The Tilt: The U.S. and the South Asian Crisis of 1971
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, on the 31st anniversary of the creation of Bangladesh, the National Security Archive published on the World Wide Web 46 declassified U.S. government documents and audio clips concerned with United States policy towards India and Pakistan during the South Asian Crisis of 1971.
The documents, declassified and available at the U.S. National Archives and the Presidential Library system detai
l how United States policy, directed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, followed a course that became infamously known as "The Tilt."
The documents published today show:
- The brutal details of the genocide conducted in East Pakistan in March and April of 1971
- One of the first "dissent cables" questioning U.S. policy and morality at a time when, as the Consulate General in Dhaka Archer Blood writes, "unfortunately, the overworked term genocide is applicable."
- The role that Nixon's friendship with Yahya Khan and the China iniative played in U.S. policymaking leading to the tilt towards Pakistan
- George Bush Senior's view of Henry Kissinger
- Illegal American military assistance approved by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to Pakistan following a formal aid cutoff by the United States
- Henry Kissinger's duplicity to the press and towards the Indians vis-à-vis the Chinese
Background
Pakistan's December 1970 elections, the first free democratic elections for the National Assembly in Pakistan's history, saw
Sheikh Mujibur (Mujib) Rahman's East Pakistan-based Awami League party (AL) win 167 out of 169 seats contested in Pakistan's Eastern flank, giving the AL a majority and control of the 313-seat National Assembly. This was the first time that political power in Pakistan would be concentrated in its Eastern half.(1)
West Pakistan's loss of political power over East Pakistan was devastating. Threatened by this development, on March 1, 1971, with the Assembly set to open in two days, the military dictator General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan (Yahya), postponed the opening indefinitely. Outraged by the West's disregard for their political rights, the ethnically Bengali East Pakistanis took to the streets demanding that Yahya and West Pakistan respect the election results.
On March 25, 1971, West Pakistani forces, commanded by General Yahya and the Martial Law Administrator, Lt. General Tikka Khan began a self-destructive course of repressive actions against their fellow Pakistanis in the East. The Martial Law Administrators did not discriminate, targeting anyone from Awami Leaguers to students. Large numbers of Bengalis -- Muslims and Hindus, businessmen and academics -- were killed during this period of martial law. The final tally of the dead, as reported by Mujib was approximately three million.(2)
As a result of the violence and instability caused in East Pakistan by the genocide,
an estimated ten million Bengalis had fled across the border to India by May 1971.(3) The refugees were problematic for two main reasons: first, they created a strain on the Indian economy, an economy just coming to terms with development. Secondly, a group of refugees known as the Mukti Bahini, referred to by the Indians as "Bengali Freedom Fighters" were using India as a base from which to launch guerrilla attacks in efforts to fight against West Pakistani oppression.
The refugees became too much for India to handle. Eventually tensions between India and Pakistan grew uncontrollable, and among other things, the lack of a political solution in East Pakistan and Indian support for the guerrilla fighters led to war between the two neighbors. The end result of the conflict was the splitting of Pakistan into two separate states: Pakistan in its present form and an independent Bangladesh.
The U.S. Tilt Towards Pakistan
Discussing the martial law situation in East Pakistan during March of 1971, President Richard Nixon, in his February 9, 1972 State of the World report to Congress indicated that the "United States did not support or condone this military action." Nevertheless, the U.S. did nothing to help curtail the genocide and never made any public statements in opposition to the West Pakistani repression.(4)
Instead, by using what Nixon and Kissinger called quiet diplomacy, the Administration gave a green light of sorts to the Pakistanis. In one instance, Nixon declared to a Pakistani delegation that, "Yahya is a good friend." Rather than express concern over the ongoing brutal military repression, Nixon explained that he "understands the anguish of the decisions which [Yahya] had to make." As a result of Yahya's importance to the China initiative and his friendship with Nixon and Kissinger,
Nixon declares that the U.S. "would not do anything to complicate the situation for President Yahya or to embarrass him. (Document 9)." Much like the present situation post 9/11, Washington was hesitant to criticize Pakistan publicly out of fear that such a tactic might weaken the dictator's support for American interests 
As the conflict in the Sub-continent began to grow, so did criticism of American policy leanings toward Pakistan. The administration denied that any specific anti-India policy was being followed.
