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Phantom Warriors of 1971: Unsung Tibetan Guerrillas
By Manas Paul
Forty years ago in 1971, on a cool and scary November 14 night in Chittagong, a Pakistani sniper of the Special Service Group, perched silently at his hidden location near his camp, felt he saw a "phantom". The days were then uncertain and nights were very risky. So, the Pakistani soldier did not take any chances and opened fire. The shadowy figures melted away into the darkness. One among them was, however, dying, fatally shot. The Pakistani soldier did not know that he had just killed one of the toughest CIA-trained Tibetan guerilla leaders Dhondup Gyatotsang.
As Gyatotsang a Dapon, or Brigadier in Tibetan language died, his comrades, all armed simply with Bulgarian AK 47s and their Tibetan knives, made radio contact with a turbaned Sikh some kilometres away and across the border. The Sikh barked at them the order: Carry on with the task you are assigned. The Tibetan guerillas once again spread out in the darkness and coiled up behind the Pakistani barracks and posts. They remained in shadow as long as they wanted and when the right time came they struck with lightning speed, raiding the Pak positions. One after another Pakistani posts fell, as the Tibetans, who by this gained the title "Phantoms of Chittagong", swept the hills and valleys of the hilly district of East Pakistan and restrained the Pakistani military movement to only small pockets. Weeks before the real war actually broke out on 3rd December, with their pre-emptive strikes the Tibetan guerrillas turned Chittagong into virtually a free zone for movement of the Indian army. On 16 December 1971, when the Pakistan army surrendered, the Tibetan commandos were only 40 kms from the Chittagong Port. By this time they had successfully accomplished the task that their chief-Inspector General, Major General Sujan Singh Uban, had assigned to them: Operation Mountain Eagle. They had, however, lost 49 of their comrades and had 190 injured.
"Operation Mountain Eagle", launched by India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in East Pakistan during the 1971 Indo-Pak War, was perhaps till date the most closely-guarded and topmost secret operation of Indian authorities in the eastern flank of the war area. Officially the operation could not be recognised, as the Tibetan guerilla force known as Special Frontier Force (SFF), or Establishment-22, or simply called "Two-Two" does not officially exist. It got the name from the fact that their first commander (at the rank of Inspector General) Maj Gen Uban had once commanded the 22 Mountain brigade. Since their inception in November 1962, the Establishment 22's direct engagement in the Indo-Pak war is also significant for the mere fact that it was not their "war" at all. They were fighting for the cause of their host country and for liberation of another country not for Tibet. But their sacrifice was never officially or publicly recognized neither by India nor by Bangladesh until today.
Formation of Top Secret Force Two-Two
At the end of the 1962 Indo-China war, the then Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Bholanath Mullick took the initiative to form a special guerilla force from the Tibetan youths who had been sheltered in India. Some documents indicate that former Chief Minister of Orissa Biju Patnaik had first come up with the idea while he was working closely with the CIA at the behest of Indian authorities in the setting up of the air surveillance Aviation Research Centre (ARC) in Charbatia in his home state. Patnaik, a daredevil pilot with vast experience in several covert operations, according to Kenneth Conboy who authored an authoritative book on CIA operations relating to Tibet, wanted to raise a resistance force by the Tibetans in Assam. However, the IB continued with the plan which ultimately materialized with the help of Chushi Gandruk, the main organization of the Khampa rebels, and the United States CIA.
Following the green signal from the Cabinet secretariat, the Special Frontier Force, or "Establishment 22", was formed on 14 November 1962.
According to the plan, the force would be formed with the Khampa rebels from Chushi Gangdruk and most of them would be brought from the CIA-run overflowing Mustang base in Nepal that housed as many as 2,032 members. The force would be handled and trained by the IB at their Chakrata base near Dehra Dun. The CIA would provide all support for their training and related matters.
