Special Frontier Force: India’s ‘Secret Tibetan’ Guerilla Squad

As tensions on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China reached another flashpoint last weekend, An Indian special operations squad is reported to act in a very counter-offensive against China’s efforts to change the establishment close to the Pangong Tso Lake within the region of Ladakh.

The Special Frontier Forces (SFF) – A covert paramilitary force consisting of Tibetan refugees (now Gurkhas and Bhutani too) – is believed to own a significant role in what the Indian Army referred to as AN operation to “thwart Chinese Intentions” on the night of August 29. Days later, it was disclosed that one SFF commando was killed owing to a land-mine blast close to the flashpoint around the same time the crash occurred.

WHAT IS SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE ?

For decades, the national capital has stayed silent concerning the existence of the SFF, which forms a part of the directorate board General Of Security (DGS) and below the cupboard Secretariat. The DGS is currently a part of India’s external administrative unit, The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

While formally not a part of the Indian Army, it functions below its operational management with its own rank structure and coaching infrastructure. Units that comprise the SFF are referred to as the Vikas Battalions. on 29/30 August, the hole-and-corner unit has been thrust into the general public spotlight, and with it, the Tibetan community in Bharat.

THE SFF’s GENESIS

Tibet has invariably been at the center of Sino-Indian tensions. For India, the people’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) annexation of the mountain territory in 1951 was a loss of its historic buffer zone. For China, India’s harboring of the Dalai Lama and also the exiled Tibetan government following the 1959 Tibetan battle was intolerable.

Until the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, Chinese intelligence remained convinced that India was trying to fuel unrest across the Tibetan highland. Following India’s defeat within the 1962 border war against China, Indian Prime Minister Nehru created a choice to assist revolt movements inside the Asian nation and to arm India’s sizeable Tibetan exile community, that numbered on the point of 80000.

In November 1962, BN Mullick, then director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) beside the United States intelligence agency united to work on multiple secret parliamentary programs. The primary of those was personnel created of Tibetan recruits capable of operative at a high-altitude piece of ground on the border within the event of future Chinese Hostility.

The arrangement hatched by the United States intelligence agency and also the Indian army was to coach recruits for 6 months in mountain warfare, sabotage, and demolition, and then, go into the Asian nation to fight the Chinese.

It absolutely was this prospect that lured several Tibetans into the SFF. By 1964, the SFF was deployed for the primary time on India’s border with the Asian nation but the chance to fight china never came. In 1971 a chance did arise, however, bullets were discharged against West Pakistan, not china.