Magnificent Delusions (26 page)

Blood gave vivid details of massacres Pakistani troops had conducted and informed Washington that the army was supporting non-Bengali Muslims in “systematically attacking poor people's quarters and murdering Bengalis and Hindus.” He further wrote that the United States “should be expressing our shock, at least privately,” to the government of Pakistan over “this wave of terror” the Pakistan military directed against its own countrymen.
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In a second telegram Blood listed reports of carnage that US citizens present at the time in East Pakistan had provided. He said that there was no armed resistance to the Pakistani military, which was setting Awami League supporters' houses on fire before gunning down people as they escaped from their burning homes. In an effort to eliminate all sources of “intellectual ferment,” the military was killing Bengali university professors.

There were “reliable reports of troops engaged in looting homes (beating those who object, including middle level government officials) and shaking down refugees.” There had been incidents of “unprovoked firing by military on children and fishermen.”
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A third
cable, titled “Killings” spoke of the mass murder of students on university campuses.
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But this recounting of horror stories had little effect on senior US policy makers. Ambassador Farland opined that “Yahya was sincere in his efforts to bring about a political solution” to disagreements between East and West Pakistan, but “acts of insurrection” had forced his hand. Farland recognized the Pakistan army's “brutal, ruthless and excessive use of force” and shared the “indignation” and “sense of horror” Blood and other witnesses at the scene had felt. But in Farland's view government servants could not base their reaction solely on “righteous indignation.”

Like Nixon and Kissinger, the US ambassador also wanted to stay quiet about the events in East Pakistan. He pointed out, smugly, that the use of force had not affected American property and citizens. For Farland, the matter was Pakistan's internal problem, because “the constituted government is using force against citizens accused of flouting its authority.” He concluded that “deplorable as current events in East Pakistan may be, it is undesirable that they be raised to the level of a contentious international political issue.”
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At this point nineteen of the twenty Americans posted in the US consulate at Dhaka decided to use the State Department's dissent channel to send what came to be known as the “Blood Telegram,” named after Archer Blood. It concluded that a Bengali victory was inevitable, as was the establishment of an independent Bangladesh. “At the moment we possess the good will of the Awami League,” Blood added to the draft of his political officer W. Scott Butcher. “We would be foolish to forfeit this asset by pursuing a rigid policy of one-sided support to the likely loser.”
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The US officials, including the ironically named Blood and Butcher, wrote of their conviction that the US response to the tragedy in East Pakistan served “neither our moral interests broadly defined nor our national interests narrowly defined.” They pointed to the US government's failure to “denounce the suppression of democracy” and its “bending over backwards to placate the West Pakistan-dominated government.”

One of the cable's memorable lines read, “Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy, ironically at a time when the USSR sent President Yahya Khan a message defending democracy”

The day after the “Blood Telegram” arrived, seven specialists on South Asian affairs from the State Department's Near East Asia bureau, one from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and another from the Agency for International Development, sent a letter to Secretary of State Rogers supporting the consulate staff's views. The telegram had significant influence within the US government, even though it did not result in a change in policy After some effort to convince the consul-general that he and his colleagues were being overly emotional, Rogers recalled Blood to Washington on Nixon's orders.

But Blood was not the only one reporting indiscriminate slaughter. Several American journalists were expelled for describing the Pakistan army's carnage in their dispatches, including Sydney Schanberg of the
New York Times
. His final story from Dhaka, published in the paper on July 4, ran under the headline: “An Alien Army Imposes Its Will: East Pakistan.”

“Doesn't the world realize that they're nothing but butchers?” Schanberg's story began, quoting a foreigner, “who has lived in East Pakistan for years,” speaking of the Pakistan army. “That they killed—are still killing—Bengalis to intimidate them, to make slaves out of them? That they wiped out whole villages, opening fire at first light and stopping only when they got tired?”

Schanberg questioned the army's design of “Islamic integrity” for Pakistan. He cited a Westerner as saying, “It's a medieval army operation as if against serfs,” adding that the West Pakistanis “will use any method just to own East Pakistan.”
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Later accounts from participating Pakistani officers, including Major General Raja, confirmed that thinking within the army.

Chester Bowles, the two-time ambassador to India, demanded that the United States discontinue all aid to West Pakistan, except food and medical supplies, and he blamed the United States for arming Pakistan in the first place. “The appalling struggle now going on
in East Pakistan,” Bowles pronounced, “is a further testament to the folly of doling out arms to ‘friendly governments' with little regard for whom they are to be used against or for what reasons.”
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Opposition to violence against the Bengalis soon became an international campaign, joined by politicians, human rights activists, and celebrities. Musicians, including former Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr, joined Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar in performing at two benefit concerts at the Madison Square Garden in New York for the victims of Pakistani atrocities. Other famous musicians, including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Leon Preston, joined the “Bangladesh Concert.” The concerts raised mass awareness as well as $250,000 for Bangladesh, and recordings of the music continued to sell for years to come.

In his memoirs written years later, Kissinger confessed that the reports emanating from Dhaka put the administration in a tight spot. “The United States could not condone a brutal military repression,” he said, admitting that there was “no doubt about the strong-arm tactics of the Pakistani military.” He explained the Nixon administration's decision not to react publicly to the military repression in East Pakistan as necessary in order to protect “our sole channel to China.”
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Writing in 1979, Kissinger conceded that “there was some merit to the charge of moral insensitivity” regarding US policy toward Pakistan. In 1971, however, Yahya's role as messenger to China trumped questioning his decision to unleash brutal violence against Bengalis. Two weeks after Yahya sent his army into action in East Pakistan, Farland reported that the Pakistan military controlled the province's major cities while the Bengalis held the countryside. He did not see the West Pakistan establishment as willing to “give up voluntarily what it has engaged to protect by the bayonet.”

