Special Frontier Force, India's secret army of Tibetans

New Delhi: India's secret force of Tibetans, the SFF (Special Frontier Force) was raised after the 1962 border conflict with China. Its main goal originally was to conduct covert operations behind Chinese lines in the event of another Sino-Indian War. The SFF, sometimes also referred to as Establishment-22, has been a part of India's external intelligence agency, R&AW, and was originally raised to play a role behind enemy lines in China in the event of a war. It came to be known as 'Establishment 22' due to its first Inspector General, Major General (Retd.) Sujan Singh Uban of Indian Army, who used to be commander of 22 Mountain Regiment during World War II, a Military Cross holder and a legendary figure in the British India Army. Singh commanded the 22nd Mountain Regiment during World War II in Europe and a Long Range Desert Squadron (LRDS) in North Africa. Based in Chakrata, Uttarakhand, the force was put under the direct supervision of the Intelligence Bureau, and later, the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency. The story of this still-secret regiment, however, reads like a set of Catch 22 situations. Though it was raised to fight the Chinese army in Tibet, it has fought in several theatres of war except that one. It's so classified a set-up that even the army may not know what it's up to — it reports directly to the prime minister via the directorate general of security in the cabinet secretariat; so the gallantry of its soldiers cannot be publicly recognised. It's supposed to be a group of volunteers; but all school-passing Tibetan children not making a certain grade are still expected to join it. On the advice of Intelligence Bureau founder-director Bhola Nath Mullick and World War II veteran Biju Patnaik, Nehru ordered the raising of a Tibetan guerrilla force that could engage the Chinese in the uber-tough terrains of the Himalayas. Since then, the regiment has participated with exemplary skill in Operation Eagle (securing Chittagong hills during the Bangladesh War of 1971, where 46 soldiers of the regiment died), Operation Bluestar (clearing Amritsar's Golden Temple in 1984), Operation Meghdoot (securing the Siachen glacier in 1984) and Operation Vijay (war with Pakistan at Kargil in 1999). The total number of soldiers, though, has changed — swelling to about 20,000 around 1970 and then whittling down to below 10,000. It's difficult to know the exact count at present because of the tight lid of secrecy. The lid was, however, blown in 1978. Indian newspapers reported that an electronic intelligence machine passed on by the CIA and mounted atop Nanda Devi in 1965 to track Chinese missile tests had gone missing. The bigger worry was over the plutonium generator that powered the machine. As Prime Minister Morarji Desai assured a worried Parliament on nuclear safety, the mention of SFF, that had mostly manned the operation, slipped out. But for all their hardship and valour, SFF men and women have got little official recognition. Only recently have a few SFF soldiers been given gallantry awards for Siachen and Kargil.