World Tibet News -- January 12, 2000
Christian Wiedemann
## aus der Gruppe: c.wie...@lm102.link-m.de
_________________WTN-L World Tibet Network News _________________
Published by: The Canada Tibet Committee
Editorial Board: Brian Given, Conrad Richter, Nima Dorjee,
Tseten Samdup, Thubten (Sam) Samdup
WTN Editors: wtn-e...@tibet.ca
______________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, January 12, 2000
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ISSUE ID: 00/01/12 Compiled by Nima Dorjee
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Contents:
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1. China Warns India Against Giving Spiritual Leader Political Asylum (AFP)
2. India under pressure to give asylum to boy lama
3. China Still Has Panchen Lama (AP)
4. Thunder Out of China (TIME)
5. Tibetan leader has not sought asylum (AP)
6. China warns India over arrival of Tibetan leader (Kyodo)
7. The Playing Fields of Asia: Book Review (NYT)
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1. China Warns India Against Giving Spiritual Leader Political Asylum (AFP)
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BEIJING, Jan 11, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) China Tuesday issued a
veiled warning to India not to give political aslyum to the 14-year-old
Tibetan spiritual leader who escaped to India last week. Foreign Ministry
spokesman Zhu Bangzao indicated that any political asylum granted to the
Karmapa Rimpoche would violate the "five principles of peaceful
co-existence" which form the basis of bilateral relations between New Dehli
and Beijing.
"China and India have stated in explicit terms that they will develop and
improve bilateral relations and on relevant issues the India side has made
commitments," Zhu said at a routine briefing. "We hope that the Indian side
will strictly observe their commitments so as to further improve and develop
China-Indian relations."
The Karmapa arrived in Dharmasala, India, last week after an arduous
week-long trek over the Himalayas. He had previously pledged allegiance to
Beijing's rule and was recognised by both China and the Dalai Lama's exiled
Tibetan government in Dharamasla. His daring escape is seen as a damaging
blow to Beijing's religious policy in Tibet, as it had tried to push forward
the Karmapa as an alternative to the exiled Dalai Lama, Tibet's supreme
spiritual leader. China's central government has routinely viewed the
granting of political asylum to domestic opposition figures as "interference
in its internal affairs." Non-interference in the internal affairs of other
countries is one of the five principles that lay the foundation of relations
with India.
"The Indian side has said in explicit terms that it recognizes Tibet as an
inalienable part of Chinese territory and that the Dalai Lama cannot engage
in political activities in India. I think the Indian side is well aware of
this," Zhu said. Indian officials Monday said no request for political
asylum had been made by the Karmapa, although Tibetan officials in
Dharamsala said they hoped that such an offer would be made. They also said
the boy was destined to become a top leader of the Tibetan movement. Zhu
reiterated the Chinese government's official view, stated last week, that
the Karmapa had gone abroad to collect a "black hat and Buddhist musical
instruments," referring to the Black Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism. "It is
reported that he (the Karmapa) is now in India, but we haven't yet had any
confirmation from the Indian side," he said.
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2. India under pressure to give asylum to boy lama
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By David Graves in Dharamsala (The Telegraph 1/11/00)
PRESSURE mounted on India yesterday to grant political asylum to the
14-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader who has fled China across the Himalayas
as the Chinese began reprisals against his supporters. Tibetan officials
said Chinese security police had raided the 800-year-old Tsurphu monastery,
30 miles from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, from where the Karmapa fled last
week, and arrested at least two monks. The officials also disclosed that the
Dalai Lama had made a personal appeal for the Indian Foreign Ministry to
grant the Karmapa asylum. New Delhi had replied that the third most
important spiritual figure in the Tibetan hierarchy should have applied for
sanctuary in Nepal, which he crossed to reach India.
In an effort to resolve the impasse, Julia Taft, the American assistant
secretary of state with special responsibility for Tibetan affairs, met
members of the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala, north India, where
the Dalai Lama is based. Officials accompanying her said India had a "long
and distinguished" record of granting refuge to Tibetans fleeing Chinese
rule and America "saw no reason why this honourable record should change in
relation to the Karmapa". Earlier, Miss Taft met Indian Foreign Ministry
officials in New Delhi to discuss the future of the Karmapa, who is the
spiritual leader of five million Kagyu Buddhists worldwide. A decision on
whether to grant asylum is expected this week. It is expected that
Washington would grant sanctuary to the Karmapa if India refused, although
US officials said they considered that "very unlikely."