The CIA had first trained the Khampa rebels in Saipan in March 1957, and then in Camp Hale in Colorado for guerilla warfare so that they could be dropped into Tibet for sabotage against the Chinese. The operation, under the code name of "ST Circus", was first headed by US marine Roger McCarthy. They trained in several batches about 259 Tibetan guerrillas. The CIA had also dropped some of them inside Tibet for sabotage and intelligence gathering.
"A formation agreement was signed in 1962. The parties to this formation agreement were the Indian Intelligence Service, the CIA and Chushi Gangdruk. General Gonpo Tashi and Jago Namgyal Dorjee, signed this three-party joint formation agreement on behalf of Chushi Gangdruk. Our organization took main responsibility for recruiting, and an initial strength of 12,000 men, mostly Khampas, were recruited at Chakrata, Dehra-dun, UP. Chushi Gangdruk sent two of the commanders to this new outfit to be political leaders in the initial stage," said Dokham Chushi Gangdruk, a Tibetan organization fighting for the Tibetan cause.
Gyalo Thondup, elder brother of the Dalai Lama, met the Khampas in Mustang. Konboy said, "Gyalo also sought four political leaders who could act as the force's indigenous officer cadre an initial contingent of Tibetans, led by Jamba Kalden, was dispatched to the hill town of Dehra Dun."
"Our organization took main responsibility for recruiting, and an initial strength of 12,000 men, mostly Khampas, were recruited at Chakrata, Dehra-dun, UP. Chushi Gangdruk sent two of the commanders to this new outfit to be political leaders in the initial stage. Established under the direct supervision of the prime minister, the unit was named the Special Frontier Force. ... the unit was meant to be air-dropped into Tibet in the event of another war in the Tibetan frontiers," wrote Dokham Chushi Gangdruk.
Soon, the CIA sent eight of its advisers on a six-month temporary duty assignment. The team was led by a veteran CIA operative in several covert and deadly campaigns, Wayne Sanford, who was recipient of two Purple Hearts. "He was acting undercover from the US Embassy as special assistant to Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith," wrote Konboy.
The USA provided all the weaponry to them, mostly M-1, M-2, and M-3 machine guns. As the covert guerilla force was raised, Maj Gen Uban was assigned the task to command them as their Inspector General. The SFF ultimately came to be known as "Establishment 22" or simply "Two-two". The name it got from the fact that Maj Gen Uban had once commanded the 22 Mountain brigade. Interestingly, the guerilla forces cap insignia was designed as if it was "12th Gorkha": regiment-crossed khukri with "12" on top. This was a deception tactic, as at that time there were only 11 Gorkha regiments seven regiments with the Indian army and four with the British after independence. It was so decided to confuse common people, in case of meeting the guerrillas, to have them think the Tibetans were Gorkhas, as their facial features were similar.
For the next several years the Indian army, MARCOS, IB, and CIA trained the guerrillas, with special focus on para-trooping and sabotage as well as intelligence collection. It was kept in mind that in case of another war with China they would be pressed into service. Some of the Camp Hale-trained Tibetans were also included in Establishment 22, and they held senior positions. They ultimately became one of the best-ever guerilla forces of the world, efficient in both land and water campaigns. While Establishment 22 was commanded by Maj Gen Uban, the guerrillas had their own political representatives and Dapon a position equivalent to Brigadier mostly held by first-generation Camp Hale-trained guerillas.
The Dalai Lama was aware of the formation of the guerilla force since the beginning, but he and his Dharamshala officials always maintained a distance from it, neither supporting nor opposing the Indian initiative. But according to some, Jawhar Lal Nehru had once visited the guerillas in Charkatha and was impressed by their training and discipline. The Dalai lama also visited them once, but it was much later.
Until late 1960, the CIA officials had kept relations with Establishment 22 at various levels, but since 1968 their connections with the Tibetan guerrillas both in Mustang and Charkatha started thinning. CIA link with Charkatha completely died out in 1970s. The USA under Richard Nixon tilted towards Pakistan and also developed secret negotiations with China as the Indo-Pakistan war seemed imminent.
