by Gary J. Bass
21. Desaix Myers, “Ki Korbo?” n.d. 1971, on file with author.
22. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 31 March 1971, Dacca 1007. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Rogers to Nixon, 3 April 1971, and POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Sisco to Rogers, 2 April 1971. For a dismissive account, see POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Spengler to Strausz-Hupé, 31 March 1971, State 53712. This death toll was roughly the same number murdered at Srebrenica, in Bosnia, in July 1995, although Dacca had a population of 1.5 million, far more than Srebrenica. (David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s Worst Massacre Since World War II [New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997].)
23. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Saunders and Hoskinson to Kissinger, 1 April 1971 (emphasis removed).
24. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 28 March 1971, Dacca 959. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Smith to Farland, 2 April 1971, State 56154; Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 214–15. NSC Files, Box 574, Indo-Pak War, South Asian Military Supply, Kennedy statement, 1 April 1971. Reuters story, 1 April 1971, in POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Fuller to Blood, 2 April 1971, State 55459; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Spengler to Blood, 2 April 1971, State 56532.
25. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 215. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Keating, 31 March 1971, Islamabad 2906. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Farland, 31 March 1971, New Delhi 4687.
26. NSA, Kissinger to Nixon, 7 May 1971. Farland blamed Keating too (POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 4 April 1971, Islamabad 3133).
27. Myers, “Ki Korbo?”
28. Hannah Gurman, The Dissent Papers: The Voices of Diplomats in the Cold War and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 169–98. Hannah Gurman, “The Other Plumbers Unit,” Diplomatic History, vol. 35, no. 2 (April 2011), pp. 321–49.
29. In April 1970, twenty Foreign Service officers had written to Rogers to protest Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia (Gurman, Dissent Papers, p. 171). Blood was not the only person to suffer retribution for a dissent cable. In 1977, H. Allen Harris was blocked for promotion after speaking up over Argentine human rights abuses (Gurman, “Other Plumbers Unit,” p. 341). In the 1990s, diplomats protested U.S. policy toward Bosnia, and some resigned (Power, “A Problem from Hell,” pp. 296–304, 312–18).
30. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Ballantine, 1993), p. 281; and see pp. 132, 175, 179–80, 187–88, 258, 581, 596.
31. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 243–44.
32. POL 1 PAK-US, Box 2535, Blood to Rogers, 6 April 1971, Dacca 1138; NSC Files, Box 138, Kissinger Office Files, Country Files—Middle East, Blood to Rogers, 6 April 1971, Dacca 1138. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 243.
33. POL 1 PAK-US, Box 2535, Blood to Rogers, 6 April 1971, Dacca 1138. The signatories were Brian Bell, Robert L. Bourquein, W. Scott Butcher, Eric Griffel, Zachary M. Hahn, Jake Harshbarger, Robert A. Jackson, Lawrence Koegel, Joseph A. Malpeli, Willard D. McCleary, Desaix Myers, John L. Nesvig, William Grant Parr, Robert Carle (misspelled as Carce), Richard L. Simpson, Robert C. Simpson, Richard E. Suttor, Wayne A. Swedenburg, Richard L. Wilson, and Shannon W. Wilson.
34. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 243–44. Later Blood would only regret the line about insufficient effort at protecting American civilians. POL 1 PAK-US, Box 2535, Blood to Rogers, 6 April 1971, Dacca 1138.
35. POL 1 PAK-US, Box 2535, Baxter et al. to Rogers, 6 April 1971, State 7105326. These signatories were Craig Baxter (see his Bangladesh: From a Nation to a State [Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997]), A. Peter Burleigh, Townsend S. Swayze, Joel M. Woldman, Anthony C. E. Quainton, Howard B. Schaffer, Douglas M. Cochran, John Eaves Jr., and Robert A. Flaten. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 248.
36. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 244. NSA, Rogers-Kissinger telcon, 6 April 1971, 9:35 a.m.
37. NSA, Rogers-Kissinger telcon, 6 April 1971, 9:35 a.m. Kissinger referred to a photograph of a Bengali holding a severed head—a gruesome image that the New York Times had run over a story that actually described a West Pakistani “surprise attack with tanks, artillery and heavy machine guns against a virtually unarmed population” (Sydney H. Schanberg, “ ‘All Part of a Game’—a Grim and Deadly One,” New York Times, 4 April 1971).
38. Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 219–20. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 248.
39. POL 1 PAK-US, Box 2535, Blood to Rogers, 6 April 1971, Dacca 1138. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 853. NSC Files, Box 138, Kissinger Office Files, Country Files—Middle East, Rogers to Blood, 7 April 1971, State 58039; NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Rogers to Blood, 7 April 1971, State 58039; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Rogers to Blood, 7 April 1971, State 58039. NSC Files, Box 138, Kissinger Office Files, Country Files—Middle East, Farland to Sisco, 6 April 1971, Islamabad 3196. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Farland to Sisco, 6 April 1971, Islamabad 3196.
40. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Van Hollen to Farland, 6 April 1971, State 58038. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Sisco to Farland, 7 April 1971, State 59106. Benjamin Welles, “U.S. Urges Pakistan Seek Peaceful Accommodation,” New York Times, 8 April 1971, p. A3. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Blood to Rogers, 10 April 1971, Dacca 1232; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Spengler to Farland, 8 April 1971, State 60070.
41. Govinda Chandra Dev, Buddha, the Humanist (Dacca: Paramount, 1969). Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 207, 223. Blood said, “I think he was killed solely because he was a Hindu” (Library of Congress, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Archer Blood interview, 27 June 1989).
42. FRUS, vol. E-7, Blood to Rogers, 10 April 1971, Dacca 1249. The Genocide Convention covers the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” The Awami League, as a political movement, would not seem to qualify, unless perhaps one tried to claim it was a part of the national or ethnical group of Bengalis. William Schabas, “Genocide Law in a Time of Transition,” Rutgers Law Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (2008); William Schabas, “Genocide and the International Court of Justice,” Genocide Studies and Prevention, vol. 2, no. 2 (2007), pp. 101–22; William Schabas, Genocide in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Paola Greta, ed., The UN Genocide Convention: A Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Scott Straus, “Contested Meanings and Conflicting Imperatives,” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 3, no. 3 (2001), pp. 349–75; A. Dirk Moses, “Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide,” in Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 19–41. For recent important precedents, see Prosecutor v. Akayesu, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, 1998; Prosecutor v. Nahimana, Barayagwiza, and Ngeze, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, 2003; Prosecutor v. Krstic´, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 2004; and Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, International Court of Justice, 2007.
43. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 208. Guha, India After Gandhi, p. 450. Choudhury, Last Days of United Pakistan, p. 103. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Hours of Terror for a Trapped Bengali Officer,” New York Times, 17 April 1971. The Punjabis were powerful in West Pakistan, but West Pakistan of course also included Baluchis, Pashtuns, and Sindhis.
44. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 205.
45. NSC Files, Box H-082, WSAG Meetings, Williams to Rogers, 3 September 1971. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 8 April 1971, Dacca 1193. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 222–23. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Bell to Shakespeare, 19 April 1971, Dacca 1386. Lieutenant General A. A. K. Niazi replaced Lieutenant General Tikka Khan as commander of the Eastern Command in early April, but Tikka Khan was installed as governor and martial law administrator (Niazi, Betrayal of East Pakistan, pp. 48–49).
46. Myers, “Ki Korbo?”
47. Ibid.
48. Hamoodur
Rehman Commission Report, pp. 415, 509–10.
49. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 216. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 8 April 1971, Dacca 1193. Blood also wrote, “Hindu genocide should increase prospect of India’s aid” (POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 2 April 1971, Dacca 1067).
50. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Bell to Shakespeare, 9 April 1971, Dacca 1211. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 8 April 1971, Dacca 1193.
51. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 8 April 1971, Dacca 1193. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Bell to Shakespeare, 9 April 1971, Dacca 1211. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 9 April 1971, Dacca 1214. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Bell to Shakespeare, 16 April 1971, Dacca 1338. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 217–18. FRUS, vol. E-7, Blood to Rogers, 10 April 1971, Dacca 1249. Blood could only point to “international moral obligations” rather than legal ones, since the United States would not ratify the Genocide Convention until 1988.
