by Gary J. Bass
108. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, CIA situation report, 17 December 1971. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, State Department situation report, 15 December 1971. Some Pakistani officers—as well as U.S. intelligence—grumbled that Pakistan had not fought hard even in the west (NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, CIA situation report, 17 December 1971; NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, U.S intelligence agency, “Pakistan’s War in the West—A Lacklustre Effort?” 16 December 1971). Malhotra, Indira Gandhi, pp. 140–41. See NSC Files, Box 572, Indo-Pak War, Keating to Rogers, 11 December 1971, New Delhi 19110. Jayakar, Indira Gandhi, pp. 181–82.
109. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 173, Haksar to embassies, 16 December 1971. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, State Department situation report, 16 December 1971. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, CIA situation report, 16 December 1971. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, Keating to Rogers, 16 December 1971, New Delhi 19340. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, Keating to Rogers, 16 December 1971, New Delhi 19341. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, CIA situation report, 17 December 1971.
110. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, CIA situation report, 17 December 1971. See Malcolm W. Browne, “Rawalpindi Skies Calm as Foreigners Fly Out,” New York Times, 13 December 1971, p. A17. See Sethi, Decisive War, pp. 146–47.
111. Sisson and Rose, War and Secession, p. 306n24. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Long Occupation of East Pakistan Foreseen in India,” New York Times, 26 December 1971, pp. A1, A13. Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report, pp. 317, 340, 513. MEA, WII/109/31/71, vol. II, Kaul to Haksar, 23 December 1971. Jayakar, Indira Gandhi, p. 185.
112. Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, 15 December 1971, p. 385. NSC Files, Box 643, Country Files—Middle East, India-Pakistan, Nixon-Kissinger telcon, 16 December 1971, 9:30 a.m.
113. NSC Files, Box 643, Country Files—Middle East, India-Pakistan, Nixon-Kissinger telcon, 16 December 1971, 9:30 a.m.
114. Kissinger, White House Years, p. 913–18. NSA, Nixon-Kissinger telcon, 16 December 1971, 10:40 a.m. See NSA, Nixon-Kissinger telcon, 16 December 1971, 12:15 p.m. NSA, Nixon-Kissinger telcon, 17 December 1971, 10:43 a.m. See NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, Nixon to Gandhi, 18 December 1971.
115. NSA, Kissinger-Haldeman telcon, 16 December 1971, 6:05 p.m.; NSA, Kissinger-Shultz telcon, 16 December 1971, 6:57 p.m. NSA, Kissinger-Connally telcon, 16 December 1971, 11 a.m. NSA, Kissinger-Hubbard telcon, 16 December 1971, 8:25 p.m.; NSA, Kissinger-Evans telcon, 16 December 1971, 5:50 p.m.; NSA, Kissinger-Schecter telcon, 16 December 1971, 2:58 p.m.; NSA, Kissinger-Alsop telcon, 17 December 1971, 3:13 p.m.; Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, 16 December 1971, p. 385. NSA, Kissinger-Bhutto telcon, 11:15 a.m.; NSA, Kissinger-Raza telcon, 16 December 1971, 3:55 p.m.; NSA, Kissinger-Bush telcon, 16 December 1971, 4:45 p.m.; NSA, Kissinger-Bush telcon, 5:45 p.m.; NSA, Kissinger-Vorontsov telcon, 16 December 1971, 4:40 p.m.; NSA, Kissinger-Bush telcon, 17 December 1971, 11:43 a.m. The result was UN Security Council Resolution 307, 21 December 1971. See MEA, WII/109/31/71, vol. II, Kaul to Haksar, 23 December 1971. NSA, Kissinger-Cromer, 16 December 1971, 3:33 p.m. NSA, Kissinger-Bush telcon, 11:23 a.m.
EPILOGUE: AFTERMATHS
1. There is of course no moral equivalence between the United States and the Soviet Union. David Lewis, Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 12–19, 76–81. Samantha Power, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (New York: Penguin, 2008), pp. 25-26. William B. Milam, Bangladesh and Pakistan: Flirting with Failure in South Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), pp. 29–37. Craig Baxter, Bangladesh: A New Nation in an Old Setting (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1984), pp. 49–58. Charles Peter O’Donnell, Bangladesh: Biography of a Muslim Nation (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1984), pp. 105–8, 110–15. Partha N. Mukherji, “The Great Migration of 1971,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 9, no. 11 (16 March 1974), pp. 449–51.
