Nixon and Genocide in Bangladesh
* What: The failed attempt to crush Bangladesh’s independence movement breaking away from Pakistan in 1971, carried out by Pakistan’s military dictatorship. India and Pakistan also went to war. Potentially there could have been a nuclear war between China and the USSR, or between the US and USSR. *
* Nixon and Kissinger hoped to use this crisis to bring closer relations with Communist China using Pakistan's dictator as a go between. Nixon continued shipping arms to Pakistan that were used in the genocide and even sent the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to threaten India with nuclear weapons to pressure them (unsuccessfully) to stay out of the conflict. The Soviets sent their own nuclear armed vessels in response.
* The Body Count: From 300,000 to 3 million dead and 10 million refugees, both Muslim and Hindu Bengalis killed or driven out of East Pakistan, later to be called Bangladesh. Up to 400,000 Bengali women were raped by Pakistani soldiers and paramilitaries. Slightly under 4,000 Indians and about 9,000 Pakistanis were also killed in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, a war begun by Pakistan.
* Who Else Gets the Blame:
* General Aga Muhammad Yaya Khan deserves the greatest blame. The strongly anti Communist military dictator of Pakistan, a leader Nixon liked and admired, planned and ordered the attacks on civilians in East Pakistan.
* In addition to the Pakistani army, religious militias Razakar, Al-Shams, and Al-Bard carried out the atrocities, targeting civilian opposition leaders, students, intellectuals, and religious centers.
* Henry Kissinger, Nixon's closest adviser on foreign policy, guided every step of US actions supporting Pakistan’s genocide.
* The US government sent arms to Pakistan indirectly through the governments of Iran and Jordan, under the two dictators the Shah of Iran and King Hussein. Though killing thousands of their own people to stay in power, the US media tended to depict the Shah and Hussein as moderates because they were allies of the US government.
* China's government also increased arms shipments to Pakistan, encouraged by Nixon and Kissinger. China also vetoed Bangladesh's attempt to join the United Nations and was almost the last nation to recognize them in 1975.
* Nixon and Kissinger have the most blood on their hands of any American President and Secretary of State. Not only were they both guilty of genocide against the people of Cambodia (see Section One), the two failed to halt or even try to slow this genocide in Bangladesh and carried out actions leading to another genocide, against the Kurds of Iraq. (See later in this section.) Kissinger also was complicit in failing to prevent and helping to sanction yet one more genocide in East Timor. (See also later in this section.)* *
* Bangladesh is a country few Americans know much about, even where it is, and this lack of understanding helped Nixon and Kissinger get away with their actions and is the greatest reason most know little about this episode today. When the British were forced out of their empire in India, they split the nation into India, mostly Hindu, and Pakistan, mostly Muslim. Pakistan at the time was two regions, West Pakistan which is today simply called Pakistan, and East Pakistan which would become Bangladesh.
* The Bengalis of East Pakistan faced much discrimination and neglect from the national government. Most political and military power was in the hands of West Pakistanis. Only the Urdu language of West Pakistanis was an official language. The government spent little on East Pakistan, even though they were slight over a majority of the population.
* The final straw was the Bhola Cyclone in 1970, killing up to half a million Bengalis. The national government response was poor, incompetent, and indifferent. East Pakistani parties won a majority in elections. The military refused to allow them to take power. The government imposed martial law and a crackdown began on East Pakistanis.
* General Yaya Khan declared at a military meeting, “Kill three million of them and the rest will be eating out of our hands.” Operation Searchlight began. Hindus, Biharis, university students, teachers, reporters, and opposition leaders were all targeted. Hundreds of thousands of Bengali women and girls were raped, with many kept as slaves in military brothels and often forced to give birth to their rapists' children.
* All of the actions of these atrocities were known to the American government almost immediately, and specifically to Nixon and Kissinger. The American consulate in Dacca, East Pakistan, reported the genocide in detail. The US Consul, Arthur Blood, sent what has become known as the Blood Telegram, written by him and signed by 29 diplomats:
* “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....”
* “But we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely an internal matter of a sovereign state. Private Americans have expressed disgust. We, as professional civil servants, express our dissent....”
* An earlier Blood telegram described the explicit West Pakistani targeting of Bengalis. Kenneth Keating, American Ambassador to India, also described the violence as genocide. Blood and Keating's call for aid was not only ignored. Nixon and Kissinger referred to the diplomats derisively in private as “fanatics” and even “traitors.” Though he had a year and half more left at his position, Arthur Blood was recalled from his post by Nixon.
* For to Nixon and Kissinger, their main concern was to use General Yaya Khan as a go between to try and improve relations with Communist China. The opening to China has long been regarded as the high point of Nixon's presidency. There is a long pattern of amnesia over how that opening happened, not through diplomatic skill, but by pandering to a go between who committed outright genocide of the most vicious kind.
* Publicly Nixon and Kissinger claimed to be staying out of the massacres, neutral and disinterested. In fact, they ordered the continued shipping of arms used in the genocide, knowing full well to what purpose they were going to. Nixon also reassured General Yaya Khan of his support with sympathetic words. “I understand the anguish you must have felt in making the difficult decisions you have faced,” Nixon personally told him.