The Karmapa, who is the only senior lama to be recognised by the Dalai Lama
and the Chinese government, had been used by Beijing as a symbol of
Communist authority in Tibet and of its so-called "encouragement" of
Buddhism in the disputed region. Both American and Tibetan officials
insisted that Miss Taft's visit "was totally unconnected" with the Karmapa's
escape and had been planned for months. But she was expected to see the
Dalai Lama, who is on a two-and-a-half-month retreat, and possibly the
Karmapa himself. He is now under tight security at a monastery 10 miles from
Dharamsala. A spokesman for the Dalai Lama said he had no plans to break his
retreat to meet Miss Taft. But the American envoy is staying at a guest
house owned by the Dalai Lama's brother and the two were expected to meet,
possibly in secret, to discuss the Karmapa's future.
China has been severely embarrassed by the most significant Tibetan
defection since the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 and would want the Karmapa
to return; and India has recently been trying to thaw the frosty relations
between the two regional superpowers. China's official Xinhua news agency
said only that the Karmapa had left a letter saying he had gone to India to
get musical instruments and black hats used by previous reincarnations of
the Karmapa Lama.
There has been speculation that the Karmapa may eventually take up residence
at Rumtek monastery, in the mountain state of Sikkim, which was annexed by
India in 1975 and where his predecessor settled after fleeing Tibet in 1959.
The black hat, which is a symbol of his authority and which his followers
believe is woven from the hair of female deities, is in Sikkim. But the
monastery is run by a regent who has appointed a rival Karmapa, and Tashi
Wamgdi, the exiled Tibetan minister for religion and culture, said it was
"very unlikely" that the young Karmapa would go there. Any move to Sikkim
would cause additional complications for India, because China has never
recognised Sikkim as a part of India and could provoke clashes between the
rival Karmapas.
As the Dalai Lama made his diplomatic overtures to New Delhi it was
confirmed that the Karmapa, who suddenly moved from a guesthouse in
Dharamsala on security grounds early on Sunday, had been taken to the Gyoto
monastery at Sidhbari, overlooking the snow-capped Dahuladhar mountains. The
monastery was opened by the Dalai Lama in 1996. The Karmapa was seen
yesterday on a balcony outside his fourth-floor room talking to Tai Situ
Rimpoche, his elderly spiritual adviser, who met him when he arrived in
Dharamsala last Wednesday after his nine-day trek to freedom.
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3. China Still Has Panchen Lama (AP)
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January 8, 2000
BEIJING (AP) - China's struggle to win over Tibet's people suffered a severe
blow with the flight of the 17th Karmapa, and Communist leaders are now left
with only one major Buddhist figure within their control: a 9-year-old boy
shrouded in controversy.
The government intervened four years ago to supervise the selection of the
11th Panchen Lama, the second most important lama in Tibetan Buddhism.
Tibet's clergy were forced to snub the Dalai Lama's candidate and appoint
another boy in an attempt to diminish the influence of the Dalai Lama,
Tibet's traditional ruler and a Nobel Peace Prize winner living in exile.
Tibetans across China disparagingly refer to Gyaincain Norbu as "the Chinese
Panchen" or Chinese President "Jiang Zemin's Panchen."
Tibetan spiritual leaders are believed to be the reincarnations of their
predecessors and are found using special rituals while they are young
children.
Chosen in 1995, the Panchen Lama has spent most of his time being educated
by tutors in a suburban Beijing compound, not in Tibet. He returned with
dozens of armed guards last June to Tashilhunpho monastery, the traditional
seat of the Panchen Lamas in Shigatse, Tibet's second-largest city.
Gendun Choekyi Nyima, the boy named by the Dalai Lama, has not been seen in
public since 1995. Human rights groups call the boy, now 10, the world's
youngest political prisoner. The government refuses to disclose his
whereabouts.
China's Communist leaders ventured into the politics of reincarnated lamas
in an attempt to assert their claim to Tibet. They backed the 10th Panchen
Lama when their soldiers marched into independent Tibet in 1950.
Communist media hailed the Panchen Lama as a patriot for not going into
exile with most ranking Buddhist clerics in 1959, although he later spent 14
years in prison or under house arrest for criticizing Mao Tse-tung's
policies in Tibet.
