Bangladesh war: 'Nixon, Kissinger let personal judgments cloud their thinking'
Last updated on: December 16, 2013 20:06 IST
Arthur J Pais
Forty two years today, December 16, the 1971 war came to an end. India won a decisive victory over Pakistan. Bangladesh was liberated.
In his powerful book, The Blood Telegram, Gary J Bass, a professor at Princeton University, has exposed how US President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger 'allied with the killers,' the Pakistani government in then East Pakistan, as it unleashed genocide on a horrific scale.
Professor Bass discusses Nixon and Kissinger's 'moral blindness,' why they hated India and then prime minister Indira Gandhi, and their plan to draw China into the conflict in this illuminating interview with Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
On the night of March 25, 1971, when the Pakistan army began 'a relentless crackdown on Bengalis, all across what was then East Pakistan and is today an independent Bangladesh,' Princeton University Professor Gary J Bass writes in his The Blood Telegram, 'Untold thousands of people were shot, bombed, or burned to death in Dacca (now Dhaka) alone.'
'(Archer) Blood (the American vice consul) had spent that grim night on the roof of his official residence, watching as tracer bullets lit up the sky, listening to clattering machine guns and thumping tank guns,' Bass records in his disturbing book which explores material in Washington recently declassified.
'There were fires across the ramshackle city. He knew the people in the deathly darkness below. He liked them. Many of the civilians facing the bullets were professional colleagues; some were his friends.'
Blood and his staffers thought they had to 'relay as much of this as they possibly could back to Washington.'
'Witnessing one of the worst atrocities of the Cold War, Blood's consulate documented in horrific detail the slaughter of Bengali civilians: an area the size of two dozen city blocks that had been razed by gunfire; two newspaper office buildings in ruins; thatch-roofed villages in flames; specific targeting of the Bengali Hindu minority,' Bass notes.
The book with the secondary title Nixon, Kissinger and A Forgotten War has been published in America by Knopf.
'The US consulate gave detailed accounts of the killings at Dacca University, ordinarily a leafy, handsome enclave. At the wrecked campus, professors had been hauled from their homes to be gunned down.'
'The provost of the Hindu dormitory, a respected scholar of English, was dragged out of his residence and shot in the neck. Blood listed six other faculty members "reliably reported killed by troops," with several more possibly dead.'
'One American who had visited the campus said that students had been "mowed down" in their rooms or as they fled, with a residence hall in flames and youths being machine-gunned.'
In Washington, President Richard M Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, with their raging dislike for India and then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, refused to support India even as millions of refugees poured into India.
'The slaughter in what is now Bangladesh stands as one of the cardinal moral challenges of recent history,' Bass writes, 'although today it is far more familiar to South Asians than to Americans. It had a monumental impact on India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh -- almost a sixth of humanity in 1971.'
'In the dark annals of modern cruelty, it ranks as bloodier than Bosnia and by some accounts in the same rough league as Rwanda.'
'It was a defining moment for both the United States and India, where their humane principles were put to the test.'
Bass sees things in a larger perspective. 'When we think of US leaders failing the test of decency in such moments,' he muses, 'We usually think of uncaring disengagement: Franklin Roosevelt fighting World War II without taking serious steps to try to rescue Jews from the Nazi dragnet, or Bill Clinton standing idly by during the Rwandan genocide.'
'But Pakistan's slaughter of its Bengalis in 1971 is starkly different. Here the United States was allied with the killers. The White House was actively and knowingly supporting a murderous regime at many of the most crucial moments.'
'There was no question about whether the United States should intervene; it was already intervening on behalf of a military dictatorship decimating its own people.'
'This stands as one of the worst moments of moral blindness in US foreign policy. Pakistan's crackdown on the Bengalis was not routine or small-scale killing, not something that could be dismissed as business as usual, but a colossal and systematic onslaught.'
'Midway through the bloodshed, both the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department conservatively estimated that about two hundred thousand people had lost their lives. Many more would perish, cut down by Pakistani forces or dying in droves in miserable refugee camps.'
