From the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, Pakistan was created as a unified Muslim nation with a bizarrely divided geography: dominant West Pakistan (now simply Pakistan) was separated from downtrodden East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) by a thousand miles of hostile India. Pakistanis joked that their bifurcated country was united by Islam and Pakistan International Airlines. This strange arrangement held until 1970, when Bengali nationalists in East Pakistan triumphed in nationwide elections. The ruling military government, based in West Pakistan, feared losing its grip.
So on March 25, 1971, the Pakistani Army launched a devastating crackdown on the rebellious Bengalis in the east. Midway through the bloodshed, both the C.I.A. and the State Department conservatively estimated that about 200,000 people had died (the Bangladeshi government figure is much higher, at three million). As many as 10 million Bengali refugees fled across the border into India, where they died in droves in wretched refugee camps.
As recently declassified documents and White House tapes show, Nixon and Kissinger stood stoutly behind Pakistan’s generals, supporting the murderous regime at many of the most crucial moments. This largely overlooked horror ranks among the darkest chapters in the entire cold war.
Of course, no country, not even the United States, can prevent massacres everywhere in the world — but this was a close American ally, which prized its warm relationship with the United States and used American weapons and military supplies against its own people.
Nixon and Kissinger barely tried to exert leverage over Pakistan’s military government. In the pivotal days before the crackdown began on March 25, they consciously decided not to warn the Pakistani generals against opening fire on their population. They did not press for respecting the election results, nor did they prod the military to cut a power-sharing deal with the Bengali leadership. They did not offer warnings or impose conditions that might have dissuaded the Pakistani junta from atrocities. Nor did they threaten the loss of American military or economic support after the slaughter began.
Nixon and Kissinger were not just motivated by dispassionate realpolitik, weighing Pakistan’s help with the secret opening to China or India’s pro-Soviet leanings. The White House tapes capture their emotional rage, going far beyond Nixon’s habitual vulgarity. In the Oval Office, Nixon told Kissinger that the Indians needed “a mass famine.” Kissinger sneered at people who “bleed” for “the dying Bengalis.”
They were unmoved by the suffering of Bengalis, despite detailed reporting about the killing from Archer K. Blood, the brave United States consul general in East Pakistan. Nor did Nixon and Kissinger waver when Kenneth B. Keating, a former Republican senator from New York then serving as the American ambassador to India, personally confronted them in the Oval Office about “a matter of genocide” that targeted the Hindu minority among the Bengalis.
After Mr. Blood’s consulate sent an extraordinary cable formally dissenting from American policy, decrying what it called genocide, Nixon and Kissinger ousted Mr. Blood from his post in East Pakistan. Kissinger privately scorned Mr. Blood as “this maniac”; Nixon called Mr. Keating “a traitor.”
India was secretly sponsoring a Bengali insurgency in East Pakistan, and the violence ended only after India and Pakistan went to war in December 1971, with the Indian Army swiftly securing an independent Bangladesh. Economic development and political progress were always going to be difficult there. But Bangladesh’s situation was made tougher by the devastation: lost lives, wrecked infrastructure and radicalized politics.
Bangladesh, despite its recent economic growth, is a haunted country. Part of the tumult centers on the fate of defendants like Abdul Quader Mollah, who face judgment in a series of national war crimes trials for atrocities committed in 1971 by local collaborators with West Pakistan. These trials are popular, but the court has often failed to meet fair standards of due process. Its proceedings have ensnared members of the largest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which is aligned with the main political rival of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
It will be up to Bangladeshis to fix their country’s rancorous politics, but their task was made harder from the outset by Nixon and Kissinger’s callousness. The legacy of 1971 still stains the reputation of the United States in India as well. If an apology from Kissinger is too much to expect, Americans ought at least to remember what he and Nixon did in those terrible days.
Was Henry Kissinger a War Criminal? Christopher Hitchens on the Controversy (2001)
Published on Jun 2, 2013 by The Film Archives [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb2EYjrzI6WpNAmPZeihhag / https://www.youtube.com/user/thefilmarchives , https://www.youtube.com/user/thefilmarchives/videos ] Kissinger's involvement in Indochina started prior to his appointment as National Security Adviser to Nixon. About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/145552297X While still at Harvard, he had worked as a consultant on foreign policy to both the White House and State Department. Kissinger says that "In August 1965... [Henry Cabot Lodge], an old friend serving as Ambassador to Saigon, had asked me to visit Vietnam as his consultant. I toured Vietnam first for two weeks in October and November 1965, again for about ten days in July 1966, and a third time for a few days in October 1966... Lodge gave me a free hand to look into any subject of my choice". He became convinced of the meaninglessness of military victories in Vietnam, "...unless they brought about a political reality that could survive our ultimate withdrawal".[22] In a 1967 peace initiative, he would mediate between Washington and Hanoi. Nixon had been elected in 1968 on the promise of achieving "peace with honor" and ending the Vietnam War. In office, and assisted by Kissinger, Nixon implemented a policy of Vietnamization that aimed to gradually withdraw US troops while expanding the combat role of the South Vietnamese Army so that it would be capable of independently defending its government against the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, a Communist guerrilla organization, and North Vietnamese army (Vietnam People's Army or PAVN). Kissinger played a key role in a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia to disrupt PAVN and Viet Cong units launching raids into South Vietnam from within Cambodia's borders and resupplying their forces by using the Ho Chi Minh trail and other routes, as well as the 1970 Cambodian Incursion and subsequent widespread bombing of suspected Khmer Rouge targets in Cambodia. The bombing campaign contributed to the chaos of the Cambodian Civil War, which saw the forces of US-backed leader Lon Nol unable to retain foreign support to combat the growing Khmer Rouge insurgency that would overthrow him in 1975.[23][24] Documents uncovered from the Soviet archives after 1991 reveal that the North Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1970 was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge and negotiated by Pol Pot's then second in command, Nuon Chea.[25] The American bombing of Cambodia killed an estimated 40,000 Cambodian combatants and civilians.[26] Pol Pot biographer David Chandler argues that the bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted -- it broke the Communist encirclement of Phnom Penh,"[27] while Christopher Hitchens asserts that the bombing may have increased recruitment for the Khmer Rouge. Along with North Vietnamese Politburo Member Le Duc Tho, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1973, for their work in negotiating the ceasefires contained in the Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam," signed the January previous.[20] Tho rejected the award, telling Kissinger that peace had not been really restored in South Vietnam.[28] Kissinger wrote to the Nobel Committee that he accepted the award "with humility."[29][30] The conflict continued until an invasion of the South by the North Vietnamese Army resulted in a North Vietnamese victory in 1975 and the subsequent progression of the Pathet Lao in Laos towards figurehead status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkKSPurwRvU [with comments]
The Trial of Henry Kissinger-Christopher Hitchens 2001
The first episode is on the most internationally famous thing to happen to the country in recent history: the story of Pinochet and Allende. As much as we've avoided Pinochet-era stories for most of this season, we figured since everyone knew about it we should get it out of the way first. Hope you like it.
Also, since this was filmed at the end of the trip, I get it, I'm looking haggard. Imagine I'm Brad Pitt and it'll work out.
Thanks for watching! You're clearly one of the good ones.
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