Eqbal Ahmad’s Internationalist Vision

Abstract

On January 12, 1971, two FBI agents burst through the doors of the Adlai Stevenson Institute in Chicago to arrest Eqbal Ahmad. A preeminent South Asian activist and analyst of international politics, Ahmad had been charged with participating in a conspiracy to kidnap National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and bomb steam tunnels underneath government buildings in Washington, D.C. A vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, Ahmad had found company among the antiwar Catholic Left and grown close to the Berrigan brothers, Philip and Daniel, both priests who had attracted the attention of federal authorities for their peace activism. By 1971, the Berrigans were serving prison sentences for breaking into a draft board office and burning hundreds of draft records. In a letter Philip received while incarcerated, a fellow Catholic activist recounted a recent conversation with Ahmad and others about a potential plan to make a citizen’s arrest of Kissinger. With the letter as evidence, the Justice Department filed charges against a group of antiwar activists that had long been on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s radar.