Gary J Bass spoke to Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
'India was sponsoring the insurgency inside East Pakistan'
Last updated on: December 16, 2013 20:06 IST
What surprised you most while researching this book?
I was surprised almost constantly while I was researching for this book.
My work as a historian is not specifically on South Asia which I think was helpful in a way. I did not come to the project with any particular pre-conceptions.
I was just trying to figure out what had actually happened.
What I was surprised was by the level of rage and emotion inside the White House in the months leading to the brutal war in East Pakistan and during the war itself.
I had expected Nixon and Kissinger to be coolly rationalising their decisions; but in fact they are remarkably angry and emotional and let personal judgments cloud a lot of their thinking.
I was surprised by the way India was sponsoring the insurgency inside East Pakistan. I did think the Indian government as a good neighbour believed in the national sovereignty of Pakistan.
But in fact what you have them (the Indians) saying is that they are talking about human rights, they are talking about genocide. In fact, they are sponsoring this massive insurgency inside of East Pakistan.
And I was surprised, lastly, by the courage of the people in the Dacca (the US) consulate. It was just physically very dangerous to be operating in the middle of this devastating military crackdown.
These American officials, especially Archer Blood, the vice consul, took tremendous risks. On top of that, they had real moral courage, they stick up for basic principles of human rights -- knowing that doing that is going to be very, very, bad for their careers.
And if you think about what else is happening in 1971. You think about Vietnam, right? Where there are all sorts of American officials who are refusing to pass bad news along to Washington, who are refusing to tell the truth to their superiors.
And here you have these guys in Dacca who do their job in a really honourable way. I thought it is extraordinary to see it.
I think it would be good if we remember people like Archer Blood who showed the diplomacy of the United States at its very best even as Kissinger and Nixon were shown at its worst.
There are things (in the book) that I think that may be helpful for making public policy in the future and having an American government to listen to its diplomats on the ground and listen to its experts around the world.
That I think is important -- there is a real danger of having the White House that has a politicised view of developments in some parts of the world and not being willing to listen to what its people on the ground are telling them.
In 1971, that was the Dacca consulate led by a man named Archer Blood who warned Nixon and Kissinger about the repression and the killings by Pakistani army and the genocide in East Pakistan, aimed in a great deal against the Hindus.
What would Blood have wished Washington to do?
It is an amazing story! Blood is a career foreign service officer; a very patriotic, disciplined, loyal public servant. He is not a radical within the US government; he is not looking to make some big political stand.
He is quite ambitious actually; he is looking to move up within the US government, but he is an honest reporter of what is happening at his station and he and his staff report in great detail about the military crackdown that Pakistan launches across what was then East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh starting on the night of March 25, 1971.
Blood's consulate is sending cable after cable to Washington detailing the scale of the killing; and again, more or less, dead silence.
So they try to increase the volume; the rhetoric gets louder, they start talking about genocide and still no response from Washington.
Then they finally sent in a full scale dissent cable where almost everybody from the Dacca consulate formally dissents from American foreign policy, saying we consider this policy to be morally bankrupt in the face of what the people in the Dacca consulate call genocide.
It is really an extraordinary statement; it is the first official dissent cable sent by US diplomats.
(The State Department had created the idea of having formal dissent cables in the Vietnam era at a time when there were a lot of American officials who were primarily uncomfortable with what the US was doing in Vietnam. Washington wanted to have a way in which Foreign Service officers and American diplomats in the field could formally register their protest with US government policy.
So, though that was created in the Vietnam era, it was being used for the first time in Bangladesh. Since then, dissent cables have happened over and over again.)
But this is the first one and nobody quite knows what's going to happen. Everybody in the Dacca consulate knows that signing and sending this cable will be very bad for your career, but it is only the senior officials that are really likely to face retaliation.
Nobody is going to bother going after a very junior person in the Dacca consulate. They are not big enough for retribution.
The people who really risk retribution are senior officials, the most important of them being Blood.
Image: A 1971 photograph showing Mukti Bahini troops on their way to the frontlines in East Pakistan during the India-Pakistan conflict for the independence of Bangladesh.
