he sat, watching the tape on the television screen showing the IR view of the Heron over Shiquanhe.
“Not the first one. That was a police battalion from the Chinese 38 TH Police Division. They got ambushed and mauled during the day’s fighting with the Tibetans. That’s when they called in their PLA buddies who, in all their genius, rolled in with armor and heavy guns and neutralized the whole damn village. No question of civilian losses. You see that? There on the left? That’s a complete block of civilian houses demolished by Chinese heavy artillery. Those guys fight insurgency with a heavy hand. And bottom line is that it works. Out Tibetan friends lost a good chunk of their men in this region in just one day’s fighting,” Lieutenant-Colonel Ansari said and paused the tape.
“So much for our chances of coordination and control. Their poor tactics are taking them towards self-destruction. This insurgency is going to be over before we can even make the Chinese bleed enough to care!” Basu said from where he sat.
“What about Gephel and his teams?” Chakri asked Ansari, ignoring Basu’s defeatist attitude for the moment.
“He and his men were down there in these hills you see on the top-left corner of the screen. Our UAV was to the south of the village while the team was northeast. They made good on their escape. All intercepts of Chinese comms revealed no suspicion of the team’s existence. But for all intents and purposes their mission was over before it began.”
“True. Damn idiots , those Tibetans. Couldn’t they have held off the temptation to attack that police convoy for just this once ? Now what?”
“We wait until we hear from the Tibetan resistance again on a new contact place,” Basu said as he leaned forward and sat upright on the sofa.
“If they haven’t been compromised by the Chinese already! We could just evac Gephel and his teams out entirely given the haphazard and uncoordinated way the Tibetans are running this thing. Last thing we want to do is get ourselves implicated in all this if they get caught. Especially considering what happened yesterday night in the skies above Ladakh,” the SOCOM officer offered. Chakri shook his head in dismissal:
“No. The Chinese are feeling the pain from the actions being taken by Gephel and his boys. They are motivated and determined to fight for their country under Beijing’s oppression. Let them fight some more. As far as reinforcement and supplies go, get them away from this sector if it’s proving difficult. Have them meet you someplace else. Near Nepal perhaps? Or Sikkim? You decide. I don’t particularly care. All I want is for these men to continue to prove a thorn embedded under Beijing’s feet. The more destabilized Tibet is, the more controllable the Chinese are and the weaker their position is in front of the world. Continue it long enough and they will be forced to negotiate with the Tibetans and us on resolving border issues just to make this whole painful affair stop. At the very least I want them to lose hundreds, if not thousands of their men to these Tibetan rebels. The Dalai Lama is on his way out and the only way the Tibetans will survive Beijing’s genocide against their culture is to fight back against them. If along the way they bring China to its knees with our support…well, then we might have just avenged the dishonor of what happened during the winter of 1962, won’t we?”
Ansari did not answer but instead walked over and shut down the video on the screen and removed the tape. He looked at the tape in his hand and then looked back at the Defense-Minister:
“Yes, we would have.”
LEH AIRBASE
INDIA
MAY 16, 0900 HRS
The three blue-painted ambassador cars pulled up in front of the entrance for the hardened aircraft shelters at one corner of the airbase. A flurry of officers got out of the cars along with Air-Marshal Bhosale. He returned the salutes to the young squadron pilots standing in
“Not the first one. That was a police battalion from the Chinese 38 TH Police Division. They got ambushed and mauled during the day’s fighting with the Tibetans. That’s when they called in their PLA buddies who, in all their genius, rolled in with armor and heavy guns and neutralized the whole damn village. No question of civilian losses. You see that? There on the left? That’s a complete block of civilian houses demolished by Chinese heavy artillery. Those guys fight insurgency with a heavy hand. And bottom line is that it works. Out Tibetan friends lost a good chunk of their men in this region in just one day’s fighting,” Lieutenant-Colonel Ansari said and paused the tape.
“So much for our chances of coordination and control. Their poor tactics are taking them towards self-destruction. This insurgency is going to be over before we can even make the Chinese bleed enough to care!” Basu said from where he sat.
“What about Gephel and his teams?” Chakri asked Ansari, ignoring Basu’s defeatist attitude for the moment.
“He and his men were down there in these hills you see on the top-left corner of the screen. Our UAV was to the south of the village while the team was northeast. They made good on their escape. All intercepts of Chinese comms revealed no suspicion of the team’s existence. But for all intents and purposes their mission was over before it began.”
“True. Damn idiots , those Tibetans. Couldn’t they have held off the temptation to attack that police convoy for just this once ? Now what?”
“We wait until we hear from the Tibetan resistance again on a new contact place,” Basu said as he leaned forward and sat upright on the sofa.
“If they haven’t been compromised by the Chinese already! We could just evac Gephel and his teams out entirely given the haphazard and uncoordinated way the Tibetans are running this thing. Last thing we want to do is get ourselves implicated in all this if they get caught. Especially considering what happened yesterday night in the skies above Ladakh,” the SOCOM officer offered. Chakri shook his head in dismissal:
“No. The Chinese are feeling the pain from the actions being taken by Gephel and his boys. They are motivated and determined to fight for their country under Beijing’s oppression. Let them fight some more. As far as reinforcement and supplies go, get them away from this sector if it’s proving difficult. Have them meet you someplace else. Near Nepal perhaps? Or Sikkim? You decide. I don’t particularly care. All I want is for these men to continue to prove a thorn embedded under Beijing’s feet. The more destabilized Tibet is, the more controllable the Chinese are and the weaker their position is in front of the world. Continue it long enough and they will be forced to negotiate with the Tibetans and us on resolving border issues just to make this whole painful affair stop. At the very least I want them to lose hundreds, if not thousands of their men to these Tibetan rebels. The Dalai Lama is on his way out and the only way the Tibetans will survive Beijing’s genocide against their culture is to fight back against them. If along the way they bring China to its knees with our support…well, then we might have just avenged the dishonor of what happened during the winter of 1962, won’t we?”
Ansari did not answer but instead walked over and shut down the video on the screen and removed the tape. He looked at the tape in his hand and then looked back at the Defense-Minister:
“Yes, we would have.”
LEH AIRBASE
INDIA
MAY 16, 0900 HRS
The three blue-painted ambassador cars pulled up in front of the entrance for the hardened aircraft shelters at one corner of the airbase. A flurry of officers got out of the cars along with Air-Marshal Bhosale. He returned the salutes to the young squadron pilots standing in
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