P.R. Chari
Random House, Delhi, India by Gary J. Bass Random House, Delhi, India, 2014, 500 pp., 599
February 2014, volume 38, No 2

The first is that the sanguineous-sounding Blood Telegram refers to a cable sent by Archer Blood, Consul General in Dacca (now Dhaka) on 6 April, 1971 to the US State Department drawing attention to the inhuman atrocities being perpetrated by Pakistani troops in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) on the local Bengali population. Probably unprecedented in diplomatic history the Blood Telegram was endorsed by the US consulate staff and other American officials in Dhaka at that time, it expressed ‘strong dissent’ against the Nixon-Kissinger controlled US policy of supporting the Pakistani regime in Islamabad in this pogrom against its own Bengali population. The author believes that this cable ‘perhaps the most radical rejection of US policy ever sent by its diplomats’—blasted the United States for silence in the face of atrocities, for not denouncing the quashing of democracy, for showing ‘moral bankruptcy’ in the face of what they bluntly called ‘genocide’. This issue has not gone away, despite over four decades having elapsed since 1971. A tribunal was set up by its Awami League Government in 2009 which had sentenced to death leaders of the right wing Jamait-e-Islami Party (JeI) for atrocities committed during East Pakistan’s independence struggle in 1971. In truth, the JeI had joined the Pakistan Army in committing mayhem against the hapless population.

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