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The American Papers: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh documents
ed. Roedad Khan
Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 1999
Faisal A. Qureshi
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This book caused quite a stir when published in
Pakistan due to the government's reluctance to declassify its own documentation
for this period. The editor deserves credit for going to the US and utilising
the FOIA to put together and index various documents, such as communications
from the State Department, minutes of presidential meetings and Ambassadors'
correspondence. The problem is that the book is too buried in paperwork and
there has only been a slight chronological attempt at putting the documents in
historical context.
Stephen Green, when writing
the revealing book, Taking Sides, gained access to various US government
documents concerning its relations with Israel during the period 1948-1967 and
used them to reinterpret Israel's history with the US. With The American
Papers, all we are provided with are edited documents and, from them, a
view of the US government's perception of the growing ethnic tension between
East and West Pakistan and India's role there. As original documents are not
reproduced here we don't know if there has been any editing by archivist staff;
and the author does not tell us which - if any - government departments refused
to release documentation concerning this period. The author should have made
this clear for future historians.
During the period 1965-71
Pakistan was troubled by various ethnic differences and this was most visible
when, in the 1970 elections, the Awami party in East Pakistan gained the
majority of seats in the National Assembly. Given that East Pakistan had been
economically neglected by successive West Pakistani governments, there were
strong feelings for more autonomy within the region. The head of the military
junta, General Yahaya Khan, responded to the election result by sending in the
Pakistan army (whose soldiers were mainly drawn from the western provinces) to
begin a murderous repressive campaign that resulted in eight million refugees
crossing the border into India. This action drew India into the conflict and
resulted in military defeat for Pakistan, the independence of East Pakistan and
its transformation into Bangladesh. With the Pakistan military in dissaray, it
was left to incoming Prime Minister Zulifikar Bhutto to use his country's
defeat to justify development of Pakistan's nuclear weapon program.
Roedad Khan should be commended
for seeking to get his country's documentation through another country's
administration. This tactic worked in 2000, when some Indian newspapers printed extracts of the confidential Hamood
Rahman report, commissioned by Bhutto during his first week in office, which
looked at the role of the Pakistan army within Bangladesh. The publication of
the extracts later forced the current Pakistan government to release the entire
document. Hopefully Khan's book will result in the Pakistan bureaucracy
releasing more documentation to the public.
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