Bhutan Military - People's perception of the Bhutanese Army varies according to the ethnicity of the people. Drupkas take national army in high esteem. On the other hand, the same Army is looked with suspicion by the people of Nepalese origin as it was instrumental in driving away a large section of the Nepalese population from Bhutan.
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Bhutan Military
Speaking to the 28 militia officers, 53 undergraduates including His Royal Highness Dasho Jigyel Namgyal Wangchuck, and 25 village volunteers at the oath taking ceremony, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince commended the volunteers for their spontaneous response when their country needed them.
Royal Bhutan Army
"There are many ways to serve the nation and you all have chosen a noble and selfless way," Dasho Khesar said. "With His Majesty the King at the helm, there is no doubt that Bhutan can overcome any problem today and in the future".
Dasho Khesar reminded the militias about the National Assembly resolutions on the militant problem which had been extensively debated since the 77th session of the Assembly in 2000. "Our ancestors have handed over to us a secure and sovereign nation," the Crown Prince said.
"It is therefore of utmost importance that we hand over a secure and sovereign Bhutan to the future generation." The army's primary mission was border defense, but it also assisted the Royal Bhutan Police in performing internal security duties.
The army also provided security at the Paro airport and regulated the sale, ownership, and licensing of civilian-owned firearms. For ceremonial occasions, the army had a band, some members of which were trained in India. The army's supreme commander in 1991 was the Druk Gyalpo;
Bhutan - Militia
Day-to-day operations were under the charge of the chief operations officer. The chief operations officer held the rank of colonel until 1981, when the position was upgraded to major general. Organizationally, the army headquarters ranked at the ministry level and was immediately subordinate to the Council of Ministers.
Adjoining the Indian Army base is a camp for approximately 120 Bhutanese soldiers who train with the Indians on joint exercises in the rugged mountains that rise up from the Paro Valley. Just another kilometer or so further up the road is a Bhutanese army camp of 24 soldiers and their families.
The camp's sole purpose is to maintain 80 horses to cart supplies to military units higher still on the trail to the Bhutan-Tibet border region. In late October, on the dirt road that winds north from the Bhutanese town of Paro in the direction of the border with Chinese-controlled Tibet, I passed an Indian army base of more than 600 soldiers.
They are packing up to return to India for the duration of Bhutan's harsh winter months. On the same road just after sunrise, I encounter an Indian Army squad of special forces soldiers with Himalayan features running in formation, sandbags roped to their backs, with the squad's commander shouting “No photos, sir!”
Royal Bhutan Army Air Arm
Most if not all of the army's weapons in the 1980s were manufactured in India. Rifles, bayonets, machine guns, and 81mm mortars have been noted in the army's weapons inventory, but some were believed to be obsolete.
Figures on defense expenditures were not publicly available and, in budgetary information published by the Planning Commission, were found only in general government costs. In FY 2002, the Bhutanese Government spent 1.9% of its GDP on the military or US $9.3 million.
Bhutan was also the first international destination for India's new army chief. From November 1 to 3, General Dalbir Singh Suhag visited senior officials in Bhutan on what was billed a “routine” visit. But coming on the heels of September's large military incursion by China into the Ladakh border region controlled by India, even as Chinese President Xi Jinping was on a state visit to India, Singh's Bhutan meetings are unlikely to have been routine, especially since he brings unusually
relevant experience to the Himalayan brinksmanship that China is displaying: he has previously headed India's Special Frontier Force, a covert “China-centric” unit of highly trained ethnic Tibetan soldiers. This probably explains why the road leading up from the Indian and Bhutanese military bases in the picturesque Paro Valley is rapidly being widened and paved, almost entirely by imported Indian laborers, often working by hand.
Residents say the Indian government, for decades a protector of sorts for a deeply Buddhist Bhutan that sympathizes with Tibet, is paying for the road-building out of its worries about China. Locals expect that the road will soon be paved all the way to the rudimentary base at Gunitsawa, far up the valley.
It is conceivable that next year the Indian army will also provide heavy-lift helicopters to supply the Bhutanese checkpoints high in the Himalayas, allowing the Bhutanese army to put its hard-working horses out to pasture, while increasing its vigilance on the border with China.
. Modi's June visit to Bhutan came one month before the scheduled China-Bhutan border talks, an annual ritual for the past 22 years that has signally failed to resolve the territorial disputes. In the face of increasing Chinese pressure on Bhutan to open relations with Beijing, Modi announced a 50 percent increase in Indian aid to Bhutan, to approximately $970 million annually.
Bhutan has 8,000 members in five military branches: the Royal Bhutan Army, Royal Bodyguard, National Militia, Royal Bhutan Police, and Forest Guards. India maintains a permanent military training presence in Bhutan through IMTRAT, the Indian Military Training Team.
The Royal Bhutan Army was formed into a regular military force in the early 1950s following the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Village security is a long-standing tradition. The present militia is controlled by the central government.
Universal militia training by the Royal Bhutan Army was instituted in 1989. Militia have been raised at various times, including during internal disturbances in the early 1990s. Militia training was reportedly provided to individuals who had completed at least the tenth grade, new college graduates, and members of the civil service.
One of the horses' former destinations, the Bhutanese army base at Gunitsawa, 14 kilometers further up the valley, was accessible only by mountain trail until a crude road was carved out in 2012, the year the base first received reliable electric power.
Gunitsawa's regiment of approximately 90 soldiers sends 15-man units on one-month rotations to three checkpoint huts higher in the mountains; supplying these forward checkpoints gives continuing employment to the army's stable of horses. Bhutan shares a China problem with its neighbor and ally, India.
