The United States government had thought that after India's operation to create Bangladesh got over in 1971, the then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi might order an attack on West Pakistan to capture Pakistan-Occupied- Kashmir (PoK).
According to recently declassified CIA documents, former US President Richard Nixon's National Security Adviser Henry A Kissinger discussed various possibilities due to deteriorating Indo-Pak ties in the wake of India's military offensive in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
However, some top security officials in Washington felt the possibility of India launching a strike on West Pakistan was remote.
As per papers which are part of nearly 12 million documents CIA declassified last week, at one of the meetings of Washington's Special Action Group, the then CIA Director Richard Holmes said, "It is reported that prior to terminating the present hostilities, Gandhi intends to attempt to eliminate Pakistan's armour and air force capabilities."
According to the documents, though Nixon had ‘warned India to cut off economic aid in case of war in East Pakistan’, the US administration was clueless on how to implement it.
"Both the President and the Secretary of State have warned the Indians that we will 'cut off' economic aid in case of war. But do we know what that means? No one has looked at the consequences or examined the means of implementing a cut off," Kissinger had told a meeting of top defence and CIA officials on August 17, 1971.
The then National Security Adviser Kissinger was also unhappy over the CIA not having enough intelligence inputs on what the Chinese, Indians and the Pakistanis were up to.
As per minutes of the meeting, the Kissinger was willing to take help of China and the Soviets to ease tension in the region.
The borders of modern Bangladesh were established with the partition of Bengal and India in August 1947, when the region became East Pakistan as a part of the newly formed state of Pakistan. However, it was separated from West Pakistan by nearly 1,600 km of Indian territory. Due to political exclusion, ethnic and linguistic discrimination, as well as economic neglect by West Pakistan, agitation and civil disobedience led to the war of independence in 1971.