Operation Mountain Eagle
Since the RAW headed by R N Kau was created on 21 September 1968, the responsibility of Establishment 22 also went to that agency. But their chief, Maj Gen Uban, had been worried at the way the trained commandos as many as 64 companies, divided into eight battalions having six companies each and including other support units were gathering moss in their Charkatha camps. They were not used against China or Pakistan for any real armed combat and the IG was worried that inaction and absence of field operations might reduce their morale and capabilities.
It was at that time that East Pakistan went up in flames with the Pakistan army resorting to large scale massacres and rape on 25 March 1971 with "Operation Searchlight". Two days later Major Zia Ur Rehman a Bengali military officer with the Pakistan army announced "independence" on Chittagong radio, and attacked the Pakistani army cantonment. Within a day, many more military officers followed and millions of refugees poured into India to flee the Pakistani Army's massacres and rapes. India was playing the card well and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was successful in garnering massive international support barring the USA and China of course for the brutalized East Pakistani Bengali population. By this time Mukti Bahini was formed from the refugee youth sheltered in Indian states for launching guerilla wars and intelligence collection inside East Pakistan against the Pakistani forces. The idea was to create a pre-emptive strike force until the Indian regular army moved in after the rainy season was over.
Incidentally, Maj Gen Uban was entrusted with the overall task for training of the Bengali forces like Mukti Bahini and Mujib Bahini.
Maj Gen Uban did not miss the chance and moved New Delhi to send his Tibetan forces to East Pakistan who, according to him were already better-trained and itching for an operation. After initial hesitation Indira Gandhi agreed to use the Tibetans for a third country cause, but sent the ball to the court of the Tibetans only.
Writes Tashi Dhundup, in an article titled "Not their own Wars": "Indira Gandhi, in the lead-up to the SFF's deployment, wired a message to the Tibetan fighters, conveyed through their Indian commander: `We cannot compel you to fight a war for us,' Gandhi wrote, `but the fact is that General A A K Niazi (the Pakistan Army commander in East Pakistan) is treating the people of East Pakistan very badly. India has to do something about it. In a way, it is similar to the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans in Tibet, we are facing a similar situation. It would be appreciated if you could help us fight the war for liberating the people of Bangladesh."
Following the letter, the senior commanders of the Establishment 22 guerrillas discussed and agreed to help the Bengalis of East Pakistan to achieve their new nation Bangladesh.
The Operation Mountain Eagle was launched in a second cool November night, apparently avoiding the Eastern Command directly by the RAW.
It was sometime in the third week of October, 1971, that one of the most top-secret armed campaigns against the Pakistan army in East Pakistan, Operation Mountain Eagle, was quietly launched. More than 3,000 Tibetan commandos from Establishment 22 were dropped at an obscure village very near the border, Demagiri in Mizoram. The Indian secret services used an AN-12 plane from the ARC to bring in the guerillas for night sorties. [An ARC plane was used rather than a military plane, as the RAW wanted to launch the Tibetan campaign avoiding the Eastern Command of the Indian army. Additional information from author 30 Aug 2011]
Demagiri, which was located across the river from the Karnafulli and Chittagong Hill Tracts in East Pakistan, was by that time crowded with refugees. The Tibetans stayed incognito with the refugees for some time, and then began small hit-and-run raids in East Pakistan. They would cross the river and strike a Pakistani force, and return to Demagiri. In the second week of November 1971, the Tibetan guerrillas, led by Dapon Dhondup Gyatotsang, crossed the river using nine canoes and went inside East Pakistan to launch a decisive guerilla campaign. Since Establishment 22 or SFF did not officially exist, Indian authorities, to deny any complicity in any eventuality, gave them Bulgarian AK 47s instead of Russian ones. On the very first night they ran over a Pakistani post. Within hours next morning they captured one more and they kept on sweeping, and then stopped for some time when their Dapon was shot dead. But then again, they swung into action.
