New Delhi: While his negotiation for the ceasefire with Vietnam earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, Henry Kissinger stood aside around the same years when Bengalis were being killed in erstwhile East Pakistan.
For decades afterwards, he remained as a consultant and writer, offering advice to various US administrations, and remains a polarising leader. He died on 29 November at the age of 100.
Born in Germany on 27 May 1923 to a German Jewish couple, Kissinger and his family fled to the US in 1938 from Nazi Germany. From speaking little English, he learnt the language and spoke with a Bavarian accent for the rest of his life.
Kissinger, the only individual who held the position of national security advisor and secretary of state at the same time in the US, exercised considerable control over American foreign policy under two presidents – Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. He went on to advise at least 12 US presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Kissinger, the architect of Washington’s normalisation of relations with China, is considered an ‘old friend’ of Beijing. As recently as July, he made headlines for meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping despite frosty relations between the two countries.
“We will never forget our old friends, and will not forget your historical contributions to develop US-China relations and friendship between the two peoples,” Xi is reported to have said during the meeting with Kissinger at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse – the location of the American’s secret meetings with Chinese officials five decades earlier.
However, his focus on Washington’s relationship with Beijing had ramifications to thousands of Bengalis in East Pakistan.
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The Blood Telegram
In the book ‘The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide,’ author Gary J. Bass documents how the Nixon administration, and Kissinger specifically, ignored missives from Archer Blood, the US Consul General in Dacca (present-day Dhaka) of the unfolding violence starting on the night of 25 March 1971.
Blood and his staff communicated regularly with the US embassy in Islamabad through a secret wireless transmitter, depicting the unfolding events as the Pakistani military cracked down on the Awami League in East Pakistan, firing and using tanks in Dacca.
A US state department spokesperson slipped up and publicly mentioned troop firing and tanks – an action that resulted in the American ambassador to Pakistan, Joseph S. Farland, to explode at the spokesperson for sharing that Washington was aware of the events unfolding in East Pakistan, Bass notes in his book.
On 28 March, after three days of silence, Blood sent a furious cable calling the Pakistan army’s actions as “selective genocide”. In the cable Blood wrote, “Here in Dacca we are mute witnesses to a reign of terror by the Pak military,” Bass notes in his book.
Blood further added that the military was “systematically eliminating” Awami League supporters – seeking them out at their homes and shooting them, while making it clear that such violence could not be justified by “military necessity”.
Blood’s cable received backing from the US ambassador to India, Kenneth Keating. However, Nixon and Kissinger’s position in support of Yahya Khan did not waver at the time. Bass notes Kissinger on 29 March informed Nixon that “Apparatenly Yahya has got control of East Pakistan…sometimes the use of power is…the use of power against seeming odds pay off. Cause all the experts were saying that 30,000 people cannot get control of 75 million.”
Commiserating with Yahya Khan’s difficulties in bringing the Bengalis to heel, Kissinger in a conversation with Nixon said, “the Bengalis have been really difficult to govern throughout their history.”
On 6 April 1971, Archer Blood and the remaining American diplomats in Dhaka sent the first ever formal ‘dissent cable’ to Washington D.C. The subject ‘Dissent from U.S policy toward East Pakistan’ was blunt as it was bold.
“Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pak[istan] dominated government and to lessen any deservedly negative international public relations impact against them,” the telegram said.
“Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy ironically at a time when the USSR sent President Yahya a message defending democracy, condemning the arrest of leader of democratically elected majority party.”
For all of Kissinger’s history in government and outside of government, the impact of ignoring the Pakistani military’s atrocities on Bengalis, will forever remain a watershed moment of his relationship with South Asia.
While the violence was unfolding in East Pakistan, Kissinger through President Yahya Khan was writing a new chapter to the US-China ties. Three months after the Blood telegram, Kissinger took his first secret trip to China via Pakistan. Bass notes in his book that one of the first things the US asked of China after its newly minted secret relationship was to “mobilise” troops to threaten India in the defence of Pakistan.
Stormy ties with India
President Nixon’s distaste for India is well recorded and reported by various media outlets. Often in those same conversations, Kissinger joined in to add his own views on India and the Indian people.
For example, on 3 June 1971, during a conversation with Nixon, Kissinger famously called Indians as a “scavenging people” to blame India for fueling the refugee crisis engulfing East Pakistan by supporting the Bengali insurgency.
On 17 June 1971, Kissinger said that Indians are “ superb flatterers” and that is how they survived for 600 years, “their great skill is to suck up to people in key positions.” In 2005, he regretted his slurs, but defended them within the context of Cold War politics.
On 15 November 1971, a day after meeting the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Kissinger is reported to have called her a “b***h”. “While she was a b***h, we got what we wanted too…She will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn’t give her a warm reception and therefore in despair she’s got to go to war,” Kissinger said at the time in conversation with Nixon.
While Kissinger may be remembered in the US as a “statesman” and a “diplomat”, policies he supported across the planet have left lasting problems. Whether it was his support of the removal of Chilean President Salvador Allende (which led to a 17-year dictatorship), or his inaction closer home in the subcontinent, Kissinger’s legacy will remain questionable for years to come.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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