Declassified documents show that in addition to tilting towards Pakistan in its public statements, the U.S. also followed a pro-Pakistan line in the UN, in discussions with China, and on the battlefield as well.
Not only did the United States publicly pronounce India as the aggressor in the war, but the U.S. sent the nuclear submarine, U.S.S. Enterprise, to the Bay of Bengal, and authorized the transfer of U.S. military supplies to Pakistan, despite the apparent illegality of doing so.(5) American Military assistance was formally cutoff to both India and Pakistan. A combination of Nixon's emotional attachment to General Yahya and his dislike for Indira Gandhi, West Pakistan's integral involvement with the China initiative and Kissinger's predilection for power politics greatly influenced American policy decision-making during this conflict.
New Documentation
The fact that the conflict occurred over 30 years ago makes it possible now to look at United States actions and policy through documents released at the National Archives under the U.S. government's historical declassification program. The record is far from complete: numerous materials remain classified both by the State Department, CIA and other agencies as well as the Nixon Presidential Materials Project. Nevertheless, the available documents offer many useful insights into how and why Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made important decisions during the 1971 South Asian Crisis.
Highlights from this briefing book include:
- Cable traffic from the United States Consulate in Dacca revealing the brutal details of the genocide conducted in East Pakistan by the West Pakistani Martial Law Administration. In the infamous Blood telegram (Document 8), the Consulate in Dacca condemns the United States for failing "to denounce the suppression of democracy," for failing "to denounce atrocities," and for "bending over backwards to placate the West Pak[istan] dominated government and to lessen any deservedly negative international public relations impact against them." [Documents 1-8, 10-11, 26](6)
- Details of the role that the China initiative and Nixon's friendship with Yahya (and dislike of Indira Gandhi) played in U.S. policymaking, leading to the tilting of U.S. policy towards Pakistan. This includes a Memorandum of Conversation (Document 13) in which Kissinger indicates to Ambassador Keating, "the President has a special feeling for President Yahya. One cannot make policy on that basis, but it is a fact of life." [Documents 9, 13, 17-21, 24-25]
- Greater insight into the role played by the United States in South Asia. While the United States tried to ease the humanitarian crisis in East Pakistan, it did not strongly endorse to Yahya the need for a political solution, which would have allowed the peaceful and safe return of refugees. While some historians believe the roots of the 1971 war were sown following the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the declassified documents show that the 1971 war had its own specific causes: a tremendous refugee flow (approximately 10 million people), Indian support to the Mukti Bahini, and continued military repression in East Pakistan. All these causes were exacerbated by the lack of public White House criticism for the root cause of the South Asian crisis, the abrogation of the December 1970 election results, and the refugee crisis that ensued following genocide. [Documents 12, 16, 22, 27, 46]
- Henry Kissinger's duplicity to the press and toward the Indians vis-à-vis the Chinese. In July of 1971, while Kissinger was in India, he told Indian officials that "under any conceivable circumstance the U.S. would back India against any Chinese pressures." In that same July meeting Kissinger said, "In any dialogue with China, we would of course not encourage her against India." However, near the end of the India-Pakistan war, in a highly secret 12/10/1971 meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to the UN Huang Ha, Kissinger did exactly this encouraging the PRC to engage in the equivalent of military action against the Indians. [Documents 14-15, 30-32]
- Details of U.S. support for military assistance to Pakistan from China, the Middle East, and even from the United States itself. Henry Kissinger's otherwise thorough account of the India-Pakistan crisis of 1971 in his memoir White House Years, omits the role the United States played in Pakistan's procurement of American fighter planes, perhaps because of the apparent illegality of shipping American military supplies to either India or Pakistan after the announced cutoff.(7) Of particular importance in this selection of documents is a series of transcripts of telephone conversations from December 4 and 16, 1971(Document 28) in which Kissinger and Nixon discuss, among other things, third-party transfers of fighter planes to Pakistan. Also of note is a cable from the Embassy in Iran dated December 29, 1971 (Document 44) which suggests that F-5 fighter aircraft, originally slated for Libya but which were being held in California, were flown to Pakistan via Iran. [23, 26, 28, 29, 33-45]
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