George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

confrontations of the US and the USSR. For Kissinger and Bush, what was at stake in this
crisis was the consolidation of the China card.
In 1970, Yahya Khan, the British-connected, Sandhurst-educated dictator of Pakistan,
was forced to announce that elections would be held in the entire country. It will be
recalled that Pakistan was at that time two separate regions, east and west, with India in
between. In East Pakistan or Bengal, the Awami League of Sheik Mujibur Rahman
campaigned on a platform of autonomy for Bengal, accusing the central government in
far-off Islamabad of ineptitude and exploitation. The resentment in East Pakistan was
made more acute by the fact that Bengal had just been hit by a typhoon, which had
caused extensive flooding and devastation, and by the failure of the government in west
Pakistan to organize and effective relief effort. In the elections, the Awami league won
167 out of 169 seats in the east. Yahya Khan delayed the seating of the new national
assembly and on the evening of March 25 ordered the Pakistani army to arrest Mujibur
and to wipe out his organization in East Pakistan. The army proceeded to launch a
campaign of political genocide in East Pakistan. Estimates of the number of victims range
from 500,000 to three million dead. All members of the Awami League, all Hindus, all
students and intellectuals were in danger of execution by roving army patrols. A senior
US Foreign Service officer sent home a depatch in which he told of West Pakistani
soldiers setting fire to a women's dormitory at the University of Dacca and then machinegunning
the women when they were forced by the flames to run out. This campaign of
killing went on until December, and it generated an estimated 10 million refugees, most
of whom fled across the nearby borders to India, which had territory all around East
Pakistan. The arrival of ten million refugees caused indescribable chaos in India, whose
government was unable to prevent untold numbers from starving to death. [fn 14]
From the very beginning of this monumental genocide, Kissinger and Nixon made it clear
that they would not condemn Yahya Khan, whom Nixon considered a personal friend.
Kissinger referred merely to the "strong -arm tactics of the Pakistani military," and Nixon
circulated a memo in his own handwriting saying "To all hands. Don't squeeze Yahya at
this time. RN" Nixon stressed repeatedly that he wanted to "tilt" in favor of Pakistan in
the crisis.
One level of explanation for this active complicity in genocide was that Kissinger and
Nixon regarded Yahya Khan as their indispensable back channel to Peking. But Kissinger
could soon go to Peking anytime he wanted, and soon he could talk to the Chinese UN
delegate in one of the CIA's New York safe houses. The essence of the support for the
butcher Yahya Khan was this: in 1962 India and China had engaged in a brief border war,
and the Peking leaders regarded India as their geopolitical enemy. In order to ingratiate
himself with Chou and Mao, Kissinger wanted to take a position in favor of Pakistan, and
therefore of Pakistan's ally China, and against India and against India's ally, the USSR.
(Shortly after Kissinger's trip to China had taken place and Nixon had announced his
intention to go to Peking, India and the USSR had signed a twenty year friendship treaty.
In Kissinger's view, the Indo-Pakistani conflict over Bengal was sure to become a Sino-
Soviet clash by proxy, and he wanted the United States aligned with China in order to