Just SayingA tale of CIA-trained Tibetan guerillas who ‘gave as good as they got’ in their invisible war with the Chinese army

I have always been fascinated by the story of the Tibetan guerillas who, with the help of the CIA, stayed behind to fight the Chinese army while the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959.

It’s a well-documented but little-known tale about the feared Khampas of eastern Tibet. As a rag-tag coalition of horse-mounted bandits, traders, herdsmen and monks, they fought a disorganised and doomed hit-and-run war that continued for nearly two decades after the People’s Liberation Army first marched into Lhasa in 1951.

So I couldn’t believe my luck when I discovered during my recent holiday in the Himalayan town of Darjeeling that a few of those old resistance fighters were still around. I met two in their family home, brothers who fought, lost and eventually fled across the border to India, where they settled, worked hard and prospered, like so many other Tibetan refugees.

Ngawang Datha, 84, and Thinley Tenzing, 78, seemed a bit surprised that I was interested in their stories. They’ve lived quiet lives in Darjeeling, never hiding or broadcasting their backgrounds. Most people have no idea about their part in a fascinating chapter in the history of the region.

The elder brother was a Buddhist monk who was directly involved in the bloody revolt at the ancient Litang monastery in 1956. Thousands of monks and villagers had taken shelter there when the PLA bombed the monastery.

While that might conjure images of a one-sided massacre, Datha recalled that it was more like “we gave as good as we got”.

He remembered heavy casualties on both sides and a nearby river turning red with blood.