Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2004, page 53

In Memoriam

Archer Kent Blood (1923-2004)

By Andrew I. Killgore

Archer Kent Blood, a former U.S. foreign service officer, died at Fort Collins, Colorado on Sept. 3 at age 81. In a 35-year diplomatic career he served in Greece, Algeria, Germany, East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh), Afghanistan and India.

The writer, who served a few months with Archer Blood in Dhaka, considered him to be an ideal diplomat—very bright, courageous and hard working, with a pleasing, charismatic personality. He was clearly headed for the top, which in Department of State terms means an ambassadorship—until he was assigned to East Pakistan as consul general.

East Pakistan and West Pakistan were separated by 1,200 miles of India. Bengali was spoken in the east, Urdu in the west. There were also racial differences, plus a widespread belief in East Pakistan that West Pakistan was “robbing” East Pakistan of its jute crop, the country’s biggest foreign exchange earner.

In this unhappy situation, national elections were held in late 1970, and were won by Shaika Mujib in Ur-Rahman, from East Pakistan. However, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a Sindhi from West Pakistan, refused to accept the result. This led to civil war, with the overwhelmingly superior West Pakistan army mounting an all-out, brutal war against the Bengalis in East Pakistan. In Washington, the State Department remained silent despite 10,000 people being massacred in the first three days.

As many as 3 million were killed by the army, with perhaps as many as 10 million fleeing to India for safety. Still the Department of State did not speak out. The staff at the Consulate General was incensed at the silence. In a tense, distressed atmosphere, Blood drafted a telegram to the State Department: “…Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy, ironically at a time when the U.S.S.R. sent [Pakistan’s] President Yahya Khan a message defending democracy…” Off it went to Washington.

And there went Blood’s chances of becoming an ambassador, for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger took the rebuke from Blood personally. The consul general was recalled to Washington, where he was assigned to the State Department’s personnel office. Blood later served as acting ambassador to Afghanistan and twice as acting ambassador to India, but never got his own embassy. According to The Washington Post Blood said, “I paid for my dissent. But I had no choice. The line between right and wrong was just too clear-cut.”

Born in Chicago, Archer Blood graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia. Later he received a master’s degree in international relations from George Washington University. After his retirement, which he termed a “self-imposed exile,” Blood served as diplomatic adviser to the U.S. War College in Carlisle, PA. In 2002, he published The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh: Memoirs of an American Diplomat.

Although Archer Blood received the Christian A. Herter Award in 1972 for “extraordinary accomplishment involving initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and creative dissent,” his career never recovered from sending the cable under such distressful conditions from Dhaka. The people who knew and admired him, including this writer, remember him as a really great diplomat and gentleman.