Many people in Bangladesh believe the United States was behind the assassination of their founding president in 1975. Whether or not Washington played any role in the military coup that toppled Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is still a subject of intense debate.
However, one thing is clear as daylight: Washington squarely backed the South Asian nation’s first military ruler, General Ziaur Rahman. Now, nearly five decades later, the daughter of the assassinated president, Sheikh Hasina, the current prime minister, is laying charges that the United States is out to topple her and put in power her rival, Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister and widow of the U.S.-backed military strongman. Americans “don’t want me to continue” in office, she recently told the BBC. Even worse, she told parliament in April, America intends to bring “such a government here which will not have any democratic existence,” an allusion to the military.
Hasina’s suspicion that the United States is inherently opposed to her, a fear she has aired privately to U.S. diplomats on several occasions, can’t be easily dismissed. Last year, Washington sanctioned multiple Hasina administration officials and members of security forces for alleged human rights violations. No such action was taken when the pro-U.S. military regime hanged hundreds of rebel soldiers after kangaroo court trials.
The trials had so outraged the State Department that Jane Coon, then deputy assistant secretary, blocked the military ruler’s visit to the White House, ignoring Ambassador Ed Masters’ pleas from Dhaka. And, this happened under President Jimmy Carter, the man who essentially codified protection of human rights as one of America’s cardinal foreign policy goals. Just recently, the United States threatened further punitive measures, saying anyone caught attempting to taint upcoming national elections would be denied entry to the country.
This threat created an unprecedented political maelstrom in Bangladesh and pulled out many forces from dormancy, including radical Islamic outfits which nearly turned the Muslimmajority nation of 165 million Bengalis into a new Afghanistan merely a decade ago. Hasina almost stamped them out after she had gotten the green light from Washington and Delhi, albeit using unlawful tactics.
The human rights violations that the US is accusing Hasina of committing have their roots in her crackdown on the militant religious forces. Of course, she cast a wider net and swept away her political opponents as well. Still, it’s an irony that now the US is punishing those who only did its bidding. No question that Hasina’s record on human rights is not squeaky clean.
There have been documented enforced disappearances and repression of political opponents under her watch. Nevertheless, the Bengalis see double standards in U.S. behaviour. While it’s punishing a weak country like Bangladesh for minor offenses, it’s rolling out the red carpet for powerful persons such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was on the U.S. no-visa list for years until elected prime minister. America is using a stick against Hasina in the name of promoting democracy, a theory that’s a hard sell in Dhaka, given the U.S. support for military dictators in Pakistan, of which Bangladesh was a part until 1971. The Bengalis say Washington’s democracy talk is a camouflage; it has a hidden self-serving motive.
Indeed, the real aim of the US is to nudge Hasina to its side in the fight against China. Bangladesh, once neglected as a poor country, now commands respect in the international arena for its impressive economic success. It’s no longer the basket case the US labeled it at birth more than 50 years ago. Moreover, its location near the Bay of Bengal has made it strategically important because of China’s rise as a global power and the US attempt to frustrate Beijing’s desire for more influence.
Two leftist parliament members recently claimed that America wants to create a naval base on a Bangladeshi island in the Bay of Bengal. Such a base will enable the US Navy to easily block China’s sea trade route to Europe and the Middle East and thus choke its economy. The US embassy in Dhaka categorically denied Washington has any such idea. Still, politicians and media are abuzz with the talk of US regime change plans for Bangladesh. India and the United States see eye-to-eye on the China containment policy. Their shared vision has found its way into multiple anti-Chinese regional security groups that include Japan and Australia.
Like the US, India wants Bangladesh to be in the antiChina camp because of longstanding Sino-Indian hostility. But how far Delhi will go with the US if Washington really wants to set up a base in the Bay of Bengal remains uncertain. For sure, Delhi wants US help to halt Chinese advances into South Asia, yet it is unlikely to feel easy with a US military base in its backyard. India considers South Asia its exclusive domain. As far as Hasina is concerned, she may in the end buckle down under Indo-U.S. pressure and keep a safe distance from Beijing to placate Big Brothers.
However, the Bengalis as a bunch are staunchly opposed to joining any military alliance. The disaster that befell their former homeland of Pakistan from its membership in the U.S.-led Cento and Seato defense pacts haunts their minds. On top of this, they see no benefits in cutting off the hand that feeds them. Neither India nor the US can give Bangladesh enough money to keep its growth momentum going, so China appears as savior. If there is one thing the highly fractious Bengali nation agrees on, it is the economy.
So no matter who rules the country, Bangladesh’s strong bond with China is likely to sustain. India’s interests in Bangladesh diverge from those of the US. America’s professed top priority is democracy, while India’s paramount goal is security on its eastern flank, which Hasina has helped maintain in decades. America may want to see all flowers bloom in Bangladesh’s political landscape, but India has no mercy for Islamic radicals. By getting into bed with Islamists, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the organization that the military ruler created and the US seems to be supporting, has put itself on the wrong side of India’s equation. New Delhi distrusts Khaleda Zia.
When she was prime minister, she irked India by dismissing Delhi’s complaints that Bangladesh was being used for antiIndia activity. Both India and the United States have common interests in keeping Bangladesh stable. What America wants the least is a restive nation rocking the entire region. And, India will seek to prevent at any cost a situation that may force millions of refugees into its eastern states. So India will go along with the US as long as Washington lets Delhi mind its own interests first;
Delhi will push Hasina on the China front, but help her retain power. The United States, on the other hand, will be less than thrilled to see Hasina win a fourth-consecutive term in this year’s elections. The reason is clear: World leaders with strong domestic support tend to rebuff US diktats. Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan and Hungary’s Victor Orban are two bright examples. So dumping its disastrous violent regime-change formula, Washington is seeking to orchestrate regime change through the ballot box.
This puts the US at odds with India, as far as Bangladesh is concerned. If India’s plans succeed, the US will find itself again in a not-so-friendly situation in Bangladesh, one that existed soon after its birth. Hasina has vowed not to bow down to foreign pressure, an indirect jab at Washington. Quiet diplomacy rather than socalled democracy-building public rhetoric and the threat of punishment will work better on her, for the prime minister may not be incorrigibly antiAmerican despite her occasional angry outbursts.
In fact, she secretly tried after returning to power in 2009, to be in America’s good graces by inviting President Barack Obama to deliver his speech to the Muslim world from Dhaka. On a personal level, Asia’s iron lady has family ties to the United States. She adores her daughter-inlaw, an American woman, whom she publicly defended in parliament when an opposition member questioned her religion. In Bengali culture, personal ties overpower formal rituals.
(The writer is author of Bangladesh Liberation War, How India, U.S., China and the USSR Shaped the Outcome, The Bangladesh Military Coup and the CIA Link and One Eleven Minus Two, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s War on Yunus and America.)