November 4, 1971
Page 39210
PAKISTAN
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, our country is greatly honored by the visit, beginning today, of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India. Mrs. Gandhi comes to the United States at a time when relations between our two countries have reached a low point. We all pray that her visit will lead to improved relations in the future.
At the heart of our frayed relations with India is the human tragedy taking place in East Pakistan – and the policy of continued support for Pakistan that our Government has insisted upon. This continued support for Pakistan comes at a time when the two great nations of the subcontinent have come dangerously close to armed conflict.
The plight of the East Pakistan refugees has also become an enormous burden, economically and politically, for India. To alleviate this burden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had recommended $250 million for assistance to the refugees as part of the foreign aid bill. That $250 million was not an adequate contribution to relief for the refugees or for needed emergency assistance to the Indian economy. But it represented a welcome beginning. With the vote last Friday, however, our effort to aid the refugees was set back.
I have said that the Senate defeat of the foreign aid bill has given us an opportunity for fundamental reform of our entire foreign assistance program. But there are a number of items in that defeated bill that should be revived immediately, if only on an interim basis, until Congress and the President can agree on a permanent foreign aid structure. Some of these essential items have to do with India and Pakistan – and the millions of East Pakistan refugees.
Mr. President, for 200 years, the Senate Chamber has witnessed pleas for the use of America's treasure and power to stop war and destruction and senseless slaughter, and to ease pain and hunger and sickness. But few causes have had as great a claim to our attention as the current situation in East Bengal.
By now, all of us know the historic source of the conflict between east and west in Pakistan. All of us know how cultural and linguistic differences, coupled with the west's political domination of the east, produced the animosity which exploded into civil war last March. And all of us know at least something about the election which was the immediate cause for conflict: how the east's Awami League won a clear majority of seats in the National Assembly; how the government of Yahya Khan refused to accept that outcome; how the east stood firm; and how, on March 26, the Pakistani Army began the brutal purge which still goes on today in East Bengal.
What is happening there in countless streets and towns – in Tripura and Assam, in Kushtia and Dacca – is a suspension of the moral laws which have set a standard for the conduct of human beings since the beginning of civilization.
I could describe the atrocities in detail – how American tanks, planes and guns have been used to help level unprotected cities and to kill an estimated 200,000 unarmed civilians, and how 9½ million people fled their burning homes to find a better chance for life across the Indian border. I could retell the stories of murder and rape and torture and looting. But we have all read the accounts ourselves, and we have all been moved in our own way. I think all of us recognize how many millions of personal tragedies have taken place in East Bengal. The question now is what can we do to prevent a million more.
Three steps are vital: First, we must provide without delay the $250 million of refugee relief contained in the foreign assistance bill. We should also consider additional steps to increase our relief effort as soon as possible. Second, we should terminate our own development assistance to Pakistan and support multilateral efforts to stop all such assistance until the situation in East Pakistan is normalized. At the same time, we should encourage multilateral efforts to bring humanitarian relief to the people of East Pakistan who are suffering because of the economic dislocations caused by the actions of the West Pakistan Army. But we should not condone any continued economic assistance which is being used by the West Pakistan Government to support its stranglehold over the East. Third, we should revoke all remaining licenses for the export of military equipment to Pakistan and insure that no new licenses are granted until a satisfactory political settlement has been reached.
I call upon President Nixon to give assurances to Prime Minister Gandhi during her visit to the United States that all these steps will be fully supported by the administration.
There are 9 million refugees – 13 percent of Pakistan's population – in 1,000 camps in India. As many as 30,000 more cross the border every day. Sixty-eight thousand refugees have died of cholera. Thirty-five thousand more lie stricken. Two million children face blindness, retardation, and death from malnutrition and vitamin A deficiencies. And the list of human horror goes on and on.
The Indian Government has responded heroically – with an efficiency and concern that is truly remarkable, given the impossible burden of caring for nine million hungry, sick, and homeless people. India pays two-thirds of the $1 million a day it costs to provide each refugee with 15 ¢ worth of food and medical care. But how long can that nation maintain its effort with about 200,000 people pouring into the camps each week? How long can its economy continue to divert the funds which should have been used to create growth and jobs for its own people? How many Indians will die next year to save the lives of their Bengali neighbors this year?
That is why we must move as quickly as possible to restore the $250 million of relief assistance contained in the foreign aid bill. And we must consider additional steps to aid India – to bring relief to the refugees and to the burdened Indian economy; to bring strength to the Indian democracy; and to help bring a greater chance for peace to Asia. If for any reason it is not possible to make such assistance part of an interim foreign aid bill, or if there is difficulty in deciding on an interim measure, I would support a separate authorization for this emergency relief assistance. I hope President Nixon would also support a separate measure if necessary – and will say so to Mrs. Gandhi during the next 2 days.
We should also terminate our own economic assistance to Pakistan and support multilateral efforts to stop all such assistance until the situation in East Pakistan is returned to normal. At the same time, we should encourage multilateral efforts to bring humanitarian relief to the people of East Pakistan who are suffering because of the economic dislocations caused by the actions of the West Pakistan Army. The economic prospects in East Bengal are bleak under the best of circumstances. Seventy-eight million people are living in an area no bigger than Florida – 1,600 to the square mile. And while the East is by far the largest producer in Pakistan, and has a majority of the population, the latest Federal budget allocates $6 out of every $10 to the West.
