Archer Blood

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First page of the Blood Telegram

Archer Kent Blood (born March 20, 1923 in Chicago , Illinois ; died September 3, 2004 in Fort Collins , Colorado ) was an American diplomat . He became known after April 6, 1971 in his capacity as Consul General in Dhaka , then the capital of East Pakistan, a telegram to the State Department had sent in which he, the ruthless actions of the Pakistani military against the Bangladeshi independence movement as genocide designated and sharply criticized the Nixon government's South Asia policy .

Life

Blood studied at the University of Virginia (BA 1943) and later International Relations at George Washington University (MA 1963). During the Second World War he served in the US Navy in the North Pacific from 1943 . In 1947 he entered the diplomatic service and was appointed to the American missions in Greece, Algeria, West Germany, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India in the course of his service. He retired in 1982 and settled in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1993, where he died in 2004. In 2002 he published his memoirs in the Dhaka University Publishing House.

The Blood Telegram

In 1971, Blood was the United States Consul General in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan. The tensions that had persisted for years between the (West) Pakistani government and the secessionist Awami League escalated in the first months of 1971 and finally led to the Bangladesh War . On March 25th of that year, Pakistani President Yahya Khan, as commander in chief of the armed forces, ordered Operation Searchlight . The military cracked down on actual or suspected separatists with extraordinary harshness, thousands were killed in a few days, with Hindus in particular becoming victims of military violence. Foreign journalists had been expelled from the country prior to the start of the operation, so few reports of the massacres found their way into the international press. Blood and the staff, however, became eyewitnesses and reported them in telegrams to the US State Department. As early as the subject of the first of these telegrams of March 28, Blood described Pakistan's actions as “selective genocide.” In other telegrams he informed Washington about the extent of the acts of violence, including the massacre of hundreds of students at Dhaka University, heaps of corpses and mass graves. After unresponsive to these reports, on April 6, Blood finally sent a telegram with the subject Dissent from US Policy Toward East Pakistan, which all consulate staff signed. In it, Blood sharply criticized the American government's passivity during the crisis:

" Aware of the task force proposals serves on" openness "in the Foreign Service, and with the conviction that US policy related to recent developments in East Pakistan neither our moral interests broadly defined nor our national interests narrowly defined, numerous officers of AmConGen Dacca, USAID Dacca and USIS Dacca consider it their duty to register strong dissent with fundamental aspects of this policy. Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pak dominated government and to lessen likely and deservedly negative international public relations impact against them. Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy, ironically at a time when the USSR sent President Yahya a message defending democracy, comdemning arrest of leader of democratically elected majority party (incidentally pro-West) and calling for end to repressive measures and bloodshed . In our most recent policy paper for Pakistan, our interests in Pakistan were defined as primarily humanitarian, rather than strategic. But we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely internal matter of a sovereign state. "

“Bearing in mind the Task Force's proposals on“ openness ”in the external service, and believing that in the face of recent developments in East Pakistan, America's strategy is not conducive to either our moral interests in the broadest sense or our national interests in the strictest sense Many officials of AmConGen Dhaka, USAID Dhaka and USIS Dhaka for their duty to clearly state that they disagree with fundamental aspects of this line. Our government has failed to condemn the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to take effective measures to protect its citizens, while doing its best to appease the West Pakistani-dominated government and alleviate international pressures that would likely and deservedly have damaged its reputation. Our government, as many will think, has declared its moral bankruptcy, ironically at a time when the USSR has sent President Yahya a message defending democracy, the arrest of a leader of a democratically elected (and, incidentally, pro-Western) Majority party condemns and calls for an end to reprisals and bloodshed. In our most recent Pakistan strategy paper, our interests in Pakistan were still humanitarian, not strategic. But now we have decided not to intervene, even morally, for the reason that the Awami conflict, to which the all too often used term genocide is unfortunately applicable, is a purely internal matter of a sovereign state. "

The telegram was initially classified as LOU ( Limited Official Use ), a fairly low level of confidentiality, so that it was quickly disseminated within the State Department and so many Ministry employees saw it. In view of the explosiveness of the telegram, however, the Ministry reclassified it the next day as NODIS ( No Distribution Outside the Department of State ), the highest level of confidentiality, in order to prevent its further dissemination. After the American employees of the consulate in Dhaka were evacuated by plane and returned to the USA, Blood was not used abroad again during Kissinger's tenure, which was often interpreted as a punishment for his rebellion.

The circumstances of the Blood Telegram, the behavior of the United States in the South Asian crisis, and particularly the role of Henry Kissinger, have since been the subject of historical and legal controversy. In his book The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001), the journalist Christopher Hitchens demanded that Kissinger should face a war crimes tribunal and, in doing so, mentioned Kissinger's behavior in the Bangladesh crisis, especially in view of the Blood Telegram, as evidence of his complicity with the Pakistani regime on. A dossier from the California Law Review also cites the Blood Telegram as evidence in the event that Kissinger should be prosecuted for his behavior, since it at least proves his complicity, and not necessarily his complicity. The telegram was distributed via the so-called Dissent Channel , a communication channel that the State Department had recently set up in the context of the Vietnam War to give diplomats an opportunity to criticize problematic instructions from Washington, coram publico, or at least internally, and is still today the most famous memo that was published this way. The memorandum Alternatives to Closing Doors in Order to Secure Our Borders (January 2017), which vehemently criticized the Executive Order 13769 of the new President Donald Trump, was also distributed via the Dissent Channel and was distributed by more , recently suggested comparisons with the Blood Telegram when 1000 American diplomats signed.

literature

Publications

  • The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh: Memoirs of an American Diplomat. Dhaka University Press, 2002. ISBN 984-05-1650-7

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Passport: Newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations ( Memento of the original of July 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , December 2004. p. 21.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.shafr.org
  2. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Verso, London and New York 2001. p. 44 ff.
  3. ↑ Steven Feldsten: Applying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: A Case Study of Henry Kissinger. In: California Law Review 92: 6, pp. 1663-1727; especially p. 1708 ff.
  4. ^ The Dissent Channel - abstract from the channel on the American Foreign Service Association website
  5. ↑ Krishnadev Kalamur: 'We Are Better Than This Ban': Dissent Over Trump's Immigration Order . In: The Atlantic (online edition), January 29, 2017.
  6. ↑ Jeffrey Gettleman: State Dept. Dissent Cable on Trump's Ban Draws 1,000 Signatures . In: The New York Times (online edition), January 31, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Blood, Archer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blood, Archer Kent
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago
DATE OF DEATH September 3, 2004
Place of death Fort Collins , Colorado