The tasks for Establishment 22 were clear: Blow up Kaptai dam, damage the Pakistani military positions and kill as many as Pak soldiers at that time popularly called "Khan Sena" as possible, destroy bridges and military infrastructures, and restrain the Pakistani military movement. Divided in three columns, their hit-and-run modus operandi and the task specified were to create a situation that when the Indian army began to move, they could march through the Chittagong hills and plains without much resistance from the Pakistanis.
According to specialists on the subject, the Establishment guerrillas were extremely successful in their campaign. At that time Pakistani 97th Independent Brigade and their 2nd commando battalion of SSG were positioned strategically in Chittagong. The guerillas successfully restrained them in their respective positions and also cut off all the routes that the Pakistani soldiers thought of opening towards Burma. In fact the Pakistani soldiers were seeing ghosts in all the shadows, and they fighting against these merciless ghosts who were always on the prowl, would swoop down from nowhere and mercilessly eliminate the humans and destroy the posts and then immediately vanish for their next target. Within one month of their operations, the Tibetan guerrillas virtually cleaned up the Chittagong, and when the Indian army moved in they did not face much resistance at all.
"About one-third of its full strength was developed adjacent to the Chittagong Hill Tracts as Mukti Bahini. They captured many towns and garrisons in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in continuous fighting of about one month," according to Dhokma Chushi Gangdruk.
In fact Maj Gen Uban and his guerillas were keen to capture the Chittagong Port. They were very close, and the Pakistan army were not at all in a position to stop them. But Indian military and other authorities were not ready to assign them with the task as, though it would have been easier for the guerillas to capture the Port, to keep it under their control they would have needed heavy artillery weapons, which they did not have with them.
According to a document, when the Chittagong Port was captured by the Indian military, the guerillas were then asked to sit quiet about 40 kms away. However, on 16 December when the Pakistan army surrendered in Dhaka, the Phantoms of Establishment 22, for the first time in their history, came out in the open on the Chittagong road rejoicing in the victory of India over Pakistan. Not only the common people were stunned by their sudden appearance happy and rejoicing virtually from nowhere, many of the Indian soldiers, not aware of their presence in the vicinity, were also taken by surprise. But soon Maj Gen Uban was informed about the public appearance of the Tibetans on Chittagong roads and he barked them back to the shadows. They were never seen again. Their happy moment in the public was only for a few hours.
Though the Tibetan guerrillas were arguably the main force that played key role in Chittagong in 1971 war, and sacrificed 49 (according to Tibetans' estimate 56) including one of their top leaders, with 190 injured, they could not be officially awarded.
"The Indian government gave awards to 580 members of the force for their active involvement and bravery in the battles. The contribution made by Establishment 22 in liberating East Pakistan was great and the price paid by the force was also high," said Dokham Chushi Gangdruk, the New York-based organization.
It then added: "[The fight and sacrifice] would have been of great value had it been used against communist China, the intended enemy. ... The SFF never had a chance of being used in operations against its intended enemy, Red China, but it was used against East Pakistan with the consent of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1971."
It is, however, a different story that Establishment 22 was later used in many Indian operations including Operation Blue Star, Siachen, Kargil. They are also being used as main anti-terrorist operators in many parts of the country. According to a report, in between Indira Gandhi's assassination and the formation of the Special Protection Group (SPG), it was these Establishment 22 commandos who were in charge of the Gandhi family's close protection. But in all the cases down the decades they remained unsung heroes the "unknown warriors" from a different country who fought and sacrificed for others.
Sources : Tibetan sources and blogs, Kenneth Conboy and Jim Morrison, Claude Arpi.