Photographs: William Lovelace/Getty Images
Last updated on: December 16, 2013 20:06 IST
Arthur J Pais
Forty two years today, December 16, the 1971 war came to an end. India won a decisive victory over Pakistan. Bangladesh was liberated.
In his powerful book, The Blood Telegram, Gary J Bass, a professor at Princeton University, has exposed how US President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger 'allied with the killers,' the Pakistani government in then East Pakistan, as it unleashed genocide on a horrific scale.
Professor Bass discusses Nixon and Kissinger's 'moral blindness,' why they hated India and then prime minister Indira Gandhi, and their plan to draw China into the conflict in this illuminating interview with Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
On the night of March 25, 1971, when the Pakistan army began 'a relentless crackdown on Bengalis, all across what was then East Pakistan and is today an independent Bangladesh,' Princeton University Professor Gary J Bass writes in his The Blood Telegram, 'Untold thousands of people were shot, bombed, or burned to death in Dacca (now Dhaka) alone.'
'(Archer) Blood (the American vice consul) had spent that grim night on the roof of his official residence, watching as tracer bullets lit up the sky, listening to clattering machine guns and thumping tank guns,' Bass records in his disturbing book which explores material in Washington recently declassified.
'There were fires across the ramshackle city. He knew the people in the deathly darkness below. He liked them. Many of the civilians facing the bullets were professional colleagues; some were his friends.'
Blood and his staffers thought they had to 'relay as much of this as they possibly could back to Washington.'
'Witnessing one of the worst atrocities of the Cold War, Blood's consulate documented in horrific detail the slaughter of Bengali civilians: an area the size of two dozen city blocks that had been razed by gunfire; two newspaper office buildings in ruins; thatch-roofed villages in flames; specific targeting of the Bengali Hindu minority,' Bass notes.
The book with the secondary title Nixon, Kissinger and A Forgotten War has been published in America by Knopf.
'The US consulate gave detailed accounts of the killings at Dacca University, ordinarily a leafy, handsome enclave. At the wrecked campus, professors had been hauled from their homes to be gunned down.'
'The provost of the Hindu dormitory, a respected scholar of English, was dragged out of his residence and shot in the neck. Blood listed six other faculty members "reliably reported killed by troops," with several more possibly dead.'
'One American who had visited the campus said that students had been "mowed down" in their rooms or as they fled, with a residence hall in flames and youths being machine-gunned.'
In Washington, President Richard M Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, with their raging dislike for India and then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, refused to support India even as millions of refugees poured into India.
'The slaughter in what is now Bangladesh stands as one of the cardinal moral challenges of recent history,' Bass writes, 'although today it is far more familiar to South Asians than to Americans. It had a monumental impact on India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh -- almost a sixth of humanity in 1971.'
'In the dark annals of modern cruelty, it ranks as bloodier than Bosnia and by some accounts in the same rough league as Rwanda.'
'It was a defining moment for both the United States and India, where their humane principles were put to the test.'
Bass sees things in a larger perspective. 'When we think of US leaders failing the test of decency in such moments,' he muses, 'We usually think of uncaring disengagement: Franklin Roosevelt fighting World War II without taking serious steps to try to rescue Jews from the Nazi dragnet, or Bill Clinton standing idly by during the Rwandan genocide.'
'But Pakistan's slaughter of its Bengalis in 1971 is starkly different. Here the United States was allied with the killers. The White House was actively and knowingly supporting a murderous regime at many of the most crucial moments.'
'There was no question about whether the United States should intervene; it was already intervening on behalf of a military dictatorship decimating its own people.'
'This stands as one of the worst moments of moral blindness in US foreign policy. Pakistan's crackdown on the Bengalis was not routine or small-scale killing, not something that could be dismissed as business as usual, but a colossal and systematic onslaught.'
'Midway through the bloodshed, both the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department conservatively estimated that about two hundred thousand people had lost their lives. Many more would perish, cut down by Pakistani forces or dying in droves in miserable refugee camps.'