But the ambassador recognized that the Pakistan army would face major logistical and operational difficulties during summer, once the monsoons began. He was “extremely doubtful” that the government of Pakistan could regain its Bengali citizens' loyalty. Farland said that most Bengalis would see through the “Indian bogey,” which had been invoked “to divert attention from West Pakistan's own deeds.”
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Conversely, Saunders thought that the breakup of Pakistan was inevitable but not necessarily imminent.

By Saunders' calculation US interest was best served by ensuring that it maintained ties with all three entities in South Asia—Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh—and denying influence to China and the Soviet Union. The delay in Pakistan's breakup meant that the United States had some time with which to come to terms with the new political reality. Instead of “rushing to get on the Bengali bandwagon,” the United States should help “a friend find a practical and face-saving way out of a bind.”
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In other words, America should advise Yahya, not admonish him. It should also start a general dialogue with India about the longer-term future of South Asia.

Based on Saunders' evaluation, Kissinger laid out for the president the United States' options. The first was to support Yahya without questions. This, however, was unlikely to save Pakistan from disintegration and would leave the United States without friends in the region after East Pakistan had formally become Bangladesh. The second was neutrality, which in effect leaned toward East Pakistanis because the rest of the world, including many Western nations, were lining up to support the Bengalis.

The third option, which Kissinger preferred, would lead the United States to help Yahya achieve a negotiated settlement. Nixon approved the last option and added a handwritten note on Kissinger's memo that read, “To all hands. Don't squeeze Yahya at this time.” He underlined “Don't” three times.
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This meant that US encouragement of a political agreement over the future of East Pakistan would not be accompanied by any pressure on Pakistan's military regime.

But Nixon and Kissinger did not realize the propensity of Pakistan's generals for self-deception. Yahya was under the impression that his plan of beating East Pakistan into submission was working. Farland reported after a visit to Dhaka that “Army officials and soldiers give every sign of believing they are now embarked on a Jihad against Hindu-corrupted Bengalis”
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He did not say that the Pakistanis were interpreting the US refusal to pressure Yahya as a sign of support for Pakistan's Jihad against its own citizens.

In an address to the nation in June, Yahya asked the nation to express “gratitude to Almighty Allah” for the army's success in East Pakistan. After blaming external forces for the challenges Pakistan faced, Yahya had declared that “Every one of us is a
Mujahid
”—a holy warrior.
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Although Pakistan had lost to India in previous wars, its military believed it could beat India if it tried to fight on behalf of the Bengalis. To add to its strength, the Pakistan army had recruited thousands of volunteers from Islamist groups in East Pakistan. These
razakaars
(volunteers) and Mujahideen terrorized critics of the Pakistani central state.

To Pakistani leaders, Indian protests over horrors in Bangladesh meant little and could be dismissed as a function of Indian unhappiness with the mere existence of Pakistan. Furthermore, strict censorship kept West Pakistanis from learning about their country's international isolation. Pakistan's economy was in tailspin, but it had recovered before. The lives of West Pakistan's elites had carried on, unperturbed by the violence in the country's distant Eastern wing. Now, only the United States had leverage to change Pakistani behavior without a full-fledged war. But Nixon had decided that the United States would not press Yahya in any way.

The Nixon administration also gave a wink and a nod to shipping war materiel to Pakistan under export licenses that had not been canceled despite the announced embargo. Administration officials admitted to Congress later that by October, $2.5 million worth of arms had been released despite the ban. The administration also encouraged the transfer of American-supplied jet fighters from Jordan and Libya to the Pakistani air force, in apparent violation of US foreign aid laws. The US General Accounting Office (GAO) also discovered that the Pakistani government diverted $10 million in US humanitarian aid to building military fortifications against India.
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Some members of Congress and the US media were criticizing Nixon for ignoring West Pakistani cruelties in East Pakistan when Yahya conveyed a message from Zhou Enlai to Nixon. Zhou said that China's government would be willing to publicly welcome Nixon or Nixon's envoy to move forward the US-China dialogue. After much internal deliberation Nixon decided that Kissinger
should travel to China first and that the visit should be secret. Once Kissinger had reached overall agreement with the Chinese, it would then be easier for Nixon to go public with his China initiative.

Yahya and Pakistan's Foreign Ministry made all the arrangements for Kissinger's trip to China. To maintain secrecy, Kissinger arrived in Pakistan and then disappeared from public view after feigning an illness. Farland informed journalists that the national security adviser had a severe stomachache and had been taken to Nathiagali, a mountain resort not far from Islamabad, to recuperate. A Pakistan Airlines plane flew Kissinger to southern China for a clandestine meeting, from July 9 to 11, 1971, with Zhou Enlai. There they arranged for Nixon's weeklong trip to China in February 1972, where they restructured long-strained Sino-American relations.

Hassan Zaheer was the senior-most West Pakistani civil servant in East Pakistan at the time. He later explained the link between Yahya's role as intermediary between China and the United States' and the army's overconfidence in relation to the civil war. “Although no one was very clear how the new development was going to help Pakistan extricate itself from the mess,” he said, “the army's faith in the omnipotence of U.S. support was reinforced.” Pakistan's Foreign Office “expected to be rewarded for services rendered, and started dreaming of a Washington-Islamabad-Beijing axis against the evil designs of its neighbor,” India.
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