How, in 1971, BSF Foiled Kissinger Plot on Bangladesh

The ongoing US-Israeli military offensive unleashed on Iran to bring about “regime change” in the oil-rich West Asian nation is one of many variants used by successive American Presidents to dislodge world leaders whose policies they don’t agree with. This has been adopted by successive White House incumbents since the days of Richard Nixon. Despite global outrage over such violation of international norms, the US has largely ignored them. Hijacking republics, brazenly kidnapping and killing heads of state have become a tool of US foreign policy to effect regime change in countries that refuse to follow US dictates. In the past three decades, this strategy was used against nations which refused to toe US guidelines: from controversial Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.

However, very few know that this policy, christened as the Kissinger Doctrine, was first initiated in 1971 during the Bangladesh Liberation War by then US national security adviser Henry Kissinger with the full backing of President Nixon, to prevent the breakup of Pakistan. The target was Tajuddin Ahmed, prime minister of the Bangladesh government-in-exile based in (then) Calcutta, at a villa at 8 Theatre Road. The operation, however, had to be aborted at the last minute because of an alert Bengali businessman who tipped off the local head of the Border Security Force.

Kissinger and the then US ambassador in Pakistan, Joseph Farland, were convinced that if this operation went through, it would instantly lead to the collapse of the Bengali resistance movement, popularly known as the “muktijudhdho”, and end the Awami League’s plans to “liberate” East Pakistan and convert it into a secular Bengali nation. It would also keep the two wings of Pakistan together.

Tajuddin’s abduction was to be done in a daring and lightning fashion, much like was done in January 2026 with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US military. Like Mr Maduro (and his wife) was kidnapped from his Caracas home and bundled out of the country in a helicopter to a waiting US aircraft-carrier and flown to New York to face criminal charges, Tajuddin’s abduction plan was drawn almost on similar lines. He was to be kidnapped from Calcutta’s Maidan area and then put in a hovering helicopter that had just flown in from a US aircraft-carrier in the Bay of Bengal. The plan was to fly him out to one of America’s Pacific military bases, where he would be held hostage until a “full and final agreement was jointly worked out” by President Yahya Khan’s special emissary and pro-Pakistan quislings in the Awami League led by interim foreign minister Khondokar Mushtaque. Both hoped this would avert Pakistan’s disintegration and end the “so-called” liberation war. Mushtaque was to “publicly announce a foolproof agreement to “protect and preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a united Pakistan”.

According to Golok Majumdar, IGP of BSF’s West Bengal Frontier, both Nixon and Kissinger were desperate to push through the abduction plan, despite the high risks involved. Their desperation was fuelled by India and the Soviet Union signing a security pact in August 1971, which made Pakistan extremely vulnerable to external aggression. Since Pakistan was considered an American bulwark against Soviet expansionism in South Asia, both Nixon and Kissinger did not want Pakistan to get truncated and weakened. They feared the Indo-Soviet treaty would upset the balance of power in South Asia. They had high hopes from Khondokar Mushtaque leading a Bangladeshi delegation to New York in September 1971 to attend a special UN session, where he would have to publicly debunk the liberation war and announce the secret confederation deal he had struck with Pakistan’s President.

But Tajuddin came to know about this and stripped Mushtaque of his foreign affairs portfolio, which badly upset all American calculations. But Kissinger was in no mood to relent. He had his “Plan B” ready, which sought Tajuddin’s physical abduction. The outline of this abortive operation was first narrated in 2021 in my book Bangladesh War: Report from Ground Zero. This little known but extremely crucial episode in Bangladesh’s liberation war history was first disclosed to me by Golak Mazumdar, the BSF IGP, on the insistence of Nihar Chakravarty, a businessmen and resident of Little Russel Street, as the latter convinced him that this key happening should be documented, else it would be lost in the morass of Bangladesh’s war history. Golak himself planned to pen this episode in his memoirs, but his failing health came in the way.

Golak had effusively praised Nihar’s contribution to aborting Kissinger’s plan to abduct Tajuddin: “If he had not tipped me off, Bangladesh’s liberation war history would have taken a different course.”

Nihar Chakravarty used to routinely visit the Maidan for his early morning walks. One day in mid-September 1971, much to his surprise, he noticed a few foreigners sporting tracksuits and military crewcuts pacing outside the entrance and exit of 8 Theatre Road. He encountered them again the next morning. The fact that the windows of the top floor rooms of a luxury hotel next door were fitted with zoom cameras and electronic surveillance devices, all aimed at Tajuddin’s bungalow, made him doubly suspicious. Alarmed, he called his longtime friend, Golak Mazumdar. Taken aback, Golak first discounted the possibility of any foul play as Fort William, the headquarters of the Eastern Command, was inside the Maidan complex. “I don’t think the Americans will be so foolhardy as to undertake an operation right under the nose of our command headquarters. Nevertheless, I shall visit the spot.” Alarmingly, the next day too, the same lot was found pacing back and forth at the site.

Hushed inquiries with the immigration authorities revealed that a posse of US Marines had been flown into Calcutta for an “unspecified” purpose. Golak immediately got his commandos to raid the hotel, but by the time they arrived, those engaged in the covert operation had fled, leaving behind their cameras and spying devices, besides clothing and huge amounts of cash.

A close examination of that equipment revealed that Tajuddin’s daily movements had been tracked for over a month. This deeply troubled Golak, who had good sources in US intelligence as he had served in Interpol for over a month. Long after the birth of Bangladesh, he got feedback that Kissinger, seeing that Pakistan was about to disintegrate, ordered Tajuddin’s abduction so that the liberation war’s trajectory could be altered. But an alert morning walker’s timely warning derailed what could have been the first application of the Kissinger Doctrine.

Manash Ghosh is a veteran journalist who had covered the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war, and is the author of several books including, most recently, Mujib’s Blunders: The Power and the Plot Behind His Killing