The Treasury of Lives

Tsongkha Lhamo Tsering (tsong kha lha mo tshe ring) was born in 1924 in the village of Zina Nagatsang (zi na na ga tshang) near Kumbum Monastery (sku 'bum) in Amdo. The area was then under the Chinese Muslim (Hui) warlord, Ma Qi 馬麒 (1869-1931). Chinese immigration had, since Ming times, asserted itself in those parts of Amdo, and Nagatsang had over fifty Chinese families to two Tibetan. Until the age of eight Lhamo Tsering was a monk at Kumbum Monastery, when he began attending the local Chinese school in the nearby village of Rusar (ru gsar). Following his schooling he went to the Teacher’s Training School in Xining and graduated from there.

The end of his schooling in Xining coincided with the Sino-Japanese war and he was briefly conscripted into the Youth Volunteer Force of the Chinese Nationalist Army. The Nationalist Army was desperately in need of recruits not only to fight Japan but also the Communist Red Army as well. Before he saw action, the war with Japan came to an end. He then went to the Institute for Frontier Minorities in Nanjing (for Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hui, Mongols and other minorities) to pursue further studies. There, in 1945, he met the Fourteenth Dalai Lama's (tA la'i bla ma 14, b. 1935) older brother, Gyalo Thondup (rgya lo don grub, born c. 1927), who had also come to study in Nanjing. Lhamo Tsering became Gyalo Thondup's assistant and close companion.

In 1949, when China's major cities were falling one-by-one to the Communists, Lhamo Tsering and Gyalo Thondup escaped from Nanjing to Shanghai. As the Communist 3rd Field Army approached Shanghai, Gyalo Thondup departed for Hong Kong, leaving Lhamo Tsering behind to collect a bank transfer. The money did not arrive on time and Communist troops surrounded Shanghai.

Lhamo Tsering escaped just before the city fell. He and another Tibetan from Labrang (bla brang) forced a local fisherman to row them out beyond the harbor to the open sea where a last ship bound for Hong Kong picked them up.

Lhamo Tsering settled in Kalimpong, the Indian frontier town and center for the wool trade with Tibet. In February 1952, he accompanied Gyalo Thondup to Lhasa. This was Lhamo Tsering's first trip to the Tibetan capital. Here he was able to observe and experience first-hand the implications of the Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet. The Communists authorities did not want Gyalo Thondup to leave Tibet and promised him a high rank (and salary) in the TAR administration. Gyalo Thondup said he first had to institute social reforms in the Yapshi estates. On a trip to his estate at Jhayul Dzong in south Tibet near the border with India, Gyalo Thondup and Lhamo Tsering crossed over the frontier and escaped to India.

On 6 August 1954, Gyalo Thondup, along with two Tibetans officials, Tsipon Shakabpa (rtsis dpon zhwa sgab pa, 1908-1989) and Jamyangkyil Khenchung ('jam dbyangs dkyil mkhan chung), founded the Tibet Welfare Association in Kalimpong (bod kyi bde don tshogs pa). Lhamo Tsering was what might be called the executive secretary. The objectives of the organization were to oppose the Chinese occupation, publicize internationally the Tibetan situation, and initiate underground movements inside Tibet.  

In 1956, the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) decided to help the resistance movement inside Tibet which was then primarily represented by the Four Rivers Six Ranges partisan force led by Andrugtsang Gonpo Tashi (a 'brug mgon po bkra shis, 1905/1906–1964). This force provided the first groups of trainees for the CIA Tibet Task Force, and Gyalo Thondup was the main contact. In July 1958, Lhamo Tsering headed a group of eleven Tibetans secretly brought to America. They were trained first at a secret camp in Virginia, and then at the newly reactivated Camp Hale in Colorado. Lhamo Tsering was also trained separately in Washington, DC in intelligence tradecraft.