The 17th Karmapa, who is 14 years old, is Tibet's third most important lama
and was being groomed by Communist leaders as an alternative to the Dalai
Lama. He crossed into India on Wednesday to join the Dalai Lama in exile.
Tibetan history is dotted with tales of power-hungry clerics backing rival
candidates as the reincarnations of high lamas. The 17th Karmapa's
predecessor, the 16th Karmapa, was only chosen after a rival mysteriously
fell to his death from the rooftop of a monastery.
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4. Thunder Out of China (TIME)
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Tibet Epic Journey: A teenaged Buddhist leader escapes from China
TIME JANUARY 17, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 2
One of Tibet's holiest figures flees Beijing's control and slips across the
border to be with the Dalai Lama
By MICHAEL FATHERS Dharamsala
The outside world viewed him as Beijing's stooge. But last week the 17th
Karmapa, the impressively tall 14-year-old recognized as the reincarnated
leader of Tibet's second-most important Buddhist sect, climbed out of a
monastery bedroom and began an incredible journey--by car, horse, bus, train
and taxi--that brought him eventually to India. After eight days on the run,
he was united last week with the exiled Dalai Lama--to the elation of those
who support Tibet's freedom.
The flight from China to Dharamsala, the Himalayan site of the Dalai Lama's
government-in-exile, caught both India and China unaware. The Karmapa is
Tibet's third-ranking reincarnated bodhisattva, or enlightened being, after
the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. The teenager's status had been formally
recognized by both the exiled Tibetan government and Beijing. His escape
represents a serious blow to Beijing's efforts to win support for its
control over Tibet. And it could set back improving relations between India
and China; Delhi is sure to face renewed pressure from Beijing to end its
support for Tibetan exiles. China's official news agency has played down the
event, reporting that the Karmapa left to search for religious artifacts and
that he did not intend to "betray the state, the nation, the monastery or
the leadership."
For the Karmapa, it's a dramatic twist in an amazing life. Born Ugyen
Thinley Dorje in 1985 to a family of nomads in a small district in southeast
Tibet, his birth was allegedly foretold by his predecessor, who died in a
Chicago hospital in 1981. It was not until 11 years later that a
high-ranking lama said he had discovered, in an amulet, the previous
Karmapa's prediction about his successor. The monks sent to search for the
incarnate noted that Dorje's birth had been heralded by other auspicious
augurs: the sound of conch shells, unique birdsong, the appearance of three
suns in the sky. He was recognized as the 17th reborn leader of the Kagyupa,
or Black Hat sect, Tibet's most venerable line of Buddhists. (They dominated
Tibet until 400 years ago, when the rival Gelugpa, or Yellow Hat sect,
gained prominence and the Dalai Lama became Tibet's God-King.) The Karmapa
was recognized in 1992, at the age of seven. Beijing's endorsement led to
charges that the Karmapa was a pawn in China's efforts to justify its rule
in Tibet.
In fact, the Karmapa has chafed under China's restrictions on his freedoms
and apparently faced strong pressure to denounce the Dalai Lama. According
to the Karmapa's adherents in exile in India, Beijing also wanted him to
declare publicly that China was a bastion of religious freedom. His
spiritual education had come to a full stop: China wouldn't allow him to
visit the three surviving regents of the Black Hat sect, all of whom are
living in India. At the end of December, he decided to flee from his home in
the remote Tsurphu monastery, a sprawling network of halls and small rooms
set in pristine pasture amid hills some 70 km northwest of Lhasa, the
Tibetan capital.
To prepare his escape, the Karmapa told his Chinese guards that he was going
into a contemplative retreat and would not leave his bedroom. During such
retreats, only his personal cook and teacher were allowed to see him; the
guards remained outside watching TV. Once his minders had been lulled into
complacency, the Karmapa escaped through a bedroom window at 10:30 p.m. on
Dec. 28. A car was waiting for him with two drivers, two lama assistants, a
personal servant and his sister, a Buddhist nun. They drove toward the Nepal
border, following a route almost identical to that of the Dalai Lama's
escape on horseback in 1959. Back at the monastery, the boy's cook and
teacher made daily visits to his empty room to keep up the illusion that he
was inside.
