Bangladeshi Independence

I posted an Electronic Briefing Book (EBB) on the Archive website today, the thirty-first anniversary of Bangladesh's independence. The EBB consists of a background essay, document descritpions, and the decalssified government documents themselves. There are some pretty interesting documents ranging everywhere from cable traffic from Dhaka to Washington describing the genocide in East Pakistan to George Bush Senior's view of Henry Kissinger. To get the whole background essay and to see the documents, just click here.

Here is the Press Release:

National Security Archive Update, December 16, 2002

*The Tilt: The U.S. and the South Asian Crisis of 1971*

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, on the 31st anniversary of the creation of
Bangladesh, the National Security Archive published on the World Wide Web 46
declassified U.S. government documents and audio clips concerned with United
States policy towards India and Pakistan during the South Asian Crisis of
1971.

The documents, declassified and available at the U.S. National Archives and
the Presidential Library system detail how United States policy, directed by
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, followed a course that became infamously
known as "The Tilt."

The documents published today show:

* The brutal details of the genocide conducted in East Pakistan in March and
April of 1971

* One of the first “dissent cables” questioning U.S. policy and morality at a
time when, as the Consulate General in Dhaka Archer Blood writes,
"unfortunately, the overworked term genocide is applicable."

* The role that Nixon’s friendship with Yahya Khan and the China iniative
played in U.S. policymaking leading to the tilt towards Pakistan

* George Bush Senior’s view of Henry Kissinger

* Illegal American military assistance approved by Richard Nixon and Henry
Kissinger to Pakistan following a formal aid cutoff by the United States

* Henry Kissinger’s duplicity to the press and towards the Indians vis-à-vis
the Chinese

Follow the link below to view the Electronic Briefing Book:

http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB79

posted by sajit @ 4:58 PM