Behind the powerful din created by the popular and celebrity-embraced “Save Tibet,” campaign is the fact that the CIA is behind the Tibet independence movement.
According to many reports, the Dalai Lama himself may be a long-time CIA asset. See The Role of the CIA behind the Dalai Lama’s holy cloak and The Tibet Card.
In addition to being geostrategically situated, Tibet is also rich with oil and gas, and minerals — and this is just part of the larger superpower warfare between the US and China. See Tibet, the "great game", and the CIA.
The legions of pro-Tibet activists also seem largely unaware of the historical fact that the “holy land of compassion” has been a CIA pawn since the end of World War II. The infamous Tolstoi Mission sent CIA operatives into Tibet, with plans to establish it as a US military base, from which the US could control the entire Asian region. This activity flourished under the US-supported, opium-banked Nationalist Kuomintang regime of Chiang Kai-Shek.
When the Communists rose to power, the CIA trained Tibetans in guerrilla tactics to use against the regime in Peking, and thousands of Tibetans lost their lives in these battles. Who benefited? Who really gave the orders then — and who is driving the agenda now?
There is little doubt that Anglo-American interests continue to use Tibet, exploit the image of Tibet as a holy place under siege, and bamboozle naïve (and well-heeled) outside activists with slick marketing, in order to undermine Beijing.
Denunciations of Beijing’s brutal crackdowns do not take into account the covert operations and outside infiltrations that triggered the crackdowns in the first place.
Read the whole article via Online Journal
April 23, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Tibet is more likely allied with the CIA, then a pawn per se. Being a pawn implies that, but for the CIA, those who want an autonomous Tibet would happily submit to Chinese rule. The CIA merely feeds and nourishes what already exists, as they do elsewhere around the world.
April 23, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Good point, Snork. I agree.
April 23, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that 1) the Tibetans didn’t invite the Chinese Army to stay in 1959 and 2) China, the US, Et Al use TIbet to further their own ends.
“Save Tibet — Redeem for Great Prizes!”
Of course, they screw with Padmasambhava at their own peril.
April 23, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Do the people of Tibet want independence? It’s a question I see seldom asked. From Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth:
“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.”
-http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
International Tibet Independence Movement is spearheaded by the old Tibetan theocracy/aristocracy and American liberals and celebrities. Whether it has any popular support within Tibet is largely ignored by both the movement and in media coverage.
That said, I certainly don’t support the Chinese gunning down protesters of any type. But that speaks to the broader problem of human rights in China.
December 13, 2009 at 6:48 am
Well said Klintron
But I believe the Chinese are gunning down every tiny threat from Tibetans, because their espionage services are completely aware of the CIA. Tibet with only 2 million people is not something that scares China, however the CIA does. I don’t believe there is any petroleum or valuable resources in Tibet but it’s geopolitical position as the rooftop of Asia almost guarantees control over Asia. The major rivers of India and China flow from Tibet.
Tibet has always been a pawn between empires. During the Great Game the British in India and Russians in Central Asian fought the Qing Dynasty hard for control over Tibet an impoverished vassal state to Manchu China.