Magnificent Delusions (27 page)

The secrecy surrounding Kissinger's China trip meant that most people did not know the reason for Nixon's failure to reprimand Yahya over the Pakistan army's actions in East Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was among those in the dark about this hush-hush diplomacy. In May she wrote a letter to Nixon describing “the gigantic problems which Pakistan's actions in East Bengal have created for India.”

According to her, “Pakistan's war on the people of East Bengal and its impact on us in the form of millions of refugees” could not be separated. She claimed that, by May 12, 1971, 2,328,507 refugees had been registered, and more were pouring in “at the rate of about fifty thousand a day.” The problem of providing shelter for the refugees would become complicated with the anticipated monsoon
rains. “Apparently, Pakistan is trying to solve its internal problems by cutting down the size of its population in East Bengal,” Gandhi said, adding that Pakistan was trying to change “its communal composition through an organized and selective program.” She sought “the advice of all friendly Governments on how they would wish us to deal with the problem.”

The Indian prime minister shared her conviction that “the loyalty of a people to a State cannot be enforced at gun-point” and cautioned that stifling the will of the people in East Bengal will eventually strengthen extremists. Referring to the long-running Marxist insurgency in West Bengal, Gandhi said that “the dangers of a linkup between the extremists in the two Bengals are real.”

She concluded by requesting that “the power and prestige of the United States” be used “to persuade the military rulers of Pakistan to recognize that the solution they have chosen for their problem in East Pakistan is unwise and untenable.”
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But her plea had little effect in Washington. Although Kissinger had voiced fears soon after Ayub's ouster about Chinese communists taking advantage of the situation in East Pakistan, he did not react when Gandhi warned about Marxist gains because of the violence Pakistan's army had unleashed.

During the monsoon season both the influx of refugees into India and the fighting in East Pakistan intensified, as did international condemnation of Pakistan's actions. A World Bank mission told of death and destruction throughout the region, with one member of the mission describing the Bengali town of Kushtia, for example, as “looking like a World War II German town having undergone strategic bombing attacks, as a result of twelve days of ‘punitive action' by the West Pakistani army.” Ten members of the eleven-nation Aid to Pakistan consortium agreed to withhold aid to Pakistan. But the United States did not.
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Only ironically did Nixon realize the futility of Pakistan continuing to hang on to East Pakistan by force. During a meeting in the Oval Office Farland told Nixon that he was convinced that Yahya would fight to the bitter end. “He will commit suicide,” Nixon remarked. Nonetheless, he still stuck to his original decision. Farland
and Kissinger agreed with the president when he said that the United States had to stand by its friend. All three thought that some deep-rooted hatred between Hindus and Muslims, rather than Yahya's unwillingness to accept the will of the Bengali majority, was fueling the conflict in South Asia.
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Years later, as he reminisced about his role as national security adviser, Kissinger wrote that he had tried to reason with Yahya during his stay in Pakistan for his secret China trip. He said he asked Yahya to put forward a comprehensive proposal to encourage refugees to return home and “to deny India a pretext for going to war.” He also asked “Yahya and his associates” to admit the United Nations for relief efforts in East Pakistan and recommended the early appointment of a civilian governor.

“Yahya promised to consider these suggestions,” Kissinger wrote. “But fundamentally he was oblivious to his perils and unprepared to face necessities. He and his colleagues did not feel that India was planning war; if so, they were convinced that they would win. When I asked as tactfully as I could about the Indian advantage in numbers and equipment, Yahya and his colleagues answered with bravado about the historic superiority of Moslem fighters.”
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If the United States recognized the perils of Yahya's course, however, they did not tell him about the impending disaster. Nixon told British Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home that Yahya had handled the situation “in a stupid way” as he also insisted that “He's a very decent man” and that the Indians were “hypocrites and sanctimonious.” Nixon said he knew it was “inevitable” that Pakistan would “come apart,” but the Indians were “deliberately trying to make it insoluble.” He saw the danger that “a West Pakistani with a suicidal attitude will decide to have a fight,” possibly in Kashmir.

Nixon saw his policy as one aimed at averting that war. Kissinger insisted that there had to be “a face-saving formula and a transition period. “Although a few months earlier he had described Yahya as “a splendid product of Sandhurst,” he now conceded that “He's not very bright.” Nixon described Yahya as “a decent man, an honorable man.” He also expressed to the British minister that he didn't think
the British should have granted India and Pakistan independence so soon. “They just aren't ready, that's all,” he concluded.
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I
NDIRA GANDHI
could not ignore Nixon's refusal to lean on Pakistan as well as his unfriendly view of India. Before his covert trip to China through Pakistan in July, Kissinger had also visited Delhi. During this visit Indian leaders shared their ideas with the US official about a settlement in East Pakistan. Gandhi told Kissinger that she did not wish to use force and that she was willing to accept any suggestions that the United States may have. Kissinger informed her of the Nixon administration's efforts to establish a relationship with communist China gradually. He said that these were not directed at India and that they derived from America's global policy.

The Indian prime minister kept her counsel in relation to China. But she did press Kissinger on East Bengal, as the number of registered refugees who had come into India had risen to 6.8 million. She insisted that Pakistan had to create circumstances that would enable the refugees to return home. “The settlement must be between East Pakistan and West Pakistan,” she said. “This is not an Indo-Pakistani problem. India would not have been involved except for the refugees.” Kissinger promised to “use what influence we have to encourage a solution.”