The first foreign state visit by India's newly elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was to Bhutan, underscoring the importance of Bhutan's border with China, and the strategic vulnerability it represents if China and India were to go to war.
From the disputed western China-Bhutan border, China could easily strike India's geographic "chicken neck" – a narrow band of land, the Siliguri Corridor, that connects the main body of India with its northeastern states, home to 45 million people.
During the early 1990s, the Indian Separatist groups, United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), and Kamtapur Liberation Organization (KLO) had begun to clandestinely set up camps in Bhutan's dense southern jungles.
The 6,000-strong army of Bhutan launched the first offensive in its history in 2003, attacking Indian separatist rebels (ULFA) with camps in the country. The 28 graduates and in-service volunteers, including three women, were awarded the rank of lieutenant, 10 undergraduates, based on their merit, were awarded the post of second lieutenant, five undergraduates were appointed as Dekha Drimpons, 17 as Drimpons, and 21
as Pelpons. A total of 634 volunteers, that form a nation-wide militia force, also completed their training on Monday around the country. The Royal Bhutan Army relies on the Eastern Air Command of the Indian Air Force for air assistance.
In recent years India has helped Bhutan start to develop its military in all areas through military donations and training. Indian Air Force helicopters evacuated RBA casualties to India for treatment during Operation All Clear in 2003. Bhutan has one airport with paved runways (1,524 to 2,437 m), and one airport with unpaved runways (1,914 to 1,523m).
As of 2015 the Light Transport squadron had 1 Dornier Do-228, and the Medium Lift Transport squadron had 7 Mil Mi-8T Hip-C. The three checkpoint camps, Gyatsa, Soi Thangthangkha and Lingshi, are Bhutan's only means of keeping an eye on its northwest border with China's Tibet region.
(Bhutan, a Switzerland-sized country of 740,000 inhabitants, famous for its emphasis on “Gross National Happiness,” has no air force; it relies on neighboring India and Nepal even for helicopter support in the event of emergencies in remote districts).
The checkpoints are near a region of Bhutan that Beijing says is its territory, in addition to the claims it has made on Bhutan's northern border. Bhutanese soldiers report that their usual task on the frontier is to intercept smugglers, but that the Chinese military sometimes crosses into Bhutanese territory via roads China has recently built all the way to the western Bhutanese border.
"When they come in, it's with 15 trucks or nothing," says one Royal Bhutan Army officer. In a move said by the Druk Gyalpo to reinforce Bhutan's security, new militia training was initiated in 1989. In the early 1980s, weapons training for all male citizens between ages sixteen and sixty was considered, but, in view of national security and public works.
projects to which the army was already committed, it was postponed. In 1990 ninety-four students were enrolled in a program at the Tenchholing army camp. Candidates for militia training included individuals who had completed at least the tenth grade, new college graduates, and members of the civil service.
Starting in 1989, new male civil service entrants were required to take a three-week militia training course. In reaction to the "prodemocracy" demonstrations by ethnic Nepalese in southern Bhutan in September 1990, the government announced that more than 1,000 citizens had volunteered to join militia groups.
The army was to provide training for around 500 militia members to assist the "badly under strength" police in dealing with mob attacks. Recruits were men and women from among civil servants and urban residents. Militia trainees pledged to give their "full support and loyalty" to tsawa sum (country, king, and people) and a total commitment to defend the nation.
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China, with its increasingly aggressive moves along its Himalayan borders, seems to be employing the same methodology it has used in its ongoing takeover of the near-entirety of the South China Sea. This gives the Indian government good reason to worry that Beijing might also muscle its way into its lands, just as it has annexed territory over the objections of South China Sea claimants Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and, most recently, Indonesia.
The Royal Bhutan Army remains a small force. The founder of the country, Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, created local militias and these were resurrected in 2003. The militias play an important role in protecting important installations like hospitals, bridges, power and telephone stations, and checkposts.
The militia volunteers have to complete a two-month militia training at the Royal Body Guards (RBG) training center. In the face of the continued presence of United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and Bodo fighters in the country, there were calls in the National Assembly in 2000 for the reintroduction of militia training for men between the ages of 18 and 60. According to
the Royal Government of Bhutan, as of 2001 there was no longer any standing militia force in the country and no military training had been conducted outside the armed forces. Historically, the government raised militia forces during times of crisis during the period of theocratic rule (1616-1907).
They were commanded by a dapon (arrow chief in Dzongkha). In modern times, a 5,000-strong militia was raised in 1958 as part of the defensive strategy against China. Militia personnel were trained by army officers who had been trained at the Indian Military Academy.
Their primary function was as a first line of defense along the border areas with China. Following an Indian inspection tour in 1961, the government was advised to step up militia recruitment. In 1967 the militia was reorganized on a national basis, with compulsory military training being given for three months each year for three years to men twenty to twenty-five years of age.
After the initial three-year training phase, militia personnel were placed on reserve status. Following the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, India took control of and began to train the Bhutan Army. Over 4,000 Indian military advisors have been sent there.
India helped establish and equip the Bhutan Air Force, which is deployed along the border with China, and encouraged Russia to provide military helicopters and logistical support. A large crowd of family and friends, including proud parents, spouses and children, gathered in Dechenchholing on September 15, 2003 as His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, Dasho Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck awarded the dhar, prizes, and certificates to 106 militia volunteers who
completed their two-month militia training. Delhi's full-court press for Bhutan's allegiance will continue on November 7, with a two-day state visit to Bhutan by India's President Pranab Mukherjee, accompanied by a large delegation – the first trip to Bhutan by an Indian president in 26 years.
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