Already, (he realities of geopolitics have confronted the U.S. with the thankless task of choosing between strategic and humanitarian considerations. Straining to preserve its influence with Yahya's government, yet anxious to help the suffering Bengalis, America has succeeded only in embroiling itself in a bitter controversy. Last week that controversy was intensified when Sen. Edward Kennedy disclosed the contents of confidential messages from U.S. diplomats in Pakistan. “Spcetre Of Famine Hangs Over East Pakistan", read one cable, “Prospects For Averting Widespread Hunger. Suffering And Perhaps Starvation Not Repeat Not Good". Kennedy's clear implication was that Nixon Administration was seeking to cover up the magnitude of the Bengali tragedy. And, Not content with that, he went on to intimate that the U.S. had plans to send police teams to East Pakistan to help Yahya's Punjabi soldiers suppress Bengali resistance.
Two Divergent Cultures
Such a cold-blooded move, should it overcome to pass, would ensnare the U.S. in one of the most intractable racial and cultural conflicts of modern times. Physically and politically, Pakistan is unique among the world's nations. Its populated eastern region is separated from the western region by more than 1000 miles of Indian territory. It is a nation of two radically divergent cultures, of two totally different peoples who have despised each other through history. The lighter skinned, aggressive Punjab is of West Pakistan scorn the Bengalis, whose rich rice land and lucrative jute crops have paid Pakistan's bills ever since the founding of the country in 1947. Bengalis regard the Punjabis as barbarians-and. to make matters worse, oppressive barbarians who have monopolized ' Pakistan's government and army. Snapped one Bengali leader, “We have never been anything but a colony of the west".
Chafing after decades of subjugation, the Bengalis responded with frenzied enthusiasm when their fiery, leonine hero. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led them to the polis last December in Pakistan's free elections after twelve years of military rule. Spurred on by the flamboyant oratory of Mujib (as his worshipful call him), the Bengalis voted in such numbers that Mujib and his Awami League won an absolute majority of seats in the countries new National Assembly. Suddenly it seemed that Bengal's time had come. But as it turned out, Mujib's platform of economic and diplomatic autonomy for the east was too great a threat, to be endured by Punjabi leaders. Unwilling to play second fiddle to Mujib, West Pakistan's most popular politician, the left-leaning Zulfiqar Alt Bhutto, refused to participate in the new Parliament. And in the end President Yahya abruptly postponed the opening of the assembly indefinitely.
Plans for Slaughter
Within hours of Yahya's decree, Mujib proclaimed a general strike in East Pakistan. To this day, Pakistani officials maintain that Yahya personally appealed to Mujib for a compromise that would heal the nation's wounds. But most observers believe that Yahya had other plans all the while. Weeks before the Yahya-Mujib meeting actually took place, the President and his right-hand man, Lt.-Gen. Tikka Khan, were already mapping out plans for Mujib's arrest, the dissolution of the Awami League and the slaughter of nationalists,