Post Script: PHANTOM FIGHTERS OF 1971 : UNSUNG TIBETAN GUERRILLAS is virtually an untold story of a top-secret mission. A mere handful of people, including some foreign journalists who were in touch with Tibetans, are aware of the operations. Many of the military generals, including Gen JFR Jacob or Maj Gen Uban who commanded the force, did not dwell extensively on them but only obliquely referred to them. So it is revisiting a mission that was intended to be kept top secret.
http://tibetsun.com/archive/2010/12/13/phantom-warriors-of-1971-unsung-tibetan-guerillas/
By Manas Paul
Forty years ago in 1971, on a cool and scary November 14 night in Chittagong, a Pakistani sniper of the Special Service Group, perched silently at his hidden location near his camp, felt he saw a "phantom". The days were then uncertain and nights were very risky. So, the Pakistani soldier did not take any chances and opened fire. The shadowy figures melted away into the darkness. One among them was, however, dying, fatally shot. The Pakistani soldier did not know that he had just killed one of the toughest CIA-trained Tibetan guerilla leaders Dhondup Gyatotsang.
As Gyatotsang a Dapon, or Brigadier in Tibetan language died, his comrades, all armed simply with Bulgarian AK 47s and their Tibetan knives, made radio contact with a turbaned Sikh some kilometres away and across the border. The Sikh barked at them the order: Carry on with the task you are assigned. The Tibetan guerillas once again spread out in the darkness and coiled up behind the Pakistani barracks and posts. They remained in shadow as long as they wanted and when the right time came they struck with lightning speed, raiding the Pak positions. One after another Pakistani posts fell, as the Tibetans, who by this gained the title "Phantoms of Chittagong", swept the hills and valleys of the hilly district of East Pakistan and restrained the Pakistani military movement to only small pockets. Weeks before the real war actually broke out on 3rd December, with their pre-emptive strikes the Tibetan guerrillas turned Chittagong into virtually a free zone for movement of the Indian army. On 16 December 1971, when the Pakistan army surrendered, the Tibetan commandos were only 40 kms from the Chittagong Port. By this time they had successfully accomplished the task that their chief-Inspector General, Major General Sujan Singh Uban, had assigned to them: Operation Mountain Eagle. They had, however, lost 49 of their comrades and had 190 injured.
"Operation Mountain Eagle", launched by India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in East Pakistan during the 1971 Indo-Pak War, was perhaps till date the most closely-guarded and topmost secret operation of Indian authorities in the eastern flank of the war area. Officially the operation could not be recognised, as the Tibetan guerilla force known as Special Frontier Force (SFF), or Establishment-22, or simply called "Two-Two" does not officially exist. It got the name from the fact that their first commander (at the rank of Inspector General) Maj Gen Uban had once commanded the 22 Mountain brigade. Since their inception in November 1962, the Establishment 22's direct engagement in the Indo-Pak war is also significant for the mere fact that it was not their "war" at all. They were fighting for the cause of their host country and for liberation of another country not for Tibet. But their sacrifice was never officially or publicly recognized neither by India nor by Bangladesh until today.
Formation of Top Secret Force Two-Two
At the end of the 1962 Indo-China war, the then Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Bholanath Mullick took the initiative to form a special guerilla force from the Tibetan youths who had been sheltered in India. Some documents indicate that former Chief Minister of Orissa Biju Patnaik had first come up with the idea while he was working closely with the CIA at the behest of Indian authorities in the setting up of the air surveillance Aviation Research Centre (ARC) in Charbatia in his home state. Patnaik, a daredevil pilot with vast experience in several covert operations, according to Kenneth Conboy who authored an authoritative book on CIA operations relating to Tibet, wanted to raise a resistance force by the Tibetans in Assam. However, the IB continued with the plan which ultimately materialized with the help of Chushi Gandruk, the main organization of the Khampa rebels, and the United States CIA.
Following the green signal from the Cabinet secretariat, the Special Frontier Force, or "Establishment 22", was formed on 14 November 1962.
According to the plan, the force would be formed with the Khampa rebels from Chushi Gangdruk and most of them would be brought from the CIA-run overflowing Mustang base in Nepal that housed as many as 2,032 members. The force would be handled and trained by the IB at their Chakrata base near Dehra Dun. The CIA would provide all support for their training and related matters.
The CIA had first trained the Khampa rebels in Saipan in March 1957, and then in Camp Hale in Colorado for guerilla warfare so that they could be dropped into Tibet for sabotage against the Chinese. The operation, under the code name of "ST Circus", was first headed by US marine Roger McCarthy. They trained in several batches about 259 Tibetan guerrillas. The CIA had also dropped some of them inside Tibet for sabotage and intelligence gathering.
