By Andrei ARESHEV
The current unrest in the Tibetan autonomy of the Chinese People’s Republic (seemingly unexpected) has continued for over a week. Manifestations organised by Buddhist monks on the occasion of an anniversary of Tibet’s annexation by China led to mass clashes with police, violence, fires and robbery. The tragic events coincided with the regular session of the All-China Assembly of People’s Representatives, acquiring a dramatic scale and have already led to deaths, forcing Beijing to use active army to crack down on the riots.
Western sources report the spread of unrest in the provinces neighbouring with Tibet (in particular Sichuan) and mass repressions by the Chinese authorities, holding them up in an utterly negative aspect. And here we have an evident parallel with the way western media covered the activities of the Yugoslav army and police in Kosovo in 1998, immediately before the NATO aggression. Primary sources of information whose precision is hard to verify, are chiefly Tibetan émigrés in the neighbouring countries and western human rights NGOs. For example, according to Thubten Sampkhel, a representative of the Tibetan “government–in-exile” 80 protestors were killed and 72 wounded. He says eyewitnesses in Tibet who did the actual counting verified the figures. Official Chinese sources say that 10 people died. Some pro-Tibetan reports are deliberately over dramatising the situation. For example there are reports about the involvement of Chinese troops in mass killings of Tibetans; others say the “Tibetans in Amdo province have no intention of surrendering and are resolute to continues protests till the start of this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing”1.
The current developments can indeed do great harm to China taking place shortly before the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Demonstrators in Lhasa have become the gravest challenge to the Chinese rule in Tibet over the past two decades, raising a worldwide wave of protests, and holding China up in an unfavourable light on the eve of the Olympics,” – the Associated Press puts it flatly. However the current events in that mountainous district have also an even greater geopolitical significance.
Experts on events in different continents and nations including Africa, Latin America, Myanmar, the Central Asia, the Middle East or Pakistan constantly stress the presence of elements of Chinese and American confrontation that is not always evident but nevertheless not less tense. In particular, one of the causes of the intervention in Iraq and the incessant threats to Iran can be accounted for by the striving to give China very poor energy rationing2.
It can be confidently argued that the present-day troubles faced by Washington’s chief geopolitical rival would be completely taken advantage of with an eye to pushing their development in a favourable direction. U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice has already called on China to exert “moderation” in order to overcome the current political crisis in the Tibetan autonomy. Having said she was sad over the unrest in the Tibetan administrative centre, Lhasa that followed protests and caused deaths, Condozleezza Rice said she was worried over reports about the growing police and army presence in Lhasa, calling on both sides to refrain from violence. Mrs. State Secretary preferred not to say that setting shops and buildings on fire and robbery did not fit well in the picture of peaceful protesting. She rather recalled that president Gorge W.Bush “has consistently called on China’s government to have a constructive dialogue” with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists both directly or negotiating with his representatives…” On behalf of the U.S. administration Mrs. Rice called on Beijing to modify those aspects of its Tibetan policies that “have led to tension caused by their impact on the local religion, culture and sources of subsistence.”
It can be assumed that over the past several years the Tibetan national movement has become significantly more radical, so Beijing would find it hard to see eye to eye with it. In the oblique way this is evidenced by the scope and the skill of organisation of protests, as well as the wave of anti-China manifestations simultaneously sweeping over many countries from the United States and France to Nepal and Australia. The Kosovo independence issue could not fail to inspire supporters of complete Tibet’s independence from China either. Washington realises this and for the time being continues to make a stake of the Dalai Lama, the champion of “peaceful non-violent forms of protest”, some sort of the “Tibetan Ibrahim Rugova.” The Tibetan spiritual leader enjoys a wide public support in the West, suffice it to recall his meeting with G.Bush, Sr. at the ceremony of awarding the Dalai Lama with the Gold Medal of U.S. Congress in October of 2007.
The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists has already called for an international inquiry into China’s crackdown. His statement in Dharamsala3 says: ”The relevant international organisations should look into the Tibetan situation to clarify its causes.” The Dalai Lama has called the activities of Chinese authorities as “cultural genocide.”4
The Dalai Lama – willingly or not – is effectively preparing starting grounds for more radical forces that are about to launch an attack, enjoying political, propaganda and other sorts of support primarily from forces across the Atlantic.