Following his return to India in August 1959, Lhamo Tsering created and headed an office for intelligence operations in Darjeeling. Its main function was to liaise between the CIA and the various Resistance operations that were being launched from India and Nepal. These included radio teams that were being parachuted into Tibet; radio teams that secretly crossed into Tibet overland; and the Mustang Resistance Force that was started in Northern Nepal in mid-1960. Lhamo Tsering had worked on creating the Mustang Force with the cooperation and blessings of Gonpo Tashi Andrugtsang.

Andrugtsang, the ailing leader of the Four Rivers Six Ranges Force, was then convalescing in Darjeeling. He passed on to Lhamo Tsering the force's old battle standard, first flown in June 1958 when they set up base at Drigutang (gri gur thang) in Lhoka (lho kha). The old man gave Lhamo Tsering his own Browning automatic pistol and sixty rounds of ammunition. He also entrusted to him his personal seal, made when a desperate Tibetan Government at Lhuntse Dzong (lhun rtse rdzong) in March 1959 gave him a dzasak (dza sag) title and appointed him commander-in-chief (dmag spyi) of all Tibetan forces.

From 1964 to 1974, the activities of the Darjeeling office were expanded and a tripartite office was created which had its base in New Delhi, and which liaised not only with the CIA but also Indian Intelligence. Lhamo Tsering headed the Tibetan section of this office, the main operations of which included the Mustang Resistance Force and the intelligence gathering missions inside Tibet.

In 1969 with a new era of Sino-American relationship heralded by Nixon’s visit to China, the CIA terminated their support of the Resistance. The Chinese began to put pressure on the Nepalese Government to do something about the Tibetan guerrillas in Nepal. This was a period of tremendous frustration and difficulty for Lhamo Tsering as, with the departure of Gyalo Thondup he now had to assume the principal leadership role.  

Nevertheless, Lhamo Tsering ran Resistance headquarters with aplomb. A new recruit who arrived in June 1971 would find, at the base at the towering Nilgiri mountain miles from any village, a small library. Among the small collection of books and magazines was an English translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War, with an appendix of selections from Mao Zedong's writings on guerilla warfare. The margins and borders of nearly every page were heavy with neatly penciled annotations in Chinese and English, done by Lhamo Tsering.

He would be up an hour earlier than anyone else and have finished his exercises and his morning run by the time everyone else turned out for physical training–when he would join them for another round of exercises. Lhamo Tsering was an exceptionally organized and dedicated spymaster and genuinely solicitous of the welfare of his agents.

In 1974, Lhamo Tsering was arrested in Pokhara and used as a bargaining chip by the Nepalese Government in its efforts to disarm the Mustang guerrillas. He refused to co-operate and managed to send a message to the guerrillas to disregard his capture. Ultimately the Dalai Lama requested the guerrillas to put down their weapons. Following the surrender of the guerrillas, Lhamo Tsering was imprisoned in Nepal for seven years. In Kathmandu Central Jail, Lhamo Tsering and eight other Tibetans were housed together in one large cell. There was a real possibility of demoralization, especially since liquor was freely available through the prison mafia. In an interview in 1991 he stated,

I told the others it would be difficult to survive if we didn’t organize ourselves. The others agreed. I wrote down a daily routine and pinned it up on our cell wall. We organized classes in English, Hindi, and Nepali for ourselves. Teachers were no problem. The jail was crowded with lawyers and teachers from the banned Congress Party and other dissident political groups. So we kept constantly busy and were never bored. In fact, I never seemed to have enough time for my own writing and reading.

Our education program was a great success. Everyone became quite proficient in Nepali and Hindi. We shared our food and tea with our Nepali teachers. They did everything they could to help us, advising us on legal matters, drafting our petitions, and helping prepare our defense. Since many of these lawyers and dissident politicians had friends in the various government offices, they even managed to get some documents concerning our case copied and smuggled into prison. We were released in December 1980.

Lhamo Tsering was back at work within seven months. Although his former efforts had been of vital national significance, his role had not been an officially acknowledged one within the exile Tibetan government. This time he worked directly in the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) of the Dalai Lama. After serving in several different positions he was appointed Minister of the Department Of Security on August 9, 1993.