The Karmapa discarded his monk's habit for civilian dress, and the party
drove night and day across Tibet. As the car approached security
checkpoints, the Karmapa alighted ahead of each barrier and circumvented the
police post, joining his companions on the other side. The Karmapa and his
party walked across the border with Nepal and traveled by horseback and via
public transport to the capital, Katmandu. (They phoned the Karmapa's
bedroom on his private line to tell the two co-conspirators that they had
safely crossed the border. Unknown voices answered the call; the fate of the
teacher and cook is not known.) From Katmandu the group crossed into India,
passing through Lucknow and New Delhi. They traveled to Dharamsala by train
and taxi, arriving Jan. 5. to an emotional welcome. "You must be tired," the
Dalai Lama said in greeting. "Yes, I am," the Karmapa replied.
With the Karmapa's escape, the most prominent Buddhist leader left in Tibet
is the Panchen Lama--or, more accurately, two Panchen Lamas. In normal
times, the Panchen Lama is the second most important figure in the Yellow
Hat sect, after the Dalai Lama. But these aren't normal times. The young boy
that Beijing insists is the incarnate holy man, now age 9, has been seen
only once in Tibet: surrounded by armed guards, he briefly presided over
religious ceremonies last June. He lives in a villa outside Beijing. Another
boy, also age 9, certified by the Dalai Lama, has disappeared completely.
China considers it an offense to possess his photograph. A similar situation
surrounded the Karmapa in 1994, two years after China and the Dalai Lama
recognized him as the 17th incarnate. In a schismatic attempt to split the
Black Hats, a group of lamas announced a rival Karmapa. China allowed the
pretender, Tenzin Chentze, to leave for India and held fast to its earlier
choice. After last week's humiliation, they must wish they had changed their
mind.
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5. Tibetan leader has not sought asylum (AP)
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A member of the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile said Monday the Karmapa
Lama hadn't asked India for asylum
January 11, 2000
DHARMSALA, India (AP) -- A teen-age Buddhist leader who fled Chinese-ruled
Tibet has not asked India for asylum, a member of the Dalai Lama's
government-in-exile said Monday.
The 14-year-old Karmapa arrived in Dharmsala on Wednesday after an eight-day
trek over the Himalayas.
"We have not applied to the government of India," said K.A. Lontashiwangd,
religious affairs minister in the Dalai Lama's administration. "But if the
government decided to give asylum, that can be accepted."
India's Foreign Office spokesman, Raminder Singh Jassal, told an informal
press briefing that the government is looking into the circumstances and
consequences of the Karmapa's arrival.
The Karmapa's defection is the most significant exodus since the Dalai Lama
and tens of thousands of Tibetans departed their homeland after a failed
1959 uprising against Chinese rule.
Both China and India have reacted cautiously to the defection.
China's fragile ties with India suffered a setback after India conducted
nuclear tests in May 1998, citing China as a security threat. India and
China fought a war in 1962.
Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Jill Taft arrived in India on Monday and
flew to Dharmsala, the seat of the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile, where
she will visit Tibetans as part of her job to investigate the conditions of
refugees and migrants.
Jassal said Taft's trip had been scheduled before the news of the Karmapa's
escape.
Early Sunday, the Karmapa left the Chonor Guest House, where he had stayed
since his arrival here. The Dalai Lama's administrators refused to say where
he went.
But local police and monks, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had
moved to Gyuto monastery in Sidvari, 10 miles southeast of Dharmsala, where
the exile Tibetan community has its biggest university.
"We have shifted him to keep him away from the media and his followers,"
Longtashiwangd said. "We want him to have a good rest."
China approved the 17th Karmapa's enthronement in 1992 and used him as a
symbol to project its toleration of Tibetan Buddhism. He is the only high
lama whose accession had been agreed upon by both the Chinese authorities
and the Dalai Lama.
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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6. China warns India over arrival of Tibetan leader (Kyodo)
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.c Kyodo News Service
BEIJING, Jan. 11 (Kyodo) - China on Tuesday called on India to deal
carefully with the issue of a high-ranking Tibetan Buddhist leader who left
Lhasa last month and arrived at the Dalai Lama's office in northern India
last week.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao told a press conference in Beijing
that Sino-Indian relations can improve and develop if India sticks to the
terms of bilateral agreements concerning the Dalai Lama, who fled to India
in 1959.
The 17th Karmapa, the third highest Tibetan Buddhist lama whose authority is
recognized both by China and the Dalai Lama, arrived in Dharamasala in
northern India last Wednesday and is believed to be staying at one of his
sect's monasteries there.
