The Blood TelegramIndia's Secret War in East PakistanA Book Review by Ahmad Imran

The ignoble actions of the United States in Latin America have become a matter of public record, but the inside story of the relationship between Pakistan and the Unites States is still an opaque sinkhole. Gary J Bass has done a tremendous job of, at least, unearthing the dynamics of that relationship during the height of the cold war when India helped create the new nation of Bangladesh.

The context of the events have multiple layers. There is always the tension within Pakistan over distributive politics and the radicalization of the Bengalis into a hyper ethno-Bengalis with the calls of Joi Bangla even before the fateful elections. The basis of the conflict was always Pakistani military junta's utter mismanagement of East Pakistan after the elections where the small detached geography of Pakistan with higher population density won the elections, something not tolerable to Leftist Secular liberals like Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in West Pakistan who's irredentism on the issue failed to produce a political solution to the electoral stalemate. Mujib was recorded in a candid speech saying he was not interested in a federalist arrangement but was interested in establishing a separate homeland. The ensuing crackdown by Pakistani military led to bloodshed of Mujib's party with conservative Pakistani estimate in tens of thousands to probable Indian and US embassy's in Dacca's estimates of millions. No forensic facts have been established and the real number of dead will probably never be known.

The new revelation in the book is not about the Bengalis, but the allegations of Pakistani army going after the Bengali Hindus. These allegations by Indira's government complained about as much as eighty percent of the refugees in India being Bengali Hindus. Indians alleged that Pakistani army believed that it was the Bengali Hindus who had put the rest of the Bengalis into the separatist fever and thus were massacring the Hindus not only as retribution but their barbaric efforts to shrink East Pakistan's populations demographics in favor of West Pakistan.

The second layer on the context was Pak-Indian animosity with a track records of multiple wars between them. The Indian Pakistan divide was a divide of Secular governance versus Pakistan Islamic identity politics. The Indians always felt vindicated as being better and thought of Pakistan as a renegade faction. India claimed that refugee problem in India was making it their business of what was happening in East Pakistan. The Indians were very fearful of Pakistani East Bangalis and their West Bengali socialist/ Maoist activism with the potential of escalating ethnic and sectarian violence on their own soil. Thus, these above concerns became a context for the Indians to hope they could finally, once and for all, put a final nail in Pakistan's coffin. There was evidence to suggest that from multiple sources, even Nixon was angry at Kissinger for not properly exploiting that angle. Furthermore, the Indians were neck deep in aiding and abetting the Mukti Bahini the Bengali rebels, first through the Indian Border Security Forces, then later under the full command of Indian military while Indira denied it to the hilt. Indian narrative of the conflict was wrapped around the rosy concepts of human dignity, political rights, and freedom and liberation, while Pakistan and most of the world in the United Nations saw it interference in the affairs of sovereign nation by India.

The third layer of the conflict involved tension because of the Cold War. The world is a chess board with the Soviets and the Allies playing for keeps. Allegedly, once again, India polishes its reputation as the exemplar Non-Aligned but signs an alliance with the Soviets after the Nixon-Kissinger team went public with their forays in China. The vulgar European realpolitik of Kissinger gives the White House sleepless nights on the probability of Pakistan succumbing to Indian machinations which they thought would start a domino effect with other nations in Asia, Middle East and Latin America going the way of the Soviets. Conversation between the Kissinger and Nixon reveal the two talking doom and gloom and being all alone in the world. The almost anal retentive obsession of Kissinger to appease China comes across very insecure of Kissinger. Thus, the Pakistan story for the two was a side show where China opening was the real prize. The hatred of Indira's India is almost pathological for the Nixon-Kissinger team due to cold war politics and the use of some rather rosy language of them both calling Indira the bitch word on more than one occasion.

The fourth layer of the dimension was domestic US politics between the democrats and the republicans. The democrats in Congress and the media openly show sympathies with India and the narrative of human rights, dignity, liberation and freedom annoying the republicans as pro-Soviet appeasement. Vietnam war lingers on in domestic policy further complicated by potential warfare in South Asia on the horizon. The Nixon White House is found breaking many of US laws on Pakistan as the democrats with the help of Indian lobbying were successful in cutting off military supplies to Pakistan. The White House is having to fend off the State Department, telling its ambassadors and allies not to communicate through regular channels since it would be picked up by their own spies. The biggest story in the book is the role Pakistani military junta dictator General Yahya played in the secret shuttle diplomacy to bring Kissinger to visit China in the middle of the night.

Without a doubt Pakistan committed atrocities because the feudal elitist moronic leadership of Pakistan that runs the security, defense and foreign policy of the nation to this day, the operating paradigm is a kingly exercise the way landlords deal with their vassals. For a being a Muslim/ Islamic state they do not know strategy, tactics or governance. Pakistan is not an Islamic state its an Islamist state.

For a Pakistani like myself, the epilogue comes as a sweet vindication. Indira , despite, her rosy narrative would go about acting the same way as Yahya did and paid the ultimate price for it too. The new nation of Bangladesh following the same primordial soup ( Haksar's words for the newly created nation state) of an example as other dictators getting brutally killed by the military along with his family. India and Bangladesh now have their border issues and animosity. Was stoking Joi Bangla in the end really worth it all. The people killed on all three sides, millions displaced, thousands of children dead due to malnutrition , the tremendous human suffering did it solve anything in the end ?

The recent election of right of center BJP party candidate Narendra Modi is still more vindication of the fallibility and myths of absloutisms of democracy and Secularism. While on the other hand, Pakistan is also devolving under a minority led Islamist driven agenda. Both Pakistan and India are caught up in the very contradictions of their foundational myths. The people that killed Gandhi now define the status quo, while the Islamists who cursed Jinnah now rule the roost in Pakistan.

