TIBET: Call to Freedom

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Living on the roof of the world, in a craggy land where even the valleys are higher than most U.S. mountains, Tibetans have learned to be cautious and practical. They conserve their energy in the chilling blasts of winter, pace themselves carefully, try each foothold for safety before moving on to another. What cannot be avoided, they bear without complaint.

But last week Tibetans, hardy as any mountain people, forsook prudence and took the field in a seemingly hopeless, idealistic action that pitted an almost unarmed nation of a million people against the might and power of 650 million Red Chinese. Alone in the mountain-locked fastness of their native land, Tibetans—like the Hungarians before them in 1956—could expect to stir the sympathy of the free world, but they could hardly count on any real help from it. Red repression in Lhasa coulu be even more brutal than in Budapest—for who would know what had been done? The single radio signal that intermittently flashes out to New Delhi from the Indian consulate in Lhasa was very weak, and its report was cautious and correct.

Ambushes & Air Raids. Since 1956 there have been repeated clashes in Tibet between Chinese garrisons and the hard-riding Khamba tribesmen, who boast that they go nowhere without their rifles, which they frequently use on everyone from rich merchants to officials from Lhasa to Communist cadres. Twenty-three years ago, when straggling parts of Mao Tse-tung's Eighth Route Army crossed Khamba territory on the famed Long March to Yenan, Khamba raiders picked off Reds by the dozens. Reportedly, Mao has never forgotten what happened—or forgiven.

Early in 1956 marauding Khambas from towns bearing such names as Amdo, Goluk and Derge began ambushing isolated Chinese units. The Reds waited until several Khamba tribes gathered together for their summer encampment, then struck back with a savage air strafing and bombardment. The Khambas grimly surrounded a Chinese base at Kardezh in eastern Tibet, forced the Reds to supply it by airlift. Other Khambas cut roads, raided munitions depots, tied down troops. Chinese settlers brought in by the Communists wilted under the savage Tibetan climate, native hostility, armed attack. Tibetan Communists or loyal government workers proved difficult to recruit.

Six-Year Wait. By 1957, faced with such opposition, the Chinese Reds—in a rare admission of serious trouble—promised that the communization of Tibet would be delayed at least six years. Many Chinese Red civilians were sent home. But still the Khamba insurrection flourished. Encampments of the tribesmen began to dot the wide plain around Lhasa. They consolidated their hold on the barren, treeless region that runs along the borders of India, Bhutan and Sikkim. The nervous Chinese Reds countered by erecting watchtowers along the Lhasa road, sandbagged strategic positions around the city.