"A formation agreement was signed in 1962. The parties to this formation agreement were the Indian Intelligence Service, the CIA and Chushi Gangdruk. General Gonpo Tashi and Jago Namgyal Dorjee, signed this three-party joint formation agreement on behalf of Chushi Gangdruk. Our organization took main responsibility for recruiting, and an initial strength of 12,000 men, mostly Khampas, were recruited at Chakrata, Dehra-dun, UP. Chushi Gangdruk sent two of the commanders to this new outfit to be political leaders in the initial stage," said Dokham Chushi Gangdruk, a Tibetan organization fighting for the Tibetan cause.
Gyalo Thondup, elder brother of the Dalai Lama, met the Khampas in Mustang. Konboy said, "Gyalo also sought four political leaders who could act as the force's indigenous officer cadre an initial contingent of Tibetans, led by Jamba Kalden, was dispatched to the hill town of Dehra Dun."
"Our organization took main responsibility for recruiting, and an initial strength of 12,000 men, mostly Khampas, were recruited at Chakrata, Dehra-dun, UP. Chushi Gangdruk sent two of the commanders to this new outfit to be political leaders in the initial stage. Established under the direct supervision of the prime minister, the unit was named the Special Frontier Force. ... the unit was meant to be air-dropped into Tibet in the event of another war in the Tibetan frontiers," wrote Dokham Chushi Gangdruk.
Soon, the CIA sent eight of its advisers on a six-month temporary duty assignment. The team was led by a veteran CIA operative in several covert and deadly campaigns, Wayne Sanford, who was recipient of two Purple Hearts. "He was acting undercover from the US Embassy as special assistant to Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith," wrote Konboy.
The USA provided all the weaponry to them, mostly M-1, M-2, and M-3 machine guns. As the covert guerilla force was raised, Maj Gen Uban was assigned the task to command them as their Inspector General. The SFF ultimately came to be known as "Establishment 22" or simply "Two-two". The name it got from the fact that Maj Gen Uban had once commanded the 22 Mountain brigade. Interestingly, the guerilla forces cap insignia was designed as if it was "12th Gorkha": regiment-crossed khukri with "12" on top. This was a deception tactic, as at that time there were only 11 Gorkha regiments seven regiments with the Indian army and four with the British after independence. It was so decided to confuse common people, in case of meeting the guerrillas, to have them think the Tibetans were Gorkhas, as their facial features were similar.
For the next several years the Indian army, MARCOS, IB, and CIA trained the guerrillas, with special focus on para-trooping and sabotage as well as intelligence collection. It was kept in mind that in case of another war with China they would be pressed into service. Some of the Camp Hale-trained Tibetans were also included in Establishment 22, and they held senior positions. They ultimately became one of the best-ever guerilla forces of the world, efficient in both land and water campaigns. While Establishment 22 was commanded by Maj Gen Uban, the guerrillas had their own political representatives and Dapon a position equivalent to Brigadier mostly held by first-generation Camp Hale-trained guerillas.
The Dalai Lama was aware of the formation of the guerilla force since the beginning, but he and his Dharamshala officials always maintained a distance from it, neither supporting nor opposing the Indian initiative. But according to some, Jawhar Lal Nehru had once visited the guerillas in Charkatha and was impressed by their training and discipline. The Dalai lama also visited them once, but it was much later.
Until late 1960, the CIA officials had kept relations with Establishment 22 at various levels, but since 1968 their connections with the Tibetan guerrillas both in Mustang and Charkatha started thinning. CIA link with Charkatha completely died out in 1970s. The USA under Richard Nixon tilted towards Pakistan and also developed secret negotiations with China as the Indo-Pakistan war seemed imminent.
