International Campaign for Tibet

The Veil of Kashmir: How Many Chirus Died for the Shawl?

Liang Yinquan thought he knew the risks of leading the Wild Yak Brigade, a gang of wildlife guardians protecting a shy, gazelle-like animals that lives 5,000 meters up on the Tibetan plateau.

The brigade's first leader died in a firefight with poachers. His comrades found his frozen corpse with a finger on the trigger of his gun and a hand on the bolt. The second died at home of a gunshot to the head - some say by his own hand, others say by an assassin's bullet. And Mr. Liang, who heads the brigade today, nearly let his men to their deaths a few weeks ago when their jeeps bogged down in a river for days, hundreds of roadless kilometers from civilization's nearest outpost.

But an even more powerful enemy has ambushed the 47-year-old country police chief: bureaucracy. Higher-level officials have ordered his group disbanded in favor of a more obedient squad with fewer people and less experience. "I don't know why they don't want us," says Mr. Liang from his concrete-floored apartment in Golmud, a remote trading town at the foot of Kunlun Mountains. "I've been working here my whole life and have ears everywhere."

The fate of the brigade - and Tibetan Antelope - shows the disastrous effects of petty infighting in remote corners of China. Now, as the animal's winter coat thickens and the illegal hunting hits its high season, the animals are losing one of their greatest guardians.

British Vogue magazine in June included the fabric on a list of "survival tactics" to "get through the parties and holidays." New York designer Christina Kim mentioned a shahtoosh shawl among her published list of "most useful travel clothes." David Tang, a big Chinese department-store owner, has said he likes a shahtoosh shawl on his lap when he eats his TV dinner. But shahtoosh's days may also be numbered. A U.S. district court in Newark, New Jersey, has issued subpoenas to a number of prominent New York socialites, ordering them to hand over their contraband shahtoosh and to say where they bought it.

The Wild Yak Brigade started as a group of mining regulators in the late 1980s, when prospectors struck gold in a remote corner of Qinghai province, once part of the Tibetan kingdom and still populated by Tibetan nomads. Gisang Sonam Dorjay, a local ethnic Tibetan official, was put in charge of issuing panning rights in a 73,000-square-kilometer region known as Kekexili, which lies on the chirus' migration path as they move through China's three western-most provinces.

By 1993, impoverished miners discovered that shahtoosh was worth more than its weight in gold and began slaughtering the animals. Several skins (at about $80 apiece) earned a year's income, and word of windfall profits spread quickly.

Mr. Gisang gathered three police officers from his county, Zhiduo, and began making forays into Kekexili to hunt poachers. On Jan. 16, 1994, while driving through a flood plain, they detained a gang coming the other way with more than 1,300 chiru skins. Nobody had brought handcuffs, so the four officers loaded the 15 poachers onto the back of a truck and began the four-day drive to Golmud, the nearest town. Two days later, the poachers overpowered their captors. They shot Mr. Gisang to death, bound the other officers stole a jeep and fled, leaving the pelts behind.

The anti-poaching movement had found its martyr. Mr. Gisang's brother-in law, Zhaba Dorje, took over, and Mr. Liang joined in 1995, when brigade membership swelled to 57 people.

In 1997, the group discovered the chiru's birthing ground, where thousands of vulnerable females gathered. They established a camp there, and tried unsuccessfully to nurse orphaned calves. China's most active independent environmental group, Friends of Nature, donated two jeeps; the International Fund for Animal Welfare followed with a $10,000 donation.

Trouble was, the Wild Yak Brigade faced not a frontal assault, but a flanking maneuver. Kekexili had become a nature reserve in 1997, and created its own anti-poaching squad of 23 people and one jeep. It has received little attention and few contributions, and has made only three anti-poaching tours though the region this year, partly because its leaders have been attending mandatory political study sessions learning to "serve the people."

Stories of the Wild Yak Brigade nonetheless rankle Cai Ga, head of the nature reserves. "It's not that we do nothing and the Wild Yak Brigade does everything," he says. "We spread a lot of propaganda, and people don't sell chiru skins in the markets anymore."

In August, while the brigade was on patrol and unavailable, officials in nearby Yushu prefecture ordered it to disband or merge with Cai Ga's nature-reserve staff.

So far, all brigade members - people like Samdrup Dorje - have refused to do so. The 30-year-old, and ethnic Tibetan, joined two years ago after hearing other members swapping war stories of battles with poachers. He gave up his$50-a month salary at a trading company for the $40 he makes as permanent brigade member. "There's no way I'll work for the reserve," he insists. Mr. Liang, who took over the brigade after Zhaba Dorje was found dead at home nearly a year ago, has been living in the group's headquarters in Golmud for two years, sleeping under a huge poster of Mao Tse-tung. He shakes his head at the bureaucracy. "They could have worked with us," he says, "or changed our name to the Nature Reserve Brigade."