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The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide cover

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide

Gary J. Bass

1

award won

12

score

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide

In 1971, the Pakistani army launched a devastating crackdown on what was then East Pakistan (today's independent Bangladesh), killing thousands of people and sending ten million refugees fleeing into India. The events also sparked the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. Drawing on recently declassified documents, unheard White House tapes, and meticulous investigative reporting, Gary Bass gives us an unprecedented chronicle of the break-up of Pakistan, and India's role in it. This is the pathbreaking account of India's real motives, the build-up to the war, and the secret decisions taken by Indira Gandhi and her closest advisers. This book is also the story of how two of the world's great democracies—India and the United States—dealt with one of the most terrible humanitarian crises of the twentieth century. Gary Bass writes a revealing account of how the Bangladeshis became collateral damage in the great game being played by America and China, with Pakistan as the unlikely power broker. The United States' embrace of the military dictatorship in Islamabad would affect geopolitics for decades, beginning a pattern of American anti-democratic engagement in Pakistan that went back far beyond General Musharraf.

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Publisher
Random House India
Year
2013
ISBN-13
9788184004830
Genre
History
Topics
1971 Bangladesh genocideUS foreign policy and Nixon-Kissinger diplomacyIndo-Pakistani War

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