Word: pakistan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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TILT! THE INDIA-PAKISTAN...
...Pakistan was disintegrating. The Bengali-dominated East, separated by 1,000 miles of India from the less populous but long-dominant West, was moving toward autonomy, if not outright independence. Civil war loomed. The East's 75 million people had been under martial law since 1969. Now Pakistani President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan's troops, most of them Punjabis from the West who were offended by the East's separatist demands, went on a murderous rampage. Bengali refugees began streaming into India, eventually numbering some 8 million. India's Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, protesting that...
...pretext for Mrs. Gandhi to seize the opportunity to dismember her hated neighbor. (Kissinger points out that the U.S. gave some $92 million in refugee aid, far more than any other single country.) The U.S. objective, says Kissinger, was "an evolution that would lead to independence for East Pakistan." But India, he adds, was too impatient to accept so gradual a solution. In August, "nonaligned" New Delhi aligned itself with Moscow by signing a Soviet-Indian Friendship Treaty. "With the treaty," writes Kissinger, "Moscow threw a lighted match into a powder keg." By November, when Mrs. Gandhi visited Nixon...
...Peking. It was unprecedented, the Chinese having previously always saved their messages until we asked for a meeting-a charming Middle Kingdom legacy. We assumed that only a matter of gravity could induce them into such a departure. We guessed that they were coming to the military assistance of Pakistan. If so, we were on the verge of a possible showdown. For if China moved militarily, the Soviet Union-according to all our information-was committed to use force against China...
...fleet passed into the Bay of Bengal and attracted much media attention. Were we threatening India? Were we seeking to defend East Pakistan? Had we lost our minds? It was in fact sober calculation. We had some 72 hours to bring the war to a conclusion before West Pakistan would be swept into the maelstrom. It would take India that long to shift its forces. We had to give the Soviets a warning. We had to be ready to back up the Chinese if they came in. Moving the task force into the Bay of Bengal created precisely the margin...