পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্থ খণ্ড).pdf/৩৪৫

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিল : চতুর্থ খণ্ড
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 American ambassador in New Delhi Kenneth Keating deplored the bloodshed, and slated that the “Ilast Pakistan problem was the concern of the world community and not merely Pakistan's internal affairs.”

 In Pakistan, as in much of Asia, the U. S. for the past quarter century has filled the breach left empty when the colonial powers withdrew. U. S. economic aid to Pakistan has passed the billion dollar mark, maintaining the successive military regimes of what John Foster Dulles called a “bastion of freedom". For the current year, the U. S. has committed some S 175 million in aid. most of it going as usual to the West. The U. S. has also been a ajor supplier to the Pakistani military and since 1950 has trained over 4,000 Pakistani officers-a majority of the largely West Pakistani officer corps. As in other American neo- colonies. live U.S. has since 1961 actively trained Pakistani police.

 Aid in laying out Pakistan's heavily imbalanced development programs and five year plans has come primarily from an alliance between America's great “philanthropies” and its great universities-particularly from the programs of the Harvard Development Advisory Service and the Stanford Research Institute, both funded by the Ford Foundation. And while American social scientists experimented with West Pakistan's development. East Bengal has relied on the U. S. for food subsidies-mostly wheat from the PL480 ("Food for Peace") programs. Since the outbreak of the civil was the U. S. has cut off all PI480 shipments, ostensibly because they could not be distributed.

 The PL480 cutback aggravates an already serious food shortage in Bengal. Last fall's highly destructive cyclone wiped out villages, flooded rice fields with salt water, and destroyed an estimated five percent of the year's crop. And because the recent fighting broke out at the beginning of sowing for the summer crop, the rebellious peasants will be hard pressed to feed themselves later in the year.

 If the West Pakistani military continues to hold the major East Bengal ports and cities, whether the U. S. resumes shipments of food grains will become a decision of some political importance. If all that stands between the people and U. S. surplus food being distributed by the West Pakistanis are “small bands of communist terrorists.” it will be easy for the Pakistani military to justify their attack on the people's militia and easy for the U. S. to justify supplying the Pakistanis with arms, helicopters, and perhaps' “advisors”.

 But in the long run, U. S. interests would probably not be hurl by an independent Bangladesh, at least not one in the hands of the pro-Weslern Awami League. Some members of elite decision-making circles in the U. S. have begun to rally a “a Bangladesh Lobby' around just that idea. Among them is Professor Edward Mason of IIarvard, the chief architect of the Ford-Ilarvard development program in Pakistan and a long-time advisor to the State Department and the World Bank. Mason has written and circulated among academic and government circles a post-massacre report recommending that the U. S. discontinue aid to West Pakistan because otherwise “we will drive East Pakistan into the arms of another power-the U. S. S. R. Of China.”

 Pakistan's long-time enemy, India, has been openly sympathetic to the liberation of