* Transcripts of Nixon in private also showed his deep racist hatred of Indians. "Indians are cunning, traitorous people," he said. “I don’t know why the hell anybody would reproduce in that damn country, but they do.” As for Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Nixon referred to her as, “the old bitch.” Kissinger, while not showing bigotry, seemed very indifferent to the lives lost, very much the pattern for his entire career. Even the death of a former student of his in genocide left him unaffected.
* Bengali leaders declared Bangladesh independence. As the repression continued, India offered arms and diplomatic support. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi traveled extensively to win condemnation for Pakistan's genocide and support for Bengali independence. Senator Edward Kennedy also called the atrocities genocide and called for the cutoff of US aid.
* Pakistan launched an air strike against India, hoping to prevent Indian intervention. The strike largely failed, and India counterattacked, finally driving Pakistani forces out, capturing over 90,000 Pakistani troops. The United Nations tried to intervene. George Bush Sr., the US Ambassador to the UN at the time, called for a ceasefire.
* The Soviet Union, an ally to India, vetoed the ceasefire. Nixon sent the USS Enterprise, armed with nuclear weapons, off the coast of India. Soviet warships with nuclear weapons followed. Nixon had long followed a policy of brinksmanship (seeing how close one could come to nuclear war) and madmanship (trying to convince your enemy you were insane.) Even for Nixon and Kissinger, this was enormously risky, and so close to the edge as to leave little doubt of, yet again, their frequent incompetence on foreign policy.
* Nixon also encouraged China to deploy its forces along the border with India. China chose not to do so, largely because eight divisions of Indian forces were already deployed and prepared to fight off attacks.
* In almost every way, Nixon and Kissinger's ploy failed utterly and exposed further their incompetence. Pakistan lost half its territory and people and was condemned almost everywhere. The Pakistani public's anger was so great over the losses and humiliating defeat by India that General Yaya Khan was forced to step down and hand over power to a civilian president.
* India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, derided as “the old bitch” by Nixon, came out of this matter viewed as a strong leader, having fought off not just Pakistan but enormous pressure from China and the US. Even the Soviet Union had been pressured by the US to pressure India. India's military had beaten Pakistan and liberated Bangladesh, a new ally.
* Kissinger's doctrine of realpolitik, (realism in politics) utterly failed. Designed to pursue stability over morality, the vicious immorality of its aims became self-defeating. The region became far more unstable. For Pakistan's government chose to pursue nuclear weapons and also supported jihadists in Afghanistan to use against India.
* The one sense in which Nixon and Kissinger's support of genocide could be called a success was in eventually building ties leading to US recognition of Communist China. But even on that matter, their legacy is controversial. For Nixon's strongest critics of that recognition, and the treaties that followed, were from his own party. Many conservatives remain convinced that detente with China and later the Soviets lengthened the Cold War, strengthened Communist dictatorships, and worsened lives for dissidents in those countries.
* Those worst off, of course, were the millions of Bengalis murdered, raped, or made refugees by this genocide. There were no trials for this genocide except within Bangladesh. The UN treaty providing for prosecution for genocide was not ratified until almost a decade and a half after the Bangladeshi genocide.
* Almost 200 Pakistani soldiers captured by the Indian Army and accused of war crimes were pardoned and returned to Pakistan as part of a treaty agreement. Between 10,000 and 40,000 Bengalis accused of being collaborators were imprisoned and facing war crimes trials until a 1973 pardon by the Bangladesh government. The pardon was revoked two years later, but there were no other efforts to prosecute war criminals.
* If a different man had been president, would US condemnation have made any difference? No one ever expected a US invasion or even bombings designed to punish Pakistan for genocide. The US public would not support such while the US-Vietnam War was still failing so utterly that it was tearing American society apart.
* Nixon, even had he not been an anti-Indian racist and had he not been trying to get Pakistan as a go between for relations with China, still would never have intervened. He was busy losing the war in Indochina, and would soon accept peace terms from the North Vietnamese identical to those they first offered when Nixon took office. Thus he continued the war for five years for nothing but his own reelection. (See Section Four.) Nixon also had been occupied with carrying out his own genocide against Cambodia. (See Section One.)
* Would diplomatic isolation and halting arms shipments have halted the Bengali genocide? Almost certainly not, but Nixon's fumbling and bigoted meddling certainly made matters far worse, turning an ethnic and religious conflict into a Cold War standoff. Cutting off weapons and diplomatic isolation would have slowed the genocide at best. But saving one tenth of the up to 3 million lives lost was possible, and certainly a worthy goal.
* Almost any other potential president at the time would not have made the decisions Nixon made. Not Humphrey, certainly not Robert Kennedy nor McGovern, and not even Reagan would have tried such duplicity for a remote and uncertain goal. Reagan only reluctantly recognized China while running as candidate and then president, and strongly condemned Nixon's agreements with both China and the Soviets. It is difficult to imagine any of the other possible presidents at that time sending an American aircraft carrier armed with nuclear weapons. While Reagan and perhaps Humphrey may continue shipping weapons, neither would do anything as reckless as risking the nuclear confrontation that Nixon did.
* Along with Cambodia and betraying the Kurds of Iraq, Nixon's support for Bengali genocide deserves to be remembered as among the worst things he ever did, far more than covering up burglary and spying during Watergate. That this tragedy is not better known in the US is due to parochialism, not teaching about this region of the world. A growing South Asian population in the US will hopefully change that.