2. NMML, Kaul Papers, Subject File 19, part 1, “Possible Questions and Answers on the Simla Agreement,” n.d. 1972; MEA, WII/109/31/71, vol. I, Gandhi statement to Parliament, 16 December 1971; MEA, WII/109/31/71, vol. II, Kaul to Haksar, 23 December 1971. NMML, Kaul Papers, Subject File 19, part 1, “The New Situation in the Sub-Continent,” n.d. 1972; NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 235, Manekshaw-Kulikov talks, 24–25 February 1972. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 174, Haksar to Gandhi, 18 December 1971. FRUS, Saunders to Kissinger, 16 April 1971, pp. 67–69. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 95, Bangladeshi press clippings, 8 July 1973. “They’re occupying East Pakistan, and I don’t think they’re ever going to get out,” said Nixon, about the Indians (White House tapes, White House telephone 17-100, 26 December 1971, 11:45–11:52 a.m.). Kathryn Jacques, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan: International Relations and Regional Tensions in South Asia (Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 25–142.
3. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 217, Boudhayan Chattopadhyey report on “Economic Impact of Bangla Desh,” 22–23 January 1972. MEA, WII/104/21/75, vol. I, joint secretary for Bangladesh to ambassadors, 21 August 1975. Ved Mehta, The New India (New York: Viking, 1976), pp. 134–36. Anthony Mascarenhas, Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986). Lewis, Bangladesh, pp. 81–96. Lawrence Ziring, Bangladesh from Mujib to Ershad: An Interpretive Study (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1992). Milam, Bangladesh and Pakistan, pp. 51–70, 95–134. S. R. Chakravarty, Bangladesh Under Mujib, Zia and Ershad: Dilemma of a New Nation (New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1995), pp. 79–164. P. N. Haksar, Premonitions (Bombay: Interpress, 1979), pp. 70, 79.
4. Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 197. Scott Carney, Jason Miklian, and Kristian Hoelscher, “Fortress India,” Foreign Policy, July–August 2011. Rumi Ahmed, “Felani’s Hanging Body over the Road to Connectivity,” bdnews24.com, 19 January 2011.
5. Julhas Alam, “Bangladesh Anticipates 7.2 Percent Economic Growth,” Associated Press, 7 June 2012; Bettina Wassener, “In Bangladesh, a Quick Evolution from Backwater to Growth Center,” New York Times, 24 April 2012, p. B6; Abdul Bayes, “The Quality of Bangladesh’s Economic Growth,” Daily Star, 22 March 2010; Nicholas Kristof, “Pakistan and Times Sq.,” New York Times, 13 May 2010, p. A31; Lewis, Bangladesh, pp. 136–66, 197–205, 97–108. Amartya Sen, “Quality of Life,” New York Review of Books, 12 May 2011; Moudud Ahmed, Bangladesh: A Study of the Democratic Regimes (Dacca: University Press, 2012). Jim Yardley, “Fighting for Bangladesh Labor, and Ending Up in Pauper’s Grave,” New York Times, 10 September 2012, pp. A1, A6. “Hello, Delhi,” and “Banged About,” The Economist, 26 May 2012, pp. 14, 41–42; “Answering for History,” The Economist, 16 December 2010. On the importance of using due process to restrain demands for punishment, see my Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 20–28, 304–10.
6. Benazir Bhutto, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), pp. 182–83. See, for instance, NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 225, Sen to Patel, 2 March 1972; Mohammad Akbar Khan, The Mystery of Debacle of Pakistan, 1971 (Karachi: Islamic Military Science Association, 1971). See, for instance, NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 225, Brown memorandum, 8 February 1972; and Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988), pp. 46–48.
7. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, Farland to Rogers, 16 December 1971, Islamabad 12648; NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, State Department situation report, 16 December 1971. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 212–13; NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, Kissinger to Nixon, 18 December 1971. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, CIA situation report, 20 December 1971. NSC Files, Box 573, Indo-Pak War, CIA situation report, 17 December 1971. Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), p. 406. See, for instance, NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 225, Brown memorandum, 8 February 1972.
8. H
aksar, Premonitions, p. 88. See MEA, WII/109/31/71, vol. I, Singh statement to UN Security Council, 12 December 1971. NMML, Kaul Papers, Subject File 19, part 1, “The New Situation in the Sub-Continent,” n.d. 1972. See P. N. Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the “Emergency,” and Indian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 151, 189. See Jayaprakash Narayan, “Bangladesh and India’s Future,” Indian Express, 27–28 October 1971, Jayaprakash Narayan, Selected Works, ed. Bimal Prasad (New Delhi: Manohar, 2008), vol. 9, pp. 660–66. Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), pp. 51–57, 60–76. See Surjit Mansingh, India’s Search for Power: Indira Gandhi’s Foreign Policy, 1966–1982 (New Delhi: Sage, 1984), p. 227; Haksar, Premonitions, p. 88. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Barrow to Rogers, 2 April 1971, Lahore 515. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Spengler to Farland, 27 March 1971, State 51982. Tariq Ali, Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1983), p. 96. See Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: Norton, 2006), pp. 15, 162–63, 171–72; Bhutto, Daughter of the East, p. 52; Lieven, Pakistan, p. 60; “Two-Nation Theory Died with Pakistan’s Break-Up, Says Altaf,” Daily Times (Lahore), 2 November 2004.
