#peoples liberation army
soldiers of the Tibetan army in Shigatse, 1938
The Tibetan Army was established in 1913 by the 13th Dalai Lama, who had fled Tibet during the 1904 British invasion of Tibet and returned only after the fall of the Qing power in Tibet in 1911. During the revolutionary turmoil, the Dalai Lama had attempted to raise a volunteer army to expel all the ethnic Chinese from Lhasa, but failed, in large part because of the opposition of pro-Chinese monks, especially from the Drepung Monastery. The Dalai Lama proceeded to raise a professional army, led by his trusted advisor Tsarong
The Tibetan Army held the dominant military strength within political Tibet from 1912, owing to Chinese weakness during the Japanese occupation of China. With the assistance of British training, it aimed to conquer territories inhabited by ethnic Tibetans but controlled by Chinese warlords, and it successfully captured western Kham from the Chinese in 1917
Tibet’s military control was located in Qamdo from 1918. During this time, the Sichuan warlords were busy fighting the Yunnan warlords, allowing the Tibetan army to defeat the Sichuan forces and conquer the region. The Tibetan Army was involved in numerous border battles against the Guomindang (KMT) and Ma Clique forces of the Republic of China. In 1932, the KMT defeated the Tibetan army, driving them out of Kham.
Their first encounter with the People’s Liberation Army was in 1950, when they took over Dengo, and after failed negotiations initiated the Battle of Qamdo, marking the Chinese occupation of Tibet that continues to this day.
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