A senior official of the Tibetan government-in-exile, based in Dharamsala,
said on Monday he hopes India would respond favorably if it sought asylum
for the teenage lama.
Zhu said, ''The Indian side has said in explicit terms that Tibet is an
inalienable part of China. It has also stated that the Dalai clique cannot
carry out political activities in India.''
''We hope the Indian side can strictly honor its commitments on the relevant
question so that bilateral relations can improve and develop,'' he said.
Answering a question why the Karmapa had left his monastery in Lhasa, Zhu
repeated the official explanation that the Karmapa went abroad to collect a
black hat and musical instruments that belonged to the 16th Karmapa, who
died in 1981 in Indian exile.
Copyright 2000 The Kyodo News Service
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7. The Playing Fields of Asia: Book Review (NYT)
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The story of the century-long battle between Britain and Russia for 2,000
miles of uncharted territory.
By JASON GOODWIN
New York Times, January 9, 2000
In the summer of 1839 a British army of 15,500, most of them native
recruits, along with about 38,000 camp followers and 30,000 camels, marched
up the Khyber Pass from India into Afghanistan. Their aim was to replace
Dost Mohammed, a khan who had never done the British any harm, with Shah
Shuja, who had never done the British any good. The expedition was promoted
by the hawks in government, who believed that breaching the classic
frontiers of British India would send a signal to the Russian czar and
subdue another native state.
''You will see,'' remarked a colonel who watched the army go, ''not a soul
will reach here from Kabul except one man, who will come to tell us the rest
are destroyed.'' Three years later he had the gloomy satisfaction of seeing
Dr. William Brydon, sagging in the saddle, come down from the hills alone.
''Did I not say so? Here comes the messenger.''
So ended the First Afghan War, creepily. One of the greatest debacles in
British military history, it signaled the start of a struggle for power that
was to pit Russia against Britain for over a century in a remote and
inhospitable corner of the world -- the 2,000 miles of unknown territory,
unspeakably hostile, mountainous, frozen, that divided British India from
the Russian Empire. In the daredevil spirit that animated many of its
participants, this contest of superpowers was called the Great Game.
At the end of the 18th century, just as the British were consolidating their
control over India, Chinese pressure closed Tibet to visitors. Beyond the
North-West Frontier, through the notorious Khyber Pass, lay the rugged hills
of Afghanistan, adapted to ambush and inhabited by fierce Muslim
sharpshooters. Still farther north, the steppe of Central Asia extended from
the borders of Russia to China, through whose frightful deserts and salt
lakes the old Silk Road had run, creating fabled cities like Bokhara and
Khiva. From the early 1800's, a battle of wits and endurance was waged
between explorers and diplomats, who plunged into these half-forgotten
wastes to win allies for the Raj or the czar, to seek better blood stock, to
botanize, to settle cartographical disputes, to measure skulls or to prove
the genesis of Aryan civilization.
As the authors of this brilliant history point out, the Great Game was a dry
run for the cold war, avoiding outright conflict but marked by the same
search for influence and the same displays of bravery and cussedness,
though whether the story of the cold war will ever seem as exciting as this,
I doubt. ''Tournament of Shadows'' is much more than a magisterial work of
scholarship: it is an absorbing inquiry into men and motives that is one
part le Carre, one part Indiana Jones.
The risks of the Great Game were frightful. Native rulers were
understandably upset to be caught in a struggle they never asked for, and
kept pits full of man-eating insects. There were unspeakable physical
challenges to overcome, from the highest mountains in the world, the
severest winters and deserts, to a disease of the steppe that caused
unappeasable itching of the testicles. Camels died, dogs died, people
dropped like flies. Yet half the time the difficulty for the authorities was
not in finding men, but in holding them back.
A book with these raw ingredients is bound to be thrilling. It might, in
fact, have become just slightly overwhelming, except that Karl E. Meyer, a
former editorial writer for The New York Times, and Shareen Blair Brysac, a
television documentary producer, never allow a sensational cast of
characters to crowd out the narrative. Chapter by chapter, they plumb the
circumstances that drove the Great Game in each of its phases. ''Tournament
of Shadows'' is a mine of information -- about the Russian steppe, about
cartography, about the functioning of the Raj, the development of spycraft
and the influence of theosophy.