The U.S. involvement in the internal affairs of Tibet and its relations with China have developed for several decades. After China annexed Tibet in 1949 and after the annexation of Hamand and Amdo provinces in 1956, on the initiative of the U.S. government the CIA started its “secret war” in the mountains of Tibet. In October of 1957, an aeroplane with no identification marks took off from a field aerodrome near Dakka carrying the first two Tibetans the CIA had trained for a month. Landing in the designated location close to Lhasa they soon established contacts with the leader of local insurgents. The Lhasa uprising started soon after, and the Dalai Lama fled. In 1958, in total secrecy, over 30 Tibetans began their training at the Camp Hale base in Colorado. Overall, more than 300 Tibetans were trained there. Starting from July, 1958 the CIA began flying C-130 aircraft from its secret base in Thailand, delivering weapons, ordnance and trained militants. More than 400 tonnes of cargo were delivered in 1957 through 1960. In one of the sabotage operations by Tibetans Chief of the Western Tibetan military district was killed, having on him vitally important documents of the Chinese Communist party. Langley obtained priceless information about China’s domestic situation, the state of its army, the PRC nuclear programmes and the rifts between Peking and Moscow that began to take place. By the early 1960s U.S. secret services spent an annual $1.7 million a year in Tibet with about $500,000 allocated for the support of 2,100 guerrillas (including 800 armed militants), mainly based in Nepal, and some $180,000 for the Dalai Lama’s personal needs. When later relations between Washington and Beijing improved, the activities of Tibetan agents were temporarily suspended. Tibetans paid a death toll of 87,000 in crackdowns of uprisings and armed clashes only…
It is to be noted that the then role of China and its economy in world affairs was not very big, but Washington was adamantly pursuing its policies of interference in Chinese internal affairs in one of its “problem outskirts.” This has become even more evident in modern times when the global struggle for influence and resources has become fiercer than ever. With the Dalai Lama completing his mission one day, he will be replaced by other people who, with the support of external forces would attempt to challenge China’s national unity as a state. There will also appear other points of “application of force” aside from Tibet, for example Xiangyang-Uigur autonomy and Inner Mongolia… External policy complications would not take long to arrive. It can be assumed that the current situation would dramatically affect relations between China and India, whom Washington is aggressively trying to draw into its orbit, and more than that.
Unrest in Tibet can unforeseeably echo in Russia, especially in the territories with a sizeable number of Buddhist population. Shows of support of Tibetan manifestators can happen in Kalmykia, Buriatia and Tuva. Ch. Budaev, Chairman of “Lamrim” Buddhist community and the Central Spiritual Buddhist Authority has already expressed hope that the developments in Tibet would lead the way for democratic changes in the Chinese society. According to him, democracy in Russia was consolidated after the well-known events of the 1990s that were given broad international coverage.
“I’d like to believe,” – Ch.Budaev said, “that the alarming developments in Tibet we are now witnessing would in the long run lead to democratisation of the Chinese society.”5
Thus, attempts of the external forces to propose a Gorbachev-Yeltsin scenario of China’s “democratisation” directly bring the developments in Tibet into the realm of Russia’s foreign and domestic policies.
The article uses excerpts from Melinda Lou’s “CIA Under the «Roof of the World». (Newsweek, July 1999)
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1 Eight dead bodies were brought into the Tibetan monastery of Ngaba Kirti (Amdo, Tibet) // http://savetibet.ru/2008/03/16/people_killed_in_tibet.html
2 Details in: K.Simonov. Global Energy War. M. Algorithm, 2007. p.130, and others
3 By the way, Levon Ter-Petroisan also called for an international inquiry into the tragic events in Armenia March 1 and 2, provoked by his own supporters. Similarities in the character of these claims as well as the tactics of “peaceful manifestators” in both cases give reasons to suggest a similarity of tools with which some people attempt to arrange a “controlled chaos” in regions as different as the southern Caucasus and Eastern Asia.
4 To recall the propaganda campaign in the wake of the destruction by the Taliban of Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan in 2001 that ushered in a NATO military operation in that country.
5 http://savetibet.ru/2008/03/16/buryatia_and_tibet.html
http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=1289
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