The difference in per capita income between East and West has risen from 32 percent in 1959 to 61 percent in 1969 and 1970. And only one-third of all external assistance goes to the Bengali people. In short, each year Pakistan undergoes a transfer of $2.6 billion in resources from East to West.
Today, as the civil war goes on, imports to the East have been cut off. Millions of acres of fertile land have been abandoned. Much of the vital jute crop lies rotting in fields. And more than 300,000 tons of imported grain sit confiscated in the clogged ports of Chittagong and Chalna, waiting for the transport facilities which instead carry soldiers to the battlegrounds of East Bengal.
Our economic aid to Pakistan has prolonged the oppression of the people of East Pakistan. It has sustained the West while millions in the East struggle for survival. And the longer this conflict continues, the larger the exodus to India will be.
There are those who say that we should not withhold our aid to impose a political solution on a civil conflict. It is true that American assistance should never be used as a lever for political control. But neither should it be used as an instrument of death. Our aid is given to build life – and when it is employed to fuel the forces of destruction and genocide, then it is our duty to withhold it. At the same time, it is our duty to resume our support whenever we can be certain that it will be used for humanitarian purposes – when, for example, it is provided through multilateral organizations.
And there are those who say that we must continue aid to maintain influence with the Pakistani Government. There is only one way to do that – by joining with a world of nations, by creating a solid alliance of countries, to tell the government of Yahya Kahn to stop the killing now. And that is why we must withhold economic development aid from Pakistan.
Finally, we must cut off all military assistance to Pakistan by revoking all remaining licenses for the export of military equipment and insuring that no new licenses are granted until a satisfactory political settlement has been reached. It is our weapons and our planes and tanks that have enforced repression in the East. The administration admits that. We cannot take those weapons back, or retrieve the lives which they took. But we must not let another weapon reach the hands of a Pakistani soldier.
On April 12, a State Department spokesman assured us that we would not. He issued the following statement: "There is no – repeat – no military equipment in the pipeline and none has been delivered." But that was not true. On June 22, the State Department verified reports that two ships had left New York with more military hardware for Pakistan.
And in September, Senator CHURCH revealed that $35 million in U.S. military supplies are still scheduled for the government of Yahya Khan.
We could talk about the politics of truth in government. But an admission of untruth would give no consolation to the Bengali citizens who may become the next victims of our weapons. The administration has explained that the deliveries were already "licensed" and so they did not constitute "new" military aid – as if old weapons make death less final than the new. And then the administration explained that bullets were not considered "lethal items," a distinction which
so slanders the victims of our power as to provide its own rebuttal.
We are talking here about human life, about people who live in fear and who daily see their loved ones killed. It simply does not matter that the vehicle of death is already licensed or classified nonlethal. What matters is the chance of millions of people for a decent lifeor for any life at all.
That is why we must help India care for the refugees and cut off economic and military aid to West Pakistan. And that is why we must act at once.
And we must also act because of what that says about ourselves as a nation. For too long, the goals of our foreign policy have submerged concern for human life under tactical, economic, and diplomatic considerations. And whether we like the realization or not, both the policymakers in Washington and the American people have reinforced this formalistic approach to international affairs, as if the nations of the world were colored spaces on a board game, as if their people were only wooden blocks to be moved and sacrificed with each additional roll of the dice.
But we have also thought of ourselves as a decent people. And we have talked about a commitment to compassion and humanity in our relations with the rest of the world. We know, when we speak rationally in Chambers like this, that it is right to make that commitment a reality.
So I believe that our leaders have a responsibility, not only to the people of Pakistan, but to the American people as well – a responsibility to put concern of human life back into our equation for foreign policy. We must never again make a foreign policy decision that does not emphasize the preservation of human life. Our country was built on a belief in the worth of every woman and man. And those who built it would have wanted us to make our decisions with that in mind.
And I think it is important that we do so for another reason – to bring a badly needed respectability back to our Government and to its actions in international affairs. To often in the past two decades, Government officials have treated foreign policy the way President Nixon treats the Pakistani crisis today – in secrecy, with deception and half-truths, with clarifications and restatements and ambiguity and sometimes even silence. Too often, our Government has been thought of by millions of our citizens as the jailer of the truth. Each time a high official plays politics with truth, each time some distorted sense of purpose leads the Government to deceive, we reinforce the view that every foreign policy is stained by such deception, even those policies which truly are open and worthwhile. And we all know, that especially in foreign affairs, this Nation can make no progress without the faith and trust of its people.
So what we do in Pakistan is important for a number of reasons. It is important because it can give a new respectability to our actions in matters of foreign affairs. It is important because it can renew our concern for human beings and human life abroad. And it is vitally important – immediately important – because there are people half a world away who suffer as we speak. They are the reason we must act today.
Mr. President, at times like these, when the world receives another wound, when all of us are stunned and saddened by the things human beings are capable of doing to each other – at times like these, I wish that we could find a magic way to win a permanent peace. But we have no such magic, only our strengths and frailties, only the eyes to see what is wrong, and the hands to make some wrong things right. And now we must do the right thing for the people of East Bengal and for ourselves.