The book is a must read for all Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis, or for that matter anyone interested the history of the region. The book is crucial in understanding US follies across the world and despicable vulgar realpolitik introduced by Henry Kissinger in an American social experiment that initially desired not to follow the path of continental Europe.

Quotable Quotes

In the dark annals of modern cruelty, it ranks as bloodier than Bosnia and by some accounts in the same rough league as Rwanda.

But Pakistan's slaughter of the Bengalis in 1971 is starkly different. Here the United States was allied with the killers.Nixon and Kissinger bear responsibility for a significant complicity in the slaughter of the Bengalis.

In fact , Indira Gandhi and her top advisers were coldly calculating strategists, even if their actions served a humane cause. India put itself in a position of breathtaking hypocrisy: demanding freedom for the Bengali people in East Pakistan, while conducting its own repression of restive populations under Indian control in Kashmir, as well as lesser known groups like Mizos and Nagas and with painful irony- leftist Bengalis within India's own volatile state of West Bengal. India , in other words, was driven not just by sympathy for Bengalis, but also a certain amount of fear of revolutionary Bengalis.

While Indira Gandhi's government professed its unwavering desire for peace, she almost immediately turned to aggressive options. ...she had the Indian military covertly prepare for a full-scale regular war against Pakistan. India secretly had its army and security forces use bases on Indian soil to support Bengali guerrillas in their fight against Pakistani state. India devoted enormous resources to covertly sponsoring the Bengali insurgency inside East Pakistan, providing the guerrillas with arms, training, camps, and safe passage back and forth across a porous border. Indian officials, from Gandhi on down, evaded or lied with verve, denying that they were maintaining the insurgency.

It is a patriotic delusion to imagine, as some Indian nationalists to today, that Pakistan's airstrikes were unprovoked.

We are the ones who have been operating against our public opinion against our bureaucracy. At the very edge of legality

Sunil Khilnani, a farsighted Indian expert, argues powerfully, that India is the most important experiment in democracy since the American and French revolutions: its outcome may well turn to be the most significant of them all, partly because of its sheer human scale, and partly because of its location, a substantial bridgehead of effervescent liberty on the Asian continent.

Nixon and Kissinger set the stage for an ongoing decimation of Pakistan's democratic opposition, giving time and space to Islamicize the country more and more.

Ayub Khan lament, it is dangerous to be the friend of the United States

Nehru fumed, Pakistan becomes practically a colony of the United States.

I dont like the Indians, Nixon snapped at the height of the Bengali crises.

Pakistani intelligence agencies captured Mujib in a breathtakingly frank moment. They played their tape to Yahya, who was shocked to hear Mujib declare, My aim is to establish Bangladesh. He would tear Yahya's federalist framework for upcoming constitutional negotiations into pieces as soon as the elections are over. Who would challenge me once the elections are over?

on Zuliqar Ali Bhutto So Nixon loathed him: the son-of-a-bitch is a total demagogue.

the US Counsel General Dacca's observation on Pakistan military, They were being spat upon, harassed and hassled by locals, but behaving quite well under the circumstances.

The Pakistani martial law administration admitted that 172 people had been killed in the first week of March- figures they had to put out to debunk stories among livid Bengali that hundreds of thousands had been killed. Archer Blood found the military's statement , reasonable, almost apologetic in tone, and seemingly honest. .this was before the crackdown

on P.N.Haksar ... He was joined in this by some of the other leading pro-Soviet Indians who were Gandhi's closest advisers all of them Kashmiri Brahmins like her, thus quickly dubbed the Kashmiri Mafia.

She (Indira) sought more Soviet arms sales, helping India to build up a formidable military machine. When the Soviet invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, India refused to vote for a United Nations resolution condemning the brutal crack down on Czech liberals.

NYTimes reporter Sydney Schanberg on Indian pre-emptive excursions into Pakistan , The Indian army was making interventions that none of us allowed to see ..page 264

The Indian officer said yes , they were all the way to Jessore ..page 265

After the news of Indian incursion deep inside East Pakistan made NYTimes headlines ... a Congress party speaker cried , India will break Pakistan to pieces. Another declared , We will make shoes out of Yahya's skin......page 265

Kissinger on Indira after Nixon /Indira summit just before hostilities b/w India and Pakistan She spent most of her time telling him [Nixon] that Baluchistan should never have been made a part of Pakistan....pg 259

Nixon fuming about India not acknowledging the US being the biggest donor to refugees in India , Goddamn, why dont they give us any credit for that? ...to which Nixon replied , Because these bastards have played an absolute brutal game with us......pg 252

Nixon, aiming for a higher tone, suggested telling Gandhi that while the Americans had no treaty with India, they were bound by a amoral commitment to promote peace and snarled at Gandhi, calling her the old bitch. .pg 252

This is just the point when she is a bitch, said the president. Kissinger replied, Well, the Indians are bastards anyway. They are starting a war there....pg 255

day two of the summit while the Nixon/Kissinger keep Indira waiting for 45 minutes ... Kissinger said, Mr. President, even though she was a bitch, we shouldnt overlook the fact that we got what we wanted , which was we kept her from going out of here saying the United States kicked her in the teeth....pg 255

On the possibility of alienating the Indian people as per NYTimes articles .. Kissinger cut him of; Well but we havent got them anyway, Mr. President. Nixon agreed: We've got their enmity anyway. That's what she's shown in this goddamned thing, hasn't she? Kissinger asked, when have these bastards ever supported us. Never said Nixon. Tell me one friend we've got in India, do you know any? Exactly, said Kissinger. .pg 271