Bangladesh War #6: The Aftermath

In this concluding blog, I’ll look at Gary Bass’ take from The Blood Telegram on the after-effects of the Bangladesh war on the different countries.

 

First up, Bangladesh itself. Its development would have been a challenge in any case, but things were even worse than normal:

“(It was made far worse by) the loss of so many people… the decimation of the ranks of the educated… the devastation of infrastructure… the widespread availability of leftover weapons from the insurgency, and the burden of getting the refugees back home.”

It was left, as one of Indira’s advisors said, as “a primordial slime. Out of this chaos, cosmos has to be created”. War crime tribunals were setup but they did nothing other than becoming a way to harass one’s political opponents. Mujib returned as the democratic leader, a lot of corruption followed, and in 1974, he seized emergency powers “gutting the constitution”. In turn he was assassinated during an army coup. It reminded me of that line from the Batman movie:

“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

 

And Pakistan? They’d lost half their country and half their population. It was a shattering moment. Yahya was blamed for everything and had to resign. His successor, Bhutto, was viewed as one of the men whose “aggressive obduracy in the constitutional negotiations” had led to the eventual catastrophe. A far greater and long-term consequence continues to haunt us till today: Pakistanis began to believe that India was not “done hammering them”, that India would next try to split the remaining parts of Pakistan as well. And a desire for a revenge breakup of India started growing. Acutely aware of their military being much weaker, they decided to resort to terrorists as the vehicle. At first it may seem weird that Pakistan also concluded that the US had “betrayed” them. But when you think of it, it makes sense. All US actions were covert and behind the scenes. But Pakistan, as a Cold War ally had expected overt actions. Who’d helped open the channel with China? What did they get in return from the US? This combo (India being stronger, and the US unreliable) led them to decide that the only way to protect themselves was to get nuclear weapons.

 

Next up, the US. It didn’t look good for having supported a genocidal regime and standing “resolutely behind Pakistan’s murderous generals”. So the US chose to forget their role in the whole issue. Even today, the US will harp of mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda, but never Bangladesh. It’s too inconvenient:

“Faraway, poor, brown – the place is all too easily ignored.”

Nixon, thanks to his “visceral hatred for India” from earlier times, ignored the genocide and blamed India for war and breaking another country. He and Kissinger even started called Indira as Hitler-like in her aggression! And all those American laws Nixon & Co broke in this episode? America simply didn’t care…

 

Finally, India. It remembers this as a famous victory. Not just militarily, but as a moral one. It thinks of this as “one of the world’s most successful cases of humanitarian intervention against genocide”. The US stance could have been behind-the-scene moves that wouldn’t have affected most Indians’ view of the US (favourable until at that time), but the aircraft carrier in the Bay of Bengal had been too visible. Too threatening. Indian (public) opinion towards America changed to “bad” and stayed that way for decades. Remember I mentioned that the aircraft carrier had nuclear weapons? Well, the incident nudged India to decide to get nuclear weapons – if a nuclear armed country would threaten one without those, it made sense to get them for oneself. (Sure, we might have gotten them anyway since China had them, but this episode made the decision a very popular one, by the time Pokhran tests eventually happened). Indira herself came out a hero, even a goddess (Durga):

“She had stood up to the cruel Pakistanis, the fanatical Chinese, and the arrogant Americans.”

It went to her head as we know all too well. India’s success with covert ops in Bangladesh led to similar attempts with the LTTE, with disastrous results.

 

If that didn’t feel like a satisfying ending (whatever that means), then perhaps one should remind oneself that this is real life, not a movie or story. And nations are involved in an “infinite game”…

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