Free Republic

This is what happens when you chop a nation in half. Before December 3, 1971, Pakistan was a country suffering from a split personality disorder. When British India became independent in 1947, the country was divided into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The problem was that East Pakistan and West Pakistan were almost a thousand miles apart, and wedged in between them was archenemy India. Imagine if the United States only consisted of the East Coast and West Coast, and Russia controlled all of North America in between. Thirteen days later, Pakistan had been amputated. Indian troops had conquered East...

'This woman suckered us', said Nixon of Indira Gandhi: Book New Delhi, March 2 (IANS) "She suckered us. Suckered us.....this woman suckered us." So said an enraged US president Richard Nixon of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi after learning that war had broken out on the subcontinent on Dec 3, 1971, and Indian forces had made a decisive push towards then East Pakistan that it recognised as Bangladesh three days later. Nixon, who had met Gandhi just a month earlier in Washington, had sought assurances from her that India would not take any precipitate military action pending efforts by the...

HUA HIN, Thailand - Indians are "a slippery, treacherous people", said president Richard Nixon. "The Indians are bastards anyway. They are the most aggressive goddamn people around," echoed his assistant for national security affairs, Henry Kissinger. The setting: a White House meeting on July 16, 1971, during the run-up to the India-Pakistan war which ultimately led to the birth of Bangladesh, erstwhile East Pakistan. The US State Department recently declassified some of the Nixon White House tapes and secret documents that bring to light the way in which the Nixon administration went about the Bangladesh saga, reflecting the potential of...