Operation Mountain Eagle
Since the RAW headed by R N Kau was created on 21 September 1968, the responsibility of Establishment 22 also went to that agency. But their chief, Maj Gen Uban, had been worried at the way the trained commandos as many as 64 companies, divided into eight battalions having six companies each and including other support units were gathering moss in their Charkatha camps. They were not used against China or Pakistan for any real armed combat and the IG was worried that inaction and absence of field operations might reduce their morale and capabilities.
It was at that time that East Pakistan went up in flames with the Pakistan army resorting to large scale massacres and rape on 25 March 1971 with "Operation Searchlight". Two days later Major Zia Ur Rehman a Bengali military officer with the Pakistan army announced "independence" on Chittagong radio, and attacked the Pakistani army cantonment. Within a day, many more military officers followed and millions of refugees poured into India to flee the Pakistani Army's massacres and rapes. India was playing the card well and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was successful in garnering massive international support barring the USA and China of course for the brutalized East Pakistani Bengali population. By this time Mukti Bahini was formed from the refugee youth sheltered in Indian states for launching guerilla wars and intelligence collection inside East Pakistan against the Pakistani forces. The idea was to create a pre-emptive strike force until the Indian regular army moved in after the rainy season was over.
Incidentally, Maj Gen Uban was entrusted with the overall task for training of the Bengali forces like Mukti Bahini and Mujib Bahini.
Maj Gen Uban did not miss the chance and moved New Delhi to send his Tibetan forces to East Pakistan who, according to him were already better-trained and itching for an operation. After initial hesitation Indira Gandhi agreed to use the Tibetans for a third country cause, but sent the ball to the court of the Tibetans only.
Writes Tashi Dhundup, in an article titled "Not their own Wars": "Indira Gandhi, in the lead-up to the SFF's deployment, wired a message to the Tibetan fighters, conveyed through their Indian commander: `We cannot compel you to fight a war for us,' Gandhi wrote, `but the fact is that General A A K Niazi (the Pakistan Army commander in East Pakistan) is treating the people of East Pakistan very badly. India has to do something about it. In a way, it is similar to the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans in Tibet, we are facing a similar situation. It would be appreciated if you could help us fight the war for liberating the people of Bangladesh."
Following the letter, the senior commanders of the Establishment 22 guerrillas discussed and agreed to help the Bengalis of East Pakistan to achieve their new nation Bangladesh.
The Operation Mountain Eagle was launched in a second cool November night, apparently avoiding the Eastern Command directly by the RAW.
It was sometime in the third week of October, 1971, that one of the most top-secret armed campaigns against the Pakistan army in East Pakistan, Operation Mountain Eagle, was quietly launched. More than 3,000 Tibetan commandos from Establishment 22 were dropped at an obscure village very near the border, Demagiri in Mizoram. The Indian secret services used an AN-12 plane from the ARC to bring in the guerillas for night sorties. [An ARC plane was used rather than a military plane, as the RAW wanted to launch the Tibetan campaign avoiding the Eastern Command of the Indian army. Additional information from author 30 Aug 2011]
Demagiri, which was located across the river from the Karnafulli and Chittagong Hill Tracts in East Pakistan, was by that time crowded with refugees. The Tibetans stayed incognito with the refugees for some time, and then began small hit-and-run raids in East Pakistan. They would cross the river and strike a Pakistani force, and return to Demagiri. In the second week of November 1971, the Tibetan guerrillas, led by Dapon Dhondup Gyatotsang, crossed the river using nine canoes and went inside East Pakistan to launch a decisive guerilla campaign. Since Establishment 22 or SFF did not officially exist, Indian authorities, to deny any complicity in any eventuality, gave them Bulgarian AK 47s instead of Russian ones. On the very first night they ran over a Pakistani post. Within hours next morning they captured one more and they kept on sweeping, and then stopped for some time when their Dapon was shot dead. But then again, they swung into action.
