Tibetan Army

The Tibetan Army (Tibetan: དམག་དཔུང་བོད་, Wylie: dmag dpung bod) was the military force of Tibet after its de facto independence in 1912 until the 1950s. As a ground army modernised with the assistance of British training and equipment, it served as the de facto armed forces of the Dalai Lama government.

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, to counter "the internal threats to his government as well as the external ones".

The internal threats were mainly officials of the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who feared British Christian and secular influence in the army, and who fought the defunding and taxing of the monasteries to feed military expenditures. The monasteries had populations rivaling Tibet's largest cities, and had their own armies of dob-dobs ("warrior monks"). As a result, those monks who feared modernisation (associated with Britain) turned to China, which being the residence of the 9th Panchen Lama, portrayed itself as ally to the Tibetan conservatives. Residents evacuated the city during the Monlam Prayer Festival and Butter Lamp Festival of 1921, fearing violent confrontation between the monks and the Tibetan Army, which was eventually barred from Lhasa to keep the peace.

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