How US Plotted Against India To Help Pakistan In 1971?
The 1971 war between India and Pakistan saw Bangladesh become a new Country and over 93,000 Pakistani troops surrender to the Indian Army. Pakistan Forces in East Pakistan signed the instrument of surrender in just over 2 weeks of War with India. This happened in spite of the backing of the United States of America to Pakistan and totally against the Wishes of Nixon their President.
The war was fought on both the western and eastern fronts between Pakistan and India. A day after Bangladesh was liberated from Pakistan on December 16, 1971, the then President of the US, Richard Nixon was told by his strategic advisor Henry Kissinger that he had managed to “save West Pakistan,” according to confidential papers since declassified by the US department of state. And just imagine now USA wants to make India its Strategic Partner!!!!
This was a war of liberation which the Americans in their arrogance misread from the very beginning. On March 29, 1971, some time after the crackdown by Yaha Khan on hapless Bengalis of East Pakistan, Henry Kissinger told Richard Nixon that Pakistan would be able to contain the rebellion in its eastern wing. In turn Nixon cited the example of British invasion of India to justify that belief…how silly of an American President.
“Congratulations Mr President. You saved West Pakistan,” said Henry Kissinger over the phone to his boss Richard Nixon, about 16 hours after Gen AAK Niazi signed the surrender of East Pakistan and about the time India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared the unilateral ceasefire on the Western front on December 17 Indian Standard Time.
Explaining the strange conversation, Ambassador Pinak R Chakravarty, former High Commissioner to Bangladesh, who is currently writing a book on the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh, said “Kissinger was playing a dubious role. Their (US administration’s) main objective was to befriend China using the Pakistanis as middlemen during the conflict months. His comments should be read as both an attempt to take credit with the Pakistanis in the face of a hopeless situation and a bid to please a difficult boss.”
The US National Security Adviser told Nixon in a phone call soon after the Pakistan military regime cracked down in East Pakistan on March 26, 1971: “Apparently Yahya has got control of East Pakistan… all the experts were saying that 30,000 people (Pakistan Army at that time in the East) can’t get control of 75 million (Bangladesh’s population)… as of this moment it seems to be quiet.”
Nixon responded that this ability of a small force to control large populations was normal and pointed out: “Look what the Spanish did when they came in and took the Incas. Look what the British did when they took India.”
By second week of December 71, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were busy plotting ways to change the tide of the war or to arrest it. They should than Their stars that India did not have nuclear weapons and Agni missiles at that time.
Henry Kissinger in a meeting with Richard Nixon and Attorney General Newton Mitchell, now declassified, said he had “got a message to you from the Shah (of Iran), in which he says he can send ammunition (to a beleaguered Pakistan) – he is doing it now.” The diplomat also revealed that Iran will send fighter planes to protect Jordan from Israel, while Jordan will send jets to Pakistan for the war effort against India.
We Indians must be aware of such plotting because they will happen in future too.
Kissinger also expressed fear that India would attack West Pakistan in a major way after winning the war in the east. “The Indian plan is now clear. They’re going to move their forces from East Pakistan to the west. They will then smash the Pakistan land forces and air forces, annex (take back) the (Pakistan-occupied) part of Kashmir and then call it off,” warned Henry Kissinger. The Americans were really spooked by our Mrs Indira Gandhi our Prime Minister.
“When this has happened, the centrifugal forces in West Pakistan would be liberated. Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier will celebrate. West Pakistan would become a sort of intricate Afghanistan,” Henry Kissinger mused.
This warning from clever Kissinger made Nixon order a task force ex Seventh Fleet to move into the Bay of Bengal from waters off Vietnam, on the pretext of evacuating US citizens from the war zone.
The task force of Seventh Fleet, was led by the 75,000-ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which was considered the most formidable naval force of the time. The Indians too had a plan if the Americans had been foolish enough to actually intervene.
