Word: khamba
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...night of March 17, under cover of darkness, Tibet's Living Buddha slipped out of the Norbulingka, his summer palace outside Lhasa, and together with his mother, two sisters and a younger brother, headed south across the most forbidding mountain country in the world to join the Khamba tribesmen who had launched Tibet's revolt against Red Chinese tyranny. For 15 days the Dalai Lama and his tiny retinue traveled by foot and by mule-back, first across the Kyi Chu River, 25 miles south of Lhasa, then on up through the 17,000-ft. Che Pass...
...forged letters as a pretext, Red China embarked on one of the most massive man hunts ever. Detachments of the estimated 300,000 Red troops in Tibet began to drive painfully into the rugged land south of the great Tsangpo River, which still remained in the hands of the Khamba guerrillas. Supply planes roared over Lhasa; other planes dropped paratroopers to seal off the passes north of the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, which the Dalai Lama might conceivably be heading for. To stifle all word of what was going on, the Chinese surrounded the Indian consulate in Lhasa, reduced...
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...
...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...