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Nixon and Kissingers Forgotten Shame

nytimes.com

PRINCETON, N.J. BANGLADESH is in fresh turmoil. On Sept. 17, its Supreme Court decided that
Abdul Quader Mollah, a leading Islamist politician, should be hanged for war crimes committed during the
countrys 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. When he was given a life sentence by a Bangladeshi
war-crimes tribunal back in February, tens of thousands of Bangladeshis took to the streets demanding his
execution. Since then, more than a hundred people have died in protests and counterprotests.
This may sound remote or irrelevant to Americans, but the unrest has much to do with the United States.
Some of Bangladeshs current problems stem from its traumatic birth in 1971 when President Richard
M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser, vigorously supported the killers and
tormentors of a generation of Bangladeshis.
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 Pakistans 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 Pakistans 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 Pakistans help with the
secret opening to China or Indias pro-Soviet leanings. The White House tapes capture their emotional
rage, going far beyond Nixons 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
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B. Keating, a former Republican senator from New York then serving as the Aug
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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. Bloods 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
Bangladeshs 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 countrys rancorous politics, but their task was made harder from
the outset by Nixon and Kissingers 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.

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