He married Tashi Dolma (bkra shis sgrol ma) in 1956, with whom he had a son, Tenzin Sonam (bstan 'dzin bsod nams) b. 1959 and daughters: Diki Yangzom Thondup (sde skyid don grub) b.1960, Tenzin Choenzom b.1961, and Tsering Yangzom b.1961 (adopted).

It is widely believed that Lhamo Tsering was once again running agents inside Tibet, attested to by escaped Tibetans who had encountered him, and who spoke of him with respect bordering on awe. Although there was a general feeling among those who knew him closely that Lhamo Tsering was never quite the same person after coming out of prison, it was nice to see that he could still inspire the kind of loyalty in his agents as before.

After his release from prison Lhamo Tsering began work on a detailed history of the Resistance. The series of eight volumes that resulted is titled The Struggle for National Liberation (btsan rgol rgyal skyob), which is translated simply as Resistance in English. The series were published by the Amnye Machen Institute (AMI) under its Occupied Tibet Studies program and edited by the scholar, Tashi Tsering (jo sras bkra shis tshe ring, born 1960), AMI's director and founder. On November 8, 2017 his family presented the Dalai Lama with a set of the eight volumes.

Although Lhamo Tsering was highly professional and meticulous in his organization, he was criticized by some for not being aggressive enough for the job of running the resistance. Yet his kindness and compassion were among the qualities that elicited the loyalty and dedication of his many agents and fighters. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, when intelligence from China was near non-existent—it was said that "not a sparrow could move from one village to another without an official permit—Lhamo Tsering managed to place, and nurture for years, a high-level agent in Lhasa itself.

Tsongkha Lhamo Tsering died on January 9, 1999.

 

Resistance can be purchased from the Amnye Machen Institute at McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala. These eight volumes constitute as complete a history of the resistance to Communist China's occupation of Tibet. An outline is as follows:

Volume One narrates Lhamo Tsering's family background in Amdo, his meeting in Nanjing with Gyalo Thondup, the Dalai Lama's older brother, and their work together with Tsipon Shakabpa and other exile Tibetan officials in Kalimpong to create a secret anti-Chinese organization.

Volume Two relates the first contact with the CIA and the training of Tibetan fighters in Saipan and Colorado. Gonpo Tashi Andrugtsang's founding of the Four Ranges Six Rivers in Lhoka. Detailed account of CIA airdrops inside Tibet, including the eight special para-drop missions into Tibet from 1957 to 1962.

Volume Three gives detailed account of the establishment of the guerilla force In Mustang, and the enormous problems—lack of weapons, supplies, etc.—that it encountered and eventually overcame.

Volume Four recounts the many guerilla raids conducted into occupied Tibet by the Mustang force, particularly the raid where an "intelligence goldmine" of Chinese political and military documents was captured.

Volume Five deals with the formation of the secret "Co-ordination Office" of CIA, Indian Intelligence (RAW) and Tibetan intelligence officers, and its organization. It also describes the many intelligence networks that were set up inside occupied Tibet and the constant "cat and mouse" struggle against Chinese counterintelligence.

Volume Six relates the administrative crisis in the Mustang leadership in 1970 and the recall of commander, Gyen Yeshi Kalsang. It also describes the special training and educational programs that were initiated in this period and the end of American support.

Volume Seven describes the resettlement programs that were started for retired fighters and also the problems the force faced with the Nepal government. Also recounted is the arrest of Lhamo Tsering by Nepalese police in Pokhara and the negotiations that took place between the Mustang Force and Nepalese authorities.

Volume Eight contains an account of the Dalai Lama's taped message to the Mustang fighters calling for their surrender and its tragic aftermath. Flight of Commander Gyado Wangdu and his men, and Wangdu's heroic death. The book concludes with a description of the continuing resettlement program of retired Mustang volunteers and their families in Nepal.

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Publication of this biography was made possible through support of National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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