Archer Kent Blood

Archer K. Blood, the late American diplomat was one of the few voices of support for the liberation effort of 1971 within the American government. While the United States officially supported (West) Pakistan and the military’s brutal oppression of representative democracy in East Pakistan (Bangladesh), Blood dissented and voiced abhorrence of the terrible violence.

In an unprecedented gesture, Blood sent a strongly worded cable to the State Department on 6 April 1971 expressing his moral as well as strategic disapproval of the United States’ alignment with the West Pakistani military regime. The majority of Americans at the consulate signed the telegram, which included the following allegations:

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[istan] dominated government and to lessen any deservedly negative international public relations impact against them…But we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked termgenocide is applicable, is purely an internal matter of a sovereign state.

Private Americans have expressed disgust. We, as professional civil servants, express our dissent with current policy and fervently hope that our true and lasting interests here can be defined and our policies redirected. Predictably, President Richard Nixon promptly removed Blood from his post in Dhaka in overt retaliation for Blood’s justified insubordination. Blood’s decision to challenge his country’s policy had a lasting negative effect on his career and his image was only recently rehabilitated within the American governmental establishment. However, Blood’s actions did not go unnoticed in the newly formed independent state of Bangladesh, where he and his family were lauded as partners in the freedom struggle.

Shahudul Haque was a friend of the Blood family and remembers their presence in Dhaka fondly: “I was about the same age as the two older Blood children. We would play cricket and softball and work on homework together.” Haque befriended the family during Blood’s first posting in Dhaka in the early 1960s and reconnected with him during his stint as Consul General in 1970-71 when Haque was a young Bengali nationalist. Haque’s first hand accounts of the atrocities committed by the West Pakistani military on a daily basis gave Blood a personal stake in the violence. “He knew that it was a concerted effort on mostly defenseless, unarmed people, and it didn’t take long for him to express his hatred of it,” remembers Haque. It is not surprising then that the famous telegram was sent less than two weeks after the commencement of Operation Searchlight on 26 March.

Blood’s sympathies were shared by the majority of his fellow citizens throughout the course of the war. Media reports by the New York Times and other organizations documented the violence throughout 1971 and the American public was horrified. The ‘Concert for Bangladesh,’ held that summer, featured stars includingBob Dylan, Joan Baez, George Harrison and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for relief work.

While the American public’s respect for Bangladesh and Bengalis was apparent, the United States government’s relations with the newly formed nation were awkward at best. To this day, only one trip by a sitting American President has been made to the country. Bill Clinton arrived in March 2000 and stayed for less than a day—his trip to a village was cancelled due to security concerns. This does not seem like the kind of diplomatic relationship befitting a pair of countries with a combined population of nearly half a billion.

In Bangladesh, the horrors of 1971 have not, and likely will not ever be forgotten. However, in the United States, a collective desire to forget our complicity in the atrocities perpetrated against Bengalis seems to have caused us to forget that the country even exists. After 1971, the war faded in the memories of Americans who were concerned with Vietnam, Watergate, and disco. American students are taught almost nothing about Bangladesh’s history, geography, or culture today. Indeed, when I informed friends that I would be coming here to work, some thought that it was part of India and many could not have located Bangladesh on a map, let alone tell you anything about the country or its people. Bangladesh is essentially invisible in the American media if one overlooks the sensationalist coverage of the Rana Plaza incident, which focused narrowly on the poor working conditions in garment factories without questioning the economic pressures on factory owners coming from American-based multinational corporations.

So, what is being done today to rectify this strange relationship? Today, the United States government is making a concerted effort to reach out to young people in Bangladesh and “promote mutual understanding”, according to Viraj LeBailly, director of the American Center and Archer K Blood Library in Baridhara.

Of course, the American Center Library’s namesake is telling. The American government institution was renamed to honor the once ridiculed consul general in 2005, the year after his death. The then American ambassador to Bangladesh, Harry K. Thomas, said of the man, “It saddens me that Mr. Blood was punished as he was simply speaking what he felt was the truth. From Archer Blood’s example, we can take hope. Even at their darkest hour, the Bengalis had influential and brave friends who knew the truth and spoke out.” Today, LeBailly sees her mission as fostering a two-way dialogue with Bangladeshis in a way that would honor Blood. To her, Blood’s example “demonstrates the importance of opposing views and that kind of dialogue.”

It certainly seems like the American Center is a popular place for local young people. On the day of my visit, there were already nearly a dozen high-school students in the library less than thirty minutes after it opened, and EducationUSA receives over seventy students per day.

Only time will tell if this American strategy will work in Bangladesh, and similar or more drastic efforts must be made in the United States to increase cultural awareness there.

The American Center is the base of American outreach in the country. At a time when American embassies around the world have been turned into maximum-security bunkers, and are anything but welcoming for visitors, the move to establish a more friendly presence in Dhaka is a step in the right direction. The main functions of the American Center are providing the space and resources of a lending library, assisting Bangladeshi high school and university students to find resources for American study with the EducationUSA program, and sponsoring cross-cultural programs throughout Dhaka.

However, the resuscitation of Archer K. Blood’s name and reputation bodes well for American policies, and we can only hope that the country continues to try to live up to the best of its people.

Patrick deSutter, The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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