| suva chintak |
Posted
on 26-Jan-04 10:12 AM
A fine article by a fellow Sajhite!
For those of us who like to try our punditry on international affairs and regional politics in South Asia, this is a must read! The author does a nice job of linking the regional and global strategic contest and how it impacts small states like Nepal. This article is in the current issue of 'The People's Review:
To break China: Indo-American alliance and Nepal in the Cold War
BY TRAILOKYA RAJ ARYAL
On April 17, 1978 the then Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai, confessed in the lower house of the Indian Parliament, Loksabha, that India and the United States of America had collaborated at the highest political level in covert operations aimed at challenging the authority and territorial integrity of China. The announcement not only shocked the Indian parliamentarians, but the entire world. In addition to the damage caused to the revered memory of Jawaharlal Nehru, this also exposed the degree of U.S. involvement in South Asia (See, Ali, S. Mahmud, Cold war in the high Himalayas : the USA, China, and South Asia in the 1950s (Richmond [England]: Curzon Press) 1999). The damage done by this revelation to the image of Nehru's political personality and to India's supposedly "neutral" foreign policy are beyond my scope here; I wish briefly to examine the effects of the joint Indo-U.S. actions on Nepal. Indo-US alliance:
India's own border issues with China and some tinge in the Indian leadership's fear of "Communism" (a trade-marked U.S. cold war export), was enough to turn India into a hidden U.S. ally. After the Chinese revolution, India became wary of China though no overt cause existed. The rulers of the United States took the success of the Chinese revolution as the defeat of their friends and clients, and in the ensuing Korean war suffered a direct military setback at the hands of the Chinese PLA. For a generation "Red China" was the devil in U.S. political theology. In the cold war days of the late '50s, India's irrational fear of Red China grew when China reiterated its long-standing and previously universally accepted claim on Tibet, and later sent troops into Tibet to secure its borders. During the period of imperialist intervention in China the rulers of India had come to consider Tibet as a buffer state between India and China. And the U.S. had been supporting the governing group around the Dalai Lama since 1942, when some members of "Wild Bill" Donovan's OSS, predecessor to the CIA, entered Tibet and fulfilled the Tibetan leadership's request to supply it with the latest radio communication equipment. The U.S. lost no time in claiming that China's reassertion of its claim on Tibet was part of an aggressive policy of expansionism, in which India was to be a target. Leading elements in India, despite the nonsensical notion of a Chinese military move across the Himalaya, took a forward and provocative military posture and border clashes took place. In this context, a destabilized China was desired by the rulers of both India and the U.S.
In the '50s and '60s, India and the U.S. engaged in a series of covert operations directed against China. Some were independent operations and some joint Indo-U.S. operations. India and the U.S. collaborated in installing a Plutonium based detecting device in the Nandadevi Mountains to monitor the Chinese activities in Tibet, however this mission resulted in failure. The covert operations against China started to take weird bizarre twists and turns - including an assassination attempt on the then Chinese PM, Zhou En Lai, in 1955. This bizarre operation remains obscure, and of course no firm evidence exists to tie either nation (nor a likely third nation) to this event.
The CIA, after a series of failures with the aging remnants of Chang Kai Shek forces on the Burma border, started to look for a base to carry out a more aggressive operation aimed at destabilizing China. The CIA "assisted" the 1959 armed actions in Tibet and the concurrent flight of the Dalai Lama into India, where he was to receive a CIA pension. In 1960 the CIA started its operations in the Mustang district of Nepal, based on a group of insurgents from the southern Tibetan province of Kham ("Khampas") gathered around a small core of men previously trained by the CIA and then parachuted into Tibet.
(contd.)
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| suva chintak |
Posted
on 26-Jan-04 10:16 AM
Posted on 01-26-04 10:13 AM Reply | Notify Admin
(contd.):
Nepal as a battleground
Mustang is a section of the Tibetan plateau north of the high Himalaya that was historically a semi-autonomous district of Nepal, inhabited by Tibetan speakers following the Lamaist religion. It lies astride a trans-Himalyan trade route, but is difficult of access from the central parts of Nepal. The geographical proximity of Mustang to Tibet and its remoteness from the power c enter Kathmandu, both politically and physically, made it a perfect venue for the U.S. supported Khampa rebel group headed by Baba Yeshi to carry out their clandestine operations.
The CIA trained guerrillas shifted their base from Kalimpong, India to Mustang, Nepal. The CIA provided them with advanced weapons, radio equipment and training. It is believed that the CIA provided training for at least 24 of these Khampa guerrillas in Colorado.
Baba Yeshi and his team of 3000 Khampa rebels soon started to create problems in Mustang and Tibet. The Chinese authorities promptly pointed out this problem to King Mahendra. But King Mahendra decided to wait before taking any action against the Khampa rebels who were now openly operating from Nepal. The wait on King Mahendra's part was possibly to let the matter intensify, then demand something from China in return for curbing the Khampa operation. But, most crucially, without Indian support the Royal Nepalese Army was far from sure of a quick and easy success against a force supplied by the CIA. And Indian support was not to be had. Repeated Chinese requests to take actions against the Khampas were not addressed by King Mahendra. When King Birendra ascended the throne in 1974, the Chinese made the same request and King Birendra acted promptly on the Chinese request. By then the Khampas had become a menace to not only China but also to Nepal, and they had lost their CIA backing.
Starting in the early '70s, the CIA had pulled itself out of the whole Khampa operation because of the changing dynamics in Sino-U.S. relations. It is certain that the 1972 Kissinger-Nixon initiative included the promise of an end to this CIA operation, and no doubt others. However the Khampas were still in Nepal creating problems for both Nepal and China. And the Army operation against them was the only option Nepal had after the rebel leader Gyato Wangdu's refusal to disarm; indeed after his repeated brazen denials of having any weapons or having ever been engaged in anti-China activities. The weapons seized by the Royal Nepali Army during its successful Mustang Operation against the Khampa rebellion were manufactured in the U.S. So as not to sour the relations between Kathmandu and Washington everyone in Nepal played dumb as to the source of those advanced weapons and equipment. However, the revelation of the Indian Prime Minister Desai, which came 4 years after the Mustang operation, provided solid evidence of U.S. involvement in Nepal and proved to be the missing piece of the puzzle. Today when the world in general and South Asia in particular are going through difficult times, some scholars see the seeds of a revival of the Cold War. We should be cautious, recalling that Nepal has recently been a victim of India and the US in the global Cold War for reason of a geopolitical fear of Chinese "expansionism" that had no basis whatsoever in reality.
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