It is written with elegant assurance. The authors keep their own sympathies
in the background, but no one can doubt that Sir John Lawrence, the only
civil servant to become viceroy of India (in 1863) and the exponent of what
his critics called a policy of ''masterly inactivity,'' was a hero; or that
the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin -- pictured here cordially shaking hands
with Hitler -- was a rotter.
Here are the legendary pundits, recruited by the British mostly in the
Himalayas, who mapped a million square miles of Tibet disguised as Buddhist
pilgrims, counting off their paces on specially adapted prayer beads, with
compasses in their prayer wheels and thermometers in their staffs. Here is
Mark Twain advising Kipling (''Write for and about boys''), Lord Curzon on
frontiers (''the razor's edge on which hang suspended the issue of war or
peace and the life of nations'') and the verdict of the first Englishman to
enter Lhasa (''Dirt, dirt, grease, smoke. Misery, but good mutton'').
And ah, the rewards! Some went for glory, some for duty, some for curiosity
and quite a few for enlightenment of one sort or another. They stoked the
fire of imagination, from Shangri-La to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, and gave
imperialism a glamour it often lacked in practice, as Kipling knew. Sir
Aurel Stein, who earlier this century dug up the vanished civilizations of
the Silk Road, was much more frightened of the unexciting bourgeois life
that beckoned him whenever one of his major expeditions looked as if it
wouldn't come off than of the dangers he faced in the desert.
Britain in full imperial rig could almost casually offer stupendous
rewards -- an enthusiastic public to ensure cracking sales of the
traveler's book, the applause of fellow specialists at the Royal
Geographical Society, cases to be filled at the British Museum, the
adulation of high society and the worship of schoolboys. Attuned to the
quiet, self-deprecating style of most heroic travelers, England whisked
away the heroes' treasures, patted them on the back and sent them out for
more.
Only ungentlemanly conduct could spoil the arrangement, as it did with
Hedin, who completed his first major expedition in 1893. In London in 1909
he defended his claim to have explored the last ''white spaces'' on the map
of Tibet by pouring scorn on the achievements of the native pundits, and
earned a deserved rebuke. He turned against England with a ferocity that
sent him spinning into the arms of the Kaiser and, eventually, Heinrich
Himmler, who once observed, ''What the English call a gentleman, we call an
SS man.'' Himmler, with Hedin's blessing, sent a wholly unexpected,
inordinately successful and unquestionably horrible Nazi mission to Tibet in
1938, to investigate some of the wilder and more intriguing claims of Nazi
prehistory. The expedition leader won over several high-ranking Tibetan
officials with his talk of swastikas, and the brief Nazi rapprochement has
been embarrassing the Dalai Lama ever since.
Russia, of course, put up the other half of the Great Game, and in fact
pressed farther into the steppe and ice than anyone, claiming whole new
empires for the czar. The Russians never quite enjoyed the same panoply of
rewards imperial and domestic that British adventurers might receive, for in
a bureaucratic autocracy the path to glory was very narrow.
In the end, Meyer and Brysac conclude, it was a game indeed. Nothing much
came of it, and forward policy had an invariably perverse outcome.
Afghanistan never submitted to the British, and actually helped destroy the
Soviet Union in the 1980's. The British invasion of Tibet in 1905 was a
breathtaking sacrilege, yet stopped infuriatingly short of imposing a treaty
on Tibet that might have served as a recognition of Tibetan independence in
later years.
One of the illustrations in the book is Lady Elizabeth Butler's ''Remnants
of an Army,'' which shows Brydon, the sole survivor of the First Afghan
War, coming up to the Jalalabad fort. Brydon later suffered in the 1857
Indian Mutiny. It is good to know that he died in his bed.
''Tournament of Shadows'' deals with a region where nature, not mankind,
sets terms. Afghanistan is almost as closed and unfathomable now as it was
a century ago; Tibet may surprise us yet; and from the former Soviet
Central Asian republics we hear little and read less. This is a region that
has swallowed civilizations, and sent the sands to seal them up. It has
been dug, charted, swindled and coerced, but what can change the fact that
its deserts are as dry as ever, its mountains vast, and it is still a long,
long way from the sea? Readers who suspect that many of the world's
tragedies are subplots to a vaster comedy will treasure ''Tournament of
Shadows.'' The rest will find all the heroism and misery they might desire.
Jason Goodwin is the author of ''Lords of the Horizons: A History of the
Ottoman Empire.''
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