KARACHI: According to a Defence Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) appraisal report on Indo-Pak tensions in 1971, one unidentified US ambassador writes to his/her government to apprise them of the situation shortly before the fall of Dhaka.

The telegram marked ‘secret’ and stamped with the ‘Department of State Telegram’, provides an insight into the notes taken by a US ambassador at the time on meetings with then Indian high commission J.K. Atal as well as former president Yahya Khan.

“He [Atal] had begun his mission, he said, by a lengthy conversation with Azres. Yahya, who was reflected as an “ogre” in the Indian press and as characterised by various government officials at high levels, but, he discovered, Yahya was nothing of the sort. Rather, he said, he found him to be, though bound by the complexes of a military mind, extremely amenable to suggestion and most desirous of ameliorating the tensions extant in the subcontinent”.

“As an example of Yahya’s cooperativeness, Atal reported, he concluded his conversation with Yahya with a discussion of his forthcoming Eid message, which in final published form contained certain statements actually dictated by Atal at the time for inclusion therein”.

Another telegram in the same chain includes the US ambassador’s notes on Atal’s meeting with Indira Gandhi. “Atal particularly emphasised India was not seeking Pakistan’s break-up in two parts and said that he was going to make his point clear to Sultan Khan that afternoon”.

“I told him that I was surprised that the name Mujibur Rahman had not entered into the message as much as both his PM and foreign minister repeatedly made his release a precondition to any dialogue towards political settlement. Atal disaffirmed this as reflecting current thinking and said, in confidence, that as far as he was concerned, he thought Mujibur was a “stupid fool”. He added that, in his opinion, Mujibur and Bhutto were primarily responsible for the present debacle”.

Published in Dawn January 26th, 2017