The tasks for Establishment 22 were clear: Blow up Kaptai dam, damage the Pakistani military positions and kill as many as Pak soldiers at that time popularly called "Khan Sena" as possible, destroy bridges and military infrastructures, and restrain the Pakistani military movement. Divided in three columns, their hit-and-run modus operandi and the task specified were to create a situation that when the Indian army began to move, they could march through the Chittagong hills and plains without much resistance from the Pakistanis.
According to specialists on the subject, the Establishment guerrillas were extremely successful in their campaign. At that time Pakistani 97th Independent Brigade and their 2nd commando battalion of SSG were positioned strategically in Chittagong. The guerillas successfully restrained them in their respective positions and also cut off all the routes that the Pakistani soldiers thought of opening towards Burma. In fact the Pakistani soldiers were seeing ghosts in all the shadows, and they fighting against these merciless ghosts who were always on the prowl, would swoop down from nowhere and mercilessly eliminate the humans and destroy the posts and then immediately vanish for their next target. Within one month of their operations, the Tibetan guerrillas virtually cleaned up the Chittagong, and when the Indian army moved in they did not face much resistance at all.
"About one-third of its full strength was developed adjacent to the Chittagong Hill Tracts as Mukti Bahini. They captured many towns and garrisons in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in continuous fighting of about one month," according to Dhokma Chushi Gangdruk.
In fact Maj Gen Uban and his guerillas were keen to capture the Chittagong Port. They were very close, and the Pakistan army were not at all in a position to stop them. But Indian military and other authorities were not ready to assign them with the task as, though it would have been easier for the guerillas to capture the Port, to keep it under their control they would have needed heavy artillery weapons, which they did not have with them.
According to a document, when the Chittagong Port was captured by the Indian military, the guerillas were then asked to sit quiet about 40 kms away. However, on 16 December when the Pakistan army surrendered in Dhaka, the Phantoms of Establishment 22, for the first time in their history, came out in the open on the Chittagong road rejoicing in the victory of India over Pakistan. Not only the common people were stunned by their sudden appearance happy and rejoicing virtually from nowhere, many of the Indian soldiers, not aware of their presence in the vicinity, were also taken by surprise. But soon Maj Gen Uban was informed about the public appearance of the Tibetans on Chittagong roads and he barked them back to the shadows. They were never seen again. Their happy moment in the public was only for a few hours.
Though the Tibetan guerrillas were arguably the main force that played key role in Chittagong in 1971 war, and sacrificed 49 (according to Tibetans' estimate 56) including one of their top leaders, with 190 injured, they could not be officially awarded.
"The Indian government gave awards to 580 members of the force for their active involvement and bravery in the battles. The contribution made by Establishment 22 in liberating East Pakistan was great and the price paid by the force was also high," said Dokham Chushi Gangdruk, the New York-based organization.
It then added: "[The fight and sacrifice] would have been of great value had it been used against communist China, the intended enemy. ... The SFF never had a chance of being used in operations against its intended enemy, Red China, but it was used against East Pakistan with the consent of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1971."
It is, however, a different story that Establishment 22 was later used in many Indian operations including Operation Blue Star, Siachen, Kargil. They are also being used as main anti-terrorist operators in many parts of the country. According to a report, in between Indira Gandhi's assassination and the formation of the Special Protection Group (SPG), it was these Establishment 22 commandos who were in charge of the Gandhi family's close protection. But in all the cases down the decades they remained unsung heroes the "unknown warriors" from a different country who fought and sacrificed for others.
Sources : Tibetan sources and blogs, Kenneth Conboy and Jim Morrison, Claude Arpi.
Post Script: PHANTOM FIGHTERS OF 1971 : UNSUNG TIBETAN GUERRILLAS is virtually an untold story of a top-secret mission. A mere handful of people, including some foreign journalists who were in touch with Tibetans, are aware of the operations. Many of the military generals, including Gen JFR Jacob or Maj Gen Uban who commanded the force, did not dwell extensively on them but only obliquely referred to them. So it is revisiting a mission that was intended to be kept top secret.
http://tibetsun.com/archive/2010/12/13/phantom-warriors-of-1971-unsung-tibetan-guerillas/