52. FRUS, vol. E-5, Allen to Kissinger, 13 February 1969, enclosing composite Nixon statements, 17 July and 10 September 1968. Nixon said that “genocide is what is taking place right now—and starvation is the grim reaper.” See John J. Stremlau, The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 112–27, 289–94; John de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1972), pp. 272–73; George A. Obiozor, The United States and the Nigerian Civil War: An American Dilemma in Africa, 1966–1970 (Lagos: Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, 1993), pp. 22–96. For a CIA argument that the Nigerian government did not have genocidal aims against the Ibos, see FRUS, vol. E-5, CIA memorandum, 5 August 1969. But as Biafra’s resistance collapsed, Roger Morris, Kissinger’s aide, warned him, “Anything short of a strong approach to Lagos will be de facto acquiescence in some degree of genocide.” (FRUS, vol. E-5, Morris to Kissinger, 10 January 1970.) NSA, Kissinger-Mitchell telcon, 9 February 1970, 3:35 a.m. The subject index of the Nixon White House tapes shows no other mention of genocide in this period. Power, “A Problem from Hell,” pp. 61–85, 151–69.
53. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 7 April 1971, New Delhi 5091. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Sisco to Farland, 7 April 1971, State 58813; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 8 April 1971, New Delhi 5241. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 8 April 1971, Islamabad 3228. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Farland, 9 April 1971, Dacca 1221. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 9 April 1971, Dacca 1212. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 9 April 1971, Dacca 1209.
54. NSA, Rogers-Kissinger telcon, 6 April 1971, 9:35 a.m. See FRUS, WSAG meeting, 8 September 1971, pp. 395–96.
55. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 8 April 1971, Dacca 1193. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 235, Omega report, 30 January 1972. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Bush to Rogers, 16 April 1971, USUN 970.
56. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Bell to Shakespeare, 1 April 1971, Dacca 1038. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 235, Omega report, 30 January 1972. Srinath Raghavan, “A Dhaka Debacle,” Indian Express, 30 July 2011. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 9 April 1971, Dacca 1214. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Luppi to Rogers, 16 April 1971. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 9 April 1971, Dacca 1217. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Blood to Rogers, 27 April 1971; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Blood to Rogers, 27 April 1971, Dacca 1503. See also POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Bell to Shakespeare, 28 April 1971, Dacca 1515; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Carle to Rogers, 28 April 1971, Dacca 1521.
57. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 250. FRUS, WSAG meeting, 8 September 1971, pp. 395–96. For detailed accounts of the awful suffering of the Biharis, see Sarmila Bose, Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), and Sarmila Bose, “The Question of Genocide and the Quest for Justice in the 1971 War,” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 13, no. 4 (2011), pp. 393–419. Bose praises Nixon for not rushing to moralistically condemn the West Pakistan side (Dead Reckoning, p. 72). For convincing critiques of Bose for playing down the Pakistan army’s killing of Bengalis, see Srinath Raghavan, “A Dhaka Debacle,” Indian Express, 30 July 2011, and Naeem Mohaiemen, “Flying Blind,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 46, no. 36 (3 September 2011), pp. 40–52. For an exchange between Bose and Mohaiemen, see Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 46, no. 53 (31 December 2011), pp. 76–80.
58. White House tapes, Oval Office 477-1, 12 April 1971, 10:24–10:33 a.m. For a partial transcript, see FRUS, pp. 65–66.
CHAPTER 6: THE INFERNO NEXT DOOR
1. MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 8 April 1971.
2. P. N. Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the “Emergency,” and Indian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 151.
3. MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 6 May 1971. Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the “Emergency,” and Indian Democracy, p. 152. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 164, Haksar notes for Gandhi meeting with opposition, March 1971. See NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 164, Haksar, draft parliamentary statement, 27 March 1971; MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 8 April 1971.
4. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 27 March 1971, New Delhi 4414. See MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 8 April 1971; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, “India and ‘Bangla Desh,’ ” INR note, 26 April 1971. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 27 March 1971, New Delhi 4416. See Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the “Emergency,” and Indian Democracy, p. 152.
5. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Gordon to Rogers, 3 April 1971, Calcutta 540. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 1 April 1971, New Delhi 4756. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 2 April 1971, New Delhi 4864.
6. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 89, Dhar letter, 18 April 1971. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 164, Haksar to Gandhi, 29 March 1971; NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 164, Working Committee of the Indian National Congress draft resolution, 29 March 1971. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Parliament in India Condemns Pakistani ‘Massacre’ in East,” New York Times, 1 April 1971, pp. A1, A6. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 30 March 1971, New Delhi 4591. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 29 March 1971, New Delhi 4503. See MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 8 April 1971; NSC Files, Box H-112, SRG Minutes, SRG meeting, 31 March 1971; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Bush to Rogers, 29 March 1971, USUN 803. See Benjamin N. Schoenfeld, “The Birth of India’s Samyukta Socialist Party,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 38, no. 3–4 (fall 1965–winter 1966), pp. 245–68; Lewis P. Fickett Jr., “The Major Socialist Parties of India in the 1967 Election,” Asian Survey, vol. 8, no. 6 (June 1968), pp. 489–98. Peter Popham, “The Orator Who Finds Himself Miscast as a Warmonger,” Independent, 25 May 2002. “Delhi Urged to Give Open Support to Bangla Desh,” Times of India, 29 March 1971, p. 3. See NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 280, Dhar-Gromyko meeting, 4 August 1971; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Keating to Rogers, 15 April 1971, New Delhi 5646. On the Jana Sangh, see Martha C. Nussbaum, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 152–85; on its successors, see Steve Coll, On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (New York: Times Books, 1994), pp. 198–210.
7. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Gordon to Rogers, 28 March 1971, Calcutta 475; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Gordon to Rogers, 28 March 1971, Calcutta 476; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Gordon to Rogers, 30 March 1971, Calcutta 503; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Gordon to Rogers, 1 April 1971, Calcutta 519.
8. See NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 164, draft Lok Sabha resolution, 30 March 1971. Indira Gandhi, India and Bangla Desh: Selected Speeches and Statements, March to December 1971 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972), pp. 13–14. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 31 March 1971, New Delhi 4677; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 1 April 1971, New Delhi 4755; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 3 April 1971, Islamabad 3116.
9. MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 8 April 1971. See MEA, HI/1012/31/71, Bakshi to Acharya, 6 April 1971; MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 8 April 1971; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Shahi to Than
t, 7 April 1971, attached to POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Bush to Rogers, 19 April 1971. Pakistan’s Hamoodur Rehman commission noted, “The need for protecting their independence and sovereignty is felt more keenly by the small states than by the big powers who are strong enough to safeguard their own interests.” (Government of Pakistan, The Report of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission of Inquiry into the 1971 War [Lahore: Vanguard, 2001], p. 129.) NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 276, Subrahmanyam, “Bangla Desh and Our Policy Options,” 4 April 1971.
10. See, for instance, NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 166, Haksar to Khadilkar, 17 May 1971. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 5 April 1971, New Delhi 4952. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, “India and ‘Bangla Desh,’ ” INR note, 26 April 1971; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 2 April 1971, New Delhi 4861; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Bush to Rogers, 2 April 1971, airgram A-499; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 3 April 1971, New Delhi 4878. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 165, Haksar to Gandhi, 5 April 1971.
11. MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 8 April 1971. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 164, Haksar notes for Gandhi meeting with opposition, March 1971. See NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 164, Haksar draft parliamentary statement, 27 March 1971; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 1 April 1971, New Delhi 4755; NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 165, Haksar to Acharya, 7 April 1971; NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 166, Haksar notes, 20 May 1971; NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 203, Kosygin-Singh conversation, 8 June 1971.
12. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Keating to Rogers, 10 April 1971, New Delhi 5280. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 30 March 1971, New Delhi 4568. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Gordon to Rogers, 5 April 1971, Calcutta 551. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Gordon to Rogers, 23 April 1971, Calcutta 725. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 6 April 1971, New Delhi 5030. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 5 April 1971, New Delhi 4891. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 5 April 1971, New Delhi 4952. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Keating to Rogers, 7 April 1971, New Delhi 5133.