tibet but only as a Cold War tactic to challenge the Chinese."

File:Tenzin Gyatzo foto 1.jpg

14th Dalai Lama

According to a book by retired CIA officer John Kenneth Knaus, entitled "Orphans Of The Cold War: America And The Tibetan Struggle For Survival", Gyalo Thondup, the older brother of the 14th Dalai Lama, sent the CIA five Tibetan recruits. These recruits were then trained in paramilitary tactics on the island of Saipan in the Northern Marianas. Shortly thereafter, the five men were covertly returned to Tibet “to assess and organize the resistance” and selected another 300 Tibetans for training.

Tibet under communist governance

See also Tibet#Demographics

The consequence the CIA aided the Tibetans to prevent, replacement of their government, and the monastic Buddhist oligarchy, with Chinese communism, is a subject of much debate in Tibet.

Tibetan views

Two issues are 'Tibetan causes': imprisonment of ethnic Tibetans between the 1960s and 1980s, and the alleged stacking of the population by China to suppress Tibetan participation in the voting process. The Dalai Lama has recently been reported as saying that the Tibetans had been reduced to a minority "in his homeland", by reference to population figures of Lhasa, and accusing China of "demographic aggression".

Ethnolinguistic Groups of Tibetan language, 1967 (See entire map, which includes a key)

PRC view

Population control policies like the one-child policy only apply to Han Chinese, not to minorities such as Tibetans.

The government of the PRC maintains that the Tibetan Government did almost nothing to improve the Tibetans' material and political standard of life during its rule from 1913–59, and that they opposed any reforms proposed by the Chinese government. According to the Chinese government, this is the reason for the tension that grew between some central government officials and the local Tibetan government in 1959. The government of the PRC also rejects claims that the lives of Tibetans have deteriorated, and stated that the lives of Tibetans have been improved immensely compared to self rule before 1950. From 1951 to 2007, the Tibetan population in Lhasa administered Tibet has increased from 1.2 million to almost 3 million. Benefits that are commonly quoted include — the GDP of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) today is thirty times that of before 1950, workers in Tibet have the second highest wages in China, the TAR has 22,500 km of highways, as opposed to none in 1950, all secular education in the TAR was created after the revolution, the TAR now has 25 scientific research institutes as opposed to none in 1950, infant mortality has dropped from 43% in 1950 to 0.661% in 2000, life expectancy has risen from 35.5 years in 1950 to 67 in 2000, the collection and publishing of the traditional Epic of King Gesar, which is the longest epic poem in the world and had only been handed down orally before, allocation of 300 million Renminbi since the 1980s for the maintenance and protection of Tibetan monasteries.

Ethnic Tibetan autonomous entities set up by the People's Republic of China. Opponents to the PRC dispute the actual level of autonomy

The People's Republic of China, for its part, does not view itself as an occupying power and has vehemently denied allegations of demographic swamping. The PRC also does not recognize Greater Tibet as claimed by the government of Tibet in Exile, saying that the idea was engineered by foreign imperialists as a plot to divide China amongst themselves, (Mongolia being a striking precedent, gaining independence with Soviet backing and subsequently aligning itself with the Soviet Union) and that those areas outside the TAR were not controlled by the Tibetan government before 1959 in the first place, having been administered instead by other surrounding provinces for centuries.

See Also

See Special Activities Division#See Also

• Free Tibet (WP)

Further Reading

See Special Activities Division#Further Reading and Special Activities Division#References