Gandhi tried to persuade Kissinger to recognize the need for more robust US involvement. She said that Pakistan has felt all these years that it will get support from the United States no matter what it does, and this has encouraged an “adventurous policy.” India is “not remotely desirous of territory,” and to have the Pakistanis base the whole survival of their country on hostility to India was irritating. “If they really had the good of Islam at heart,” she said, “they would think of the 60 million Muslims in India also.”
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During his stay in Delhi Kissinger also met India's defense minister, Jagjivan Ram, to hear him assess the Chinese military threat to India. Kissinger observed that China might intervene on behalf of
Pakistan if there were a war between India and Pakistan. He assured Ram that the United States would take a grave view of any Chinese move against India.
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But on his return to Washington Kissinger qualified that assurance in a meeting with the Indian ambassador Lakshmi Kant Jha.

Kissinger had said that in the case of a Chinese attack that was unprovoked, the United States' interest in India would be very great; in the case of a Chinese attack provoked by an Indian attack on Pakistan, the United States would have a much harder time intervening.
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But the media reported this conversation in a way that disturbed Indians and cheered Pakistanis. According to the media, Kissinger had conveyed the warning that if war broke out between India and Pakistan, and China became involved on Pakistan's side, “we would be unable to help you against China.”
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The emergence of a possible coalition between the United States, China, and Pakistan did not portend well for India. The Soviets, however, had problems with both the United States and China and were not particularly interested in being evenhanded between India and Pakistan. Saunders' forecast—that US support for Pakistan as well as the opening of ties with China would drive India toward the Soviet Union—was about to come true.

Although India had championed nonalignment since its independence, it was not averse to seeking advantage from either superpower. After all, India had bought weapons from the Soviet Union for years. When the Soviets started selling military hardware to Pakistan, Indira Gandhi aspired to calibrate Soviet arms sales to India and Pakistan. She said she wanted to prevent the Soviet Union from “taking over management of the subcontinent.”

Gandhi wrote to Kosygin in mid-July 1968 to protest Moscow's arms sales to Pakistan. The Soviet premier rushed to assure her that “every country in the world could envy Soviet-Indian relations,” thus affirming the Soviet preference for India over Pakistan.
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But Gandhi entertained no illusions about the Soviet Union or any other major power, convinced that all nations “were guided only by their own interests and had no obligations to other countries
which did not conform to those interests.'
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But she concluded in the summer of 1971 that it was time to accept the Soviet offer, first made by Premier Kosygin in February 1969, to sign a bilateral treaty of friendship. Gandhi had initially stalled on the proposed treaty because she did not want to risk India's ties with the United States.

Kosygin had said in Delhi soon after proposing the treaty that “if your great country is threatened at its borders, then we will be there to help you.” Because Soviet relations with China had been steadily deteriorating, Brezhnev proposed a collective security system in Asia, intended to contain China, that Gandhi turned down. She agreed to a treaty of friendship without an explicit military component, which was akin to the one the Soviets had signed earlier with Egypt. But even after the draft agreement had been negotiated, for almost two years Gandhi put off signing the treaty.

But on August 9,1971, Indian Foreign Minister Swaran Singh and his Soviet counterpart, Andrei Gromyko, signed a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation in New Delhi. Most of the treaty's provisions comprised expressions of goodwill toward one another. India and the Soviet Union agreed to “enter into mutual consultations” in case of threat to the security of either and “to take appropriate effective measures to ensure peace and the security of their countries.” Couched in diplomatic language, the two countries had effectively become security allies.

The Indo-Soviet pact sealed the fate of East Pakistan; Gandhi had completely outmaneuvered Yahya. On the ground Pakistan's forces were losing territory to the Mukti Bahini and possibly Indian regulars fighting along their side. Diplomatically Pakistan was completely isolated. Although China and the United States made sympathetic noises, neither could deny that Pakistani forces had wantonly killed Bengalis in large numbers. Now, with the Soviet Union openly standing with India, there was little chance that the United States or China would risk wider conflict by supporting Pakistan militarily.

But Yahya looked at things in a different light. When Nixon and Kissinger assured him of their interest in Pakistan's well-being, he assumed the United States would put its military muscle behind
Pakistan. He and his fellow generals also had an unrealistic expectation of China's willingness to save a united Pakistan. Yahya's Sandhurst training had obviously not prepared him for statecraft.

Ghulam Ishaq Khan, secretary to the cabinet who later became Pakistan's president, and M. M. Ahmad, economic adviser to the president, told US officials that Yahya was “increasingly isolated from events in East Pakistan.”
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There were also reports that the Pakistan army in East Pakistan operated autonomously and that Yahya's influence was limited to “foreign affairs affecting East Pakistan.” But this influence was sufficient for Pakistan to persist with its military plans based on false assumptions.

This was the time when Nixon should have had a candid conversation with Yahya. After all, Pakistan's usefulness as a channel of communication with China had been exaggerated; the United States could have managed its quiet diplomacy with China without allowing the atrocities in East Pakistan. The US president could have told the Pakistani dictator that only direct talks with the Awami League, including Mujib, would work. Further, someone needed to illuminate Yahya about the limits of US support, given Pakistan's other drawbacks. The threat of an aid cutoff, as Bowles had proposed, could have had a sobering effect. Instead, however, Nixon stood by his friend Yahya and leaned on Gandhi, going to the extent of abusing her behind her back.