Gary J Bass spoke to Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
'India was sponsoring the insurgency inside East Pakistan'
Last updated on: December 16, 2013 20:06 IST
What surprised you most while researching this book?
I was surprised almost constantly while I was researching for this book.
My work as a historian is not specifically on South Asia which I think was helpful in a way. I did not come to the project with any particular pre-conceptions.
I was just trying to figure out what had actually happened.
What I was surprised was by the level of rage and emotion inside the White House in the months leading to the brutal war in East Pakistan and during the war itself.
I had expected Nixon and Kissinger to be coolly rationalising their decisions; but in fact they are remarkably angry and emotional and let personal judgments cloud a lot of their thinking.
I was surprised by the way India was sponsoring the insurgency inside East Pakistan. I did think the Indian government as a good neighbour believed in the national sovereignty of Pakistan.
But in fact what you have them (the Indians) saying is that they are talking about human rights, they are talking about genocide. In fact, they are sponsoring this massive insurgency inside of East Pakistan.
And I was surprised, lastly, by the courage of the people in the Dacca (the US) consulate. It was just physically very dangerous to be operating in the middle of this devastating military crackdown.
These American officials, especially Archer Blood, the vice consul, took tremendous risks. On top of that, they had real moral courage, they stick up for basic principles of human rights -- knowing that doing that is going to be very, very, bad for their careers.
And if you think about what else is happening in 1971. You think about Vietnam, right? Where there are all sorts of American officials who are refusing to pass bad news along to Washington, who are refusing to tell the truth to their superiors.
And here you have these guys in Dacca who do their job in a really honourable way. I thought it is extraordinary to see it.
I think it would be good if we remember people like Archer Blood who showed the diplomacy of the United States at its very best even as Kissinger and Nixon were shown at its worst.
There are things (in the book) that I think that may be helpful for making public policy in the future and having an American government to listen to its diplomats on the ground and listen to its experts around the world.
That I think is important -- there is a real danger of having the White House that has a politicised view of developments in some parts of the world and not being willing to listen to what its people on the ground are telling them.
In 1971, that was the Dacca consulate led by a man named Archer Blood who warned Nixon and Kissinger about the repression and the killings by Pakistani army and the genocide in East Pakistan, aimed in a great deal against the Hindus.
What would Blood have wished Washington to do?
It is an amazing story! Blood is a career foreign service officer; a very patriotic, disciplined, loyal public servant. He is not a radical within the US government; he is not looking to make some big political stand.
He is quite ambitious actually; he is looking to move up within the US government, but he is an honest reporter of what is happening at his station and he and his staff report in great detail about the military crackdown that Pakistan launches across what was then East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh starting on the night of March 25, 1971.
Blood's consulate is sending cable after cable to Washington detailing the scale of the killing; and again, more or less, dead silence.
So they try to increase the volume; the rhetoric gets louder, they start talking about genocide and still no response from Washington.
Then they finally sent in a full scale dissent cable where almost everybody from the Dacca consulate formally dissents from American foreign policy, saying we consider this policy to be morally bankrupt in the face of what the people in the Dacca consulate call genocide.
It is really an extraordinary statement; it is the first official dissent cable sent by US diplomats.
(The State Department had created the idea of having formal dissent cables in the Vietnam era at a time when there were a lot of American officials who were primarily uncomfortable with what the US was doing in Vietnam. Washington wanted to have a way in which Foreign Service officers and American diplomats in the field could formally register their protest with US government policy.
So, though that was created in the Vietnam era, it was being used for the first time in Bangladesh. Since then, dissent cables have happened over and over again.)
But this is the first one and nobody quite knows what's going to happen. Everybody in the Dacca consulate knows that signing and sending this cable will be very bad for your career, but it is only the senior officials that are really likely to face retaliation.
Nobody is going to bother going after a very junior person in the Dacca consulate. They are not big enough for retribution.
The people who really risk retribution are senior officials, the most important of them being Blood.
Image: A 1971 photograph showing Mukti Bahini troops on their way to the frontlines in East Pakistan during the India-Pakistan conflict for the independence of Bangladesh.
Photographs: William Lovelace/Getty Images