A recent book, which has received several literary awards and has been authored by renowned Princeton University professor Gary Bass, exposes the indifference of former American president Richard Nixon and his then national security adviser Henry Kissinger: both ignored warnings by US diplomats on the ground imploring them to stop the large-scale violence against Bengalis and alleged atrocities committed by Pakistani troops in East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh); instead, both Nixon and Kissinger turned a blind eye because Pakistan was helping Nixon open up a channel of communication with Mao’s reclusive China.
Nixon and Kissinger — the latter would become secretary of state — saw China as a counterweight to the rising power of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The book, “Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide”, has won a number of prestigious awards recently, including the 2014 Cundill Prize for historical literature, the 2014 Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award, and the Bernard Schwarz Book Award 2014, conferred by the Asia Society in New York. According to Bass, not only did both Nixon and Kissinger turn a blind eye to the alleged actions of the Pakistan army but also supported the military dictator General Yahya Khan, who was alleged to have ordered mass killings of Bengalis in 1971 in East Pakistan. According to the CIA, 200,000 Bengalis were massacred, including thousands of Hindus. However, Bangladeshi sources speak of three million deaths and tens of thousands of rapes committed against Bengali women.
About 10 million refugees from East Pakistan poured into India, forcing the Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi to launch an operation to enable the refugees to return to their native land which later became independent Bangladesh. India helped create the country. During a recent discussion at the Asia Society and, later, at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Bass told Weekend Review that “Blood Telegram” recounts a “very dark period” in Pakistan’s history.
He revealed that the material collated for his book “took four long years” but the “most useful material I had access to were the White House tapes, although they were a nightmare”. Bass meticulously pored over the material, relying on declassified documents from US archives; he had also wanted to evaluate Indian documents, but the “Indian archives were in a terrible condition”.
“Blood Telegram” highlights the human tragedy that unfolded in East Pakistan following the refusal by Yahya Khan, in connivance with Zulkifar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s foreign minister at the time, to accept the election victory of the East Pakistani leader Mujibur Rahman.
Many historians and human rights activists have criticised Nixon and Kissinger for not stopping the bloodshed, although they had the power to do so. The duo was fixated on using Pakistan to help open a direct channel of communication with Mao’s China and pave the way for Nixon’s visit, the first-ever by a US President to China, the following year.
Indeed, Nixon even calls Yahya Khan a “decent man” and empathises with the latter, generating shock and disapproval among many Americans, particularly American diplomats based in Dhaka where they witnessed mass killings of civilians. Nixon showed a special affinity for Yahya Khan, who had been friendly with the American president during the latter’s lean political times.
“Pakistan is a Cold War ally of the US. Nixon has an emotional investment in liking Pakistan and at the same time an emotional investment in hating India and Indira Gandhi. There are suggestions that the US could have warned Pakistan [to stop the bloodshed] but this was not happening. US military supplies were used against Bengalis, raising a lot of resentment against the US,” Bass said at the CFR.
Archer Blood, then US consul-general in Dhaka, around whom the narration is woven and from whom the book gets its title, is named. He risked his entire career when he sent bluntly worded cables to the State Department about the ground situation in East Pakistan, imploring the administration to stop the madness.
A cable dated March 28, 1971 criticised the administration’s failure to denounce the atrocities. “We, as professional public servants, express our dissent with current policy and fervently hope that our true and lasting interests here can be defined and our policies redirected in order to salvage our nation’s position as a moral leader of the free world.” Bass said that Blood even hid Bengalis in his home to prevent them from being killed by Pakistani soldiers.
Blood’s cables infuriated both Nixon and Kissinger. “Blood and his senior staff took a big risk on their careers and professions when they expressed their disapproval of Washington’s attitude,” Bass said. When the then US secretary of state Will Rogers received this “miserable” cable, he informed Nixon about the “open rebellion” at the Dhaka consulate. Nixon was unmoved.
Bass said that Nixon also wanted to fire Kenneth B. Keating, then US ambassador to India, because he had refused to toe Nixon’s line. Nixon, known for his bouts of rage, called Keating a “traitor” and wanted to fire him because he was allegedly supporting the Indians. Nixon and Kissinger frequently resorted to the use of invectives against Indira Gandhi. Nixon, given to mood swings, once compared Yahya Khan to Abraham Lincoln, while on another occasion called the Pakistani president a “Hitler”, according to Bass.
The documents show that Nixon’s friendship with Yahya Khan and his interest in China played a role in US policymaking, leading to what came to be known as the “tilt” towards Pakistan. They exposed the illegal American military assistance approved by Nixon and Kissinger to Pakistan, violating the arms embargo against Pakistan at that time.
Not only did the US publicly pronounce India as the aggressor in the war, but also sent the nuclear submarine “USS Enterprise” to the Bay of Bengal, and authorised the transfer of US military supplies to Pakistan. Nixon had also asked China to move its troops to India’s northeastern borders with China so as to put pressure on India. At the CFR discussion, Bass revealed that he had tried to talk to Kissinger to get his views for his book. However, Kissinger did not respond to Bass’s two requests for an interview.
The book, which shows Kissinger in poor light, has been attacked by some close associates of the former secretary of state, though Kissinger himself did not personally attack the book or directly contact the author.
“I tried to contact Kissinger to get his views for the book because I wanted to have a balance and also give him an opportunity to present his views. But he did not respond,” Bass said.
The scale of the alleged killings would normally have shaken the world’s conscience. However, unlike the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunals set up to try war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, there has been no accountability from those in West Pakistan responsible for the violence in Bangladesh. “It was a tragic human cost for the China opening,” Bass observed.
Could Nixon and Kissinger have stopped the violence in 1971? Many US critics privately told Weekend Review that Nixon and Kissinger should not have used Yahya Khan’s go-between role with China, and exercised their leverage to prevent the mass killings. Nixon had options other than blindly rushing to establish direct contacts with China which was then, anyway, slowly opening itself through its so-called ping-pong diplomacy. Nixon also had the option of using Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu’s help to open a back channel with China. During his 1970 US visit, Ceausescu had discussed the question of China’s opening but Nixon decided later that Pakistan, not Romania, would be the conduit.
Manik Mehta is a commentator on Asian affairs.