9. Stephen P. Cohen, The Pakistan Army (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 158–61. NMML, Kaul Papers, Subject File 19, Singh briefing in London, n.d. June 1971. See FRUS, WSAG minutes, 12 November 1971, 11:09 a.m., pp. 508; FRUS, WSAG meeting, 22 November 1971, 2:39– 3:14 p.m., p. 553; FRUS, WSAG meeting, 29 November 1971, 2:36–3:36 p.m., p. 575. See Steve Coll, On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (New York: Times Books, 1994), pp. 184–87. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 220, “SSB and Bangladesh,” 3 February 1972.
10. G. W. Choudhury, The Last Days of United Pakistan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974), p. 181. Government of Pakistan, The Report of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission of Inquiry into the 1971 War (Lahore: Vanguard, 2001), pp. 281, 340, 352, 535–36, 539.
11. Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report. Samar Halarnkar, “Behind Pakistan’s Defeat,” India Today, 21 August 2000. Swapan Dasgupta, “History Creates Hell,” India Today, 28 August 2000, p. 42. Oriana Fallaci, Interviews with History and Conversations with Power (New York: Rizzoli, 2011), pp. 286–88.
12. Najam Sethi, “Roads Not Taken,” Friday Times (Lahore), 12–18 August 2011. Lieven, Pakistan, p. 60.
13. Lieven, Pakistan, p. 60. Bhutto, Daughter of the East, pp. 46–48.
14. Huma Imtiaz, “Fall of East Pakistan,” Dawn, 16 December 2010. For a more forthright textbook, used in O-level courses in Pakistan Studies, see Farooq Naseem Balwa, Pakistan: A Historical and Contemporary Look (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 168–71. “How Did West Pakistan Treat East Pakistan?” Herald Annual, January 2010, p. 101.
15. Elliot L. Tepper, “The New Pakistan,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 47, no. 1 (spring 1974), pp. 56-68. MEA, WII/109/31/71, vol. II, Kaul to Haksar, 23 December 1971. Bhutto, Daughter of the East, pp. 49, 51.
16. Lee Lescaze, “U.S. Arms Aid to Pakistan Bewilders Fearful Bengalis,” Washington Post, 24 July 1971; Akbar Khan, Mystery of Debacle of Pakistan, 1971. A. A. K. Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 194. For his blaming of Bhutto and others, see ibid., pp. 220–31. Qutubuddin Aziz, Mission to Washington: An Éxposé of India’s Intrigues in the United States of America in 1971 to Dismember Pakistan (Karachi: United Press of Pakistan, 1973).
17. FRUS, Kissinger to Farland, 10 December 1971, p. 740. NSA, Kissinger-Bush telcon, 10 December 1971, 10:30 a.m. NSA, Kissinger-Bhutto telcon, 11 December 1971. See NSA, Kissinger-Bhutto telcon, 15 December 1971, 1:25 p.m.; NSC Files, Box 627, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan vol. VIII, Nixon-Bhutto memcon, 18 December 1971.
18. See Mohsin Hamid, “Why They Get Pakistan Wrong,” New York Review of Books, 29 September 2011. See also Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi, “US Foreign Policy Shift Towards Pakistan Between 1965 & 1971 Pak-India Wars,” South Asian Studies, vol. 25, no. 1 (January–June 2010), pp. 21–37.
19. “China’s First Veto,” Time, 4 September 1972. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 27, 60–62. Lieven, Pakistan, pp. 76–79, 125. Cohen, Pakistan Army, pp. 139–41. Talbot, Pakistan, pp. 229–30, 235–37, 245–54. Vali Nasr, “Military Rule, Islamism and Democracy in Pakistan,” Middle East Journal, vol. 58, no. 2 (spring 2004), pp. 195–209.
20. Coll, Grand Trunk Road, pp. 256–59. Simon Long, “Perilous Journey: Pakistan,” The Economist, special report, 11 February 2012, p. 7. Shafqat Hussain Naghmi, “Pakistan’s Public Attitude Toward the United States,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 26, no. 3 (September 1982), pp. 507-23. Husain Haqqani, “Breaking Up Is Not Hard to Do,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 92, no. 2 (March–April 2013).
21. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 276, Subrahmanyam, “Bangla Desh and Our Policy Options,” 4 April 1971; NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 235, Manekshaw-Kulikov talks, 24-25 February 1972; Narayan to Masani, 9 December 1971, Narayan, Selected Works, p. 695. Ali, Can Pakistan Survive? p. 95. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 174, Haksar to Kaul, 18 December 1971. MEA, WII/109/31/71, vol. II, Kaul to Haksar, 23 December 1971. Talbot, Pakistan, pp. 223–24. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 235, Manekshaw-Kulikov talks, 24–25 February 1972.
22. Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the “Emergency,” and Indian Democracy, pp. 184, 200–204, 210–11; Pupul Jayakar, Indira Gandhi: An Intimate Biography (New York: Pantheon, 1992), pp. 187–89; Lachhman Singh, Victory in Bangladesh (New Delhi: Natraj Publishers, 1981), p. 242; K. P. Candeth, The Western Front: Indo-Pakistan War, 1971 (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1984), p. 166. NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 235, unsigned report, 12 January 1973. NMML, Kaul Papers, Subject File 19, part 1, “The New Situation in the Sub-Continent,” n.d. 1972. Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (New York: Ecco, 2003), pp. 463–65.
23. Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 475.
24. Talbot, Pakistan, pp. 224–27. Musharraf talk at Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 9 November 2010.
25. Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 475, 60–62, 100, 221, 345, 394, 440, 475–76, 547. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 26–29, 35, 39, 44–48, 58–59, 72–76, 129, 178–95, 137–38. Steve Coll, “Looking for Mullah Omar,” The New Yorker, 23 January 2012, pp. 52–53. John R. Schmidt, The Unraveling: Pakistan in the Age of Jihad (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011), pp. 78–99. “A Rivalry That Threatens the World,” The Economist, 21 May 2011, pp. 47–50.
26. Steve Coll, “Looking for Mullah Omar,” The New Yorker, 23 January 2012, pp. 52–53. Stephen D. Krasner, “Talking Tough to Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 91, no. 1 (January–February 2012). Jane Perlez, “Musharraf Walked a Tightrope,” New York Times, 18 August 2008. “The World’s Most Dangerous Border,” The Economist, 21 May 2011, pp. 11–12. See Patterson to Clinton, 21 February 2009, WikiLeaks cable on Guardian web site, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/193196. Some of that fear hearkens back to 1971, when Indian officials were tempted to whip up trouble among Pashtuns in Afghanistan—although Pashtun nationalism has many causes unrelated to India. D. P. Dhar hoped Afghanistan’s leaders could “help the oppressed East Bengalis materially by reviving [the Afghans’] vocal interest in the Pakhtoon movement.” (NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 165, Dhar to Kaul, 4 April 1971.) When India’s foreign minister, Swaran Singh, was contemplating ways to break apart West Pakistan, he was intrigued that Afghanistan’s government invoked “the slogan of Pakhtoonistan”—reaching out to their fellow Pashtuns living in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. “I do not see that the Pakhtoon issue is dead,” Singh told a meeting of Indian diplomats. “It is an issue which can be activated with some effort on our part.” (NMML, Kaul Papers, Subject File 19, Singh briefing in London,
n.d. June 1971.)
27. George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 165. Talbot, Pakistan, pp. 238–40. See Cohen, Pakistan Army, pp. 152–58; Zalmay Khalilzad, “Pakistan and the Bomb,” Survival, November–December 1979, pp. 244–50. David E. Sanger, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (New York: Harmony, 2009), pp. xxi, 26, 177–78, 207, 416. Philip Taubman, The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb (New York: Harper, 2012), p. 47. James Mann, The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power (New York: Vintage, 2012). Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder, “The Ally from Hell,” The Atlantic, December 2011. “Nuclear Profusion,” The Economist, 25 August 2012, p. 33. “A Rivalry That Threatens the World,” The Economist, 21 May 2011, pp. 47–50. Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (New York: Norton, 1995), p. 41. A. Q. Khan, “ ‘I Saved My Country from Nuclear Blackmail,’ ” Newsweek, 16 May 2011.
28. NMML, Kaul Papers, Subject File 19, part 1, “Possible Questions and Answers on the Simla Agreement,” n.d. 1972. Guha, India After Gandhi, pp. 461–62. Stanley Wolpert, India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 237. Shashi Tharoor, Reasons of State: Political Development and India’s Foreign Policy Under Indira Gandhi, 1966–1977 (New Delhi: Vikas, 1982), pp. 72–73. Sumeet Kaul and Bhartesh Singh Thakur, “1971 War: India’s Greatest Triumph,” Hindustan Times, 16 December 2011.
29. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Reluctant India,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 22, no. 4 (October 2001), p. 100. See Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 74–75.