Tag: Tibet

Legacy of CIA operations in Tibet shows Pompeo can’t be trusted

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Legacy of CIA operations in Tibet shows Pompeo can’t be trusted

The policy however, came to an end when Richard Nixon visited China in 1972 and paved the way to re-establishing bilateral relations, resulting in the creation of Shanghai Communiqué. The agreement set out that both sides should “conduct their relations on the principles of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states” and therefore, the United States accepted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet and ended the program.

As a result of this legacy, China has perceived its sovereignty in the region as being challenged by the West. While active promotion of insurgency has ended, the United States has nevertheless sought to indirectly encourage separatism through tools such as Radio Free Asia and as a result, the United States has failed to establish trust with Beijing on this issue.

Tibet: The CIA’s Cancelled War

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Tibet: The CIA’s Cancelled War

However there was one dramatic departure from the minimalist approach. For nearly two decades after the 1950 Chinese takeover of Tibet, the CIA ran a covert operation designed to train Tibetan insurgents and gather intelligence about the Chinese, as part of its efforts to contain the spread of communism around the world. Though little known today, the program produced at least one spectacular intelligence coup and provided a source of support for the Dalai Lama. On the eve of Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 meeting with Mao, the program was abruptly cancelled, thus returning the US to its traditional arms-length policy toward Tibet. But this did not end the long legacy of mistrust that continues to color Chinese-American relations. Not only was the Chinese government aware of the CIA program; in 1992 it published a white paper on the subject. The paper included information drawn from reliable Western sources about the agency’s activities, but laid the primary blame for the insurgency on the “Dalai Lama clique,” a phrase Beijing still uses today.

Who is Behind Wikileaks?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Who is Behind Wikileaks?

At the outset in early 2007, Wikileaks acknowledged that the project had been “founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa…. [Its advisory board] includes representatives from expat Russian and Tibetan refugee communities, reporters, a former US intelligence analyst and cryptographers.”

(Wikileaks Leak email exchanges, January 2007).

Related:

Wikileaks: A Big Dangerous US Government Con Job

How WikiLeaks Keeps Its Funding Secret

WikiLeaks promoting Iranophobia

[2007] Friendly Fuedalism – The Tibet Myth

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth (updated and expanded version, January 2007)

The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts. Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama’s second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.

Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed. “Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure,” writes Hugh Deane. In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: “As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed.” Eventually the resistance crumbled.

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.