• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Royal Bhutan Army - Personnel

Mintaining neighbours including India pose no threat to its territory, by 2007 Bhutan contemplated reducing its army strength to 8,000 and raise a militia by next year. "Bhutan's standing army as of today is 9,021 soldiers," said Chief of Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) Wogma Batoo Tshering told the National Assembly 24 June 2007. "We are planning to reduce the strength to 8,000 by next year," he said. At least 22 officers and 1,283 soldiers of the RBA had resigned since the initiative to reduce the strength of the armed forces was announced in 2005.

The Royal Bhutan Army was organized as a regular military force in the 1950s with the encouragement of India and in response to China's takeover of Tibet. An effort by the expatriate Nepalese living in India to expand their operations into Bhutan wtih a satyagraha [non-violent resistence] movement in 1954 failed in the face of the mobilization of the Militia and a lack of enthusiasm among those Nepalese who did not want to risk their already tenuous status.

Following the establishment of a national militia in 1958, the government announced a new conscription system the same year and plans for a standing army of 2,500 troops with modern equipment. Military training was given to all able-bodied men, and by 1963 the standing army was well established. A reorganization in 1968 led several years later to an increase in the army to 4,850 troops and a campaign aimed at recruiting 600 additional troops per year. By 1990 the Royal Bhutan Army was composed of 6,000 men and was backed by a growing militia. Two women were recruited for the army's airport security unit in 1989, but no other women soldiers were noted.

The army was traditionally a small, lightly armed conscript force. The majority of its officers and noncommissioned officers were trained by IMTRAT, which was commanded by an Indian Army brigadier at the Wangchuck Lo Dzong Military Training School, established in 1961 in Ha District. Recruits were trained at the Army Training Centre established in 1957 at Tenchholing in Wangdiphodrang District. IMTRAT also offered a one-to-twomonth precourse for officers and enlisted personnel selected for advanced training in India. Royal Bhutan Army cadets were sent to the Indian National Defence Academy at Pune, followed by training at the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun, from which they were commissioned as second lieutenants. It was reported in 1990 that members of the Royal Body Guards (an elite VIP protection unit commanded by a lieutenant colonel) had completed counterinsurgency and jungle warfare training in the Mizo Hills in India, the Indian College of Combat, and the Indian Military Academy.

The army conducted an annual recruitment drive. Families with two or more sons were expected to have one son serve in the army. Individuals between sixteen and twenty-four years of age, having a minimum height of 150 centimeters and minimum weight of fifty-two kilograms, were eligible for recruitment. Selected from among volunteers and conscripts, recruits were given ten to twelve months of basic training that included weapons proficiency, "field craft," signals, map reading, tae kwon do, and physical fitness. Soldiers also were expected to achieve proficiency in Dzongkha, Nepali, and English. Annual salaries started at Nu300 plus food, clothing, and accommodations.

In September 2000 the Government of Bhutan stated that "the question of the use of children as combatants ... does not arise" due to the absence of "a war like situation" in Bhutan. There was some evidence of underage recruitment in the past, particularly during the major security mobilisation in the early 1990s. A case study on Bhutan conducted for the Machel Study in 1995 provided testimonies indicating that detachments of the Royal Bhutan Army contained young boys, some not more than 15 years of age. Testimony from former soldiers now living in the refugee camps in Nepal suggested a pattern of forced underage recruitment at that time. For example, one boy from Samdripjongkhar district said, "I ran away from home when I was told that I would have to join the army. I was only 16 years old. But it was not to go on for long. They caught me and forced me to join." According to one source, children who failed their school examinations were compelled to join the armed forces, and families with more than three sons were required to send at least one for military service. NGO sources claim that up to 30 per cent of militia recruits in the early 1990s were school and village children.

Since the 1970s, one of the army's goals had been self-sufficiency. The Army Welfare Committee was established in 1978 to oversee the Army Welfare Project, which provided housing, food, and income for the Royal Bhutan Army and the Royal Body Guards. It was charged with taking care of individual army personnel problems and providing pensions to retirees. Although some labor for the Army Welfare Project was provided by army personnel, the project was administered by civil service employees and contractors. By 1979 a pilot project, the Lapchekha Agriculture Farm in Wangdiphodrang District, had been established to provide food for army units in western Bhutan. The farm comprised 525 hectares with a potential for an additional 113 hectares of arable land.

Army personnel constructed a twenty-one-kilometer-long canal to irrigate the farm and worked there for three months each year. Revenues from the farm and other welfare projects helped provide benefits to retired and disabled personnel in the form of pensions and loans and, in the case of landless retirees, agricultural land grants. Army careerists could retire, depending on their rank, between the ages of thirty-seven and forty-five years of age. Preretirement training in farming was provided to army personnel. All retirees received pensions, and those disabled during service received both a pension and free medical care. In 1985 the Army Welfare Project generated Nu40 million in sales of farm services and products, which ranged from such practical civil activities as fence electrification to protect sugarcane farms from wild elephants in Geylegphug District to entrepreneurial endeavors, such as the manufacture and sale of rum to the Indian Army and Indian Air Force.