Saturday, 16 November 2024

Bangladesh Political Crisis: Challenges for India

Great powers are highly intolerant to nations with independent foreign policy. They refuse to approve strategic autonomy. Though the era of the Cold War ended, the Cold War mentality hasn’t left them. Trained to lob countries into blocks, their doctrine rests on the foundation of “either you are with us or against us”. Even the paradigms of ‘Strategic Partnership’ or for that matter, ‘comprehensive global strategic partnership’ are subject to convenient interpretation and application. As things rapidly escalated in Bangladesh leaving a political void, this message became deeply imperative.

With the West’s silent approval of the street verdict that toppled a democratic government and the subsequent welcoming of an interim government dominated by the military, the power games in South Asia have come full circle. The indifferent shrug of Western democracies to the dethronement of a legitimately elected government in the eighth-largest populated country is hard to ignore.

South Asia, beset with turmoil since the military coup in Myanmar in February 2021 became grave with the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August 2021. Soon enough, grappling with severe economic recession, June 2022 student protests in Sri Lanka dethroned the newly elected President.  The country next to be jolted with a sudden overthrow of political dispensation was Pakistan in May 2023. The latest to join the ranks is Bangladesh. All these countries constitute the immediate neighbourhood of India, the oasis of peaceful power transfer.

Rise of Fundamentalism

Each of these changes has altered the power dynamics of the region. But the ouster of the Awami League and the vandalisation of Mujibur's statue echoed a symbolic shift of the State from the ‘Bangla identity’ to diabolical shades of extremism. Ironically, the sheen of the student revolution that caused a political meltdown unravelled rather too quickly with radical Islamist forces baring out their agenda openly. Moments after PM Shiekh Hasina’s resignation, the jihadi elements unleashed a genocidal pogrom on the religious minorities, especially the Hindus. Hindu properties were vandalised, looted, burnt down, women were raped and even temples weren’t spared.

The unabated attacks on Hindus have inexorably sent a clear message to India of the direction in which the country is headed. A semblance of democratic governance that existed in the past 15 years, vanished into thin air. The journey of Bangladesh through noxious shades of extremism remained a cause of concern for India. The supply of weapons and arms from the Bangladesh Islamist outfits to the insurgency groups in the North East from the early 1990s till to the late 2000s presented a perennial threat to India’s sovereignty. This pernicious menace was compounded by the porous borders and the unwillingness of dictatorial and extremist regimes at the helm to rein them.

The pro-Pakistani Islamist organisations operating from Bangladesh used to train cadres of secessionist groups in the North East as part of their ‘unfinished agenda of the partition’. The situation became better after the ascension of Shiekh Hasina to power. She kept transborder terrorism under check. Though incontestably wedded to the Medina Sanad (Charter of Medina) and encouraged Islamic education, she restrained the activities of pro-Pakistani radical outfits and political parties believed to be responsible for her father’s assassination.

Islamic fundamentalism prevailed in Bangladesh and annual attacks on Hindus remained an unmissable feature even under her regime. Having prioritised development, the erosion of secular ideals within the country hardly received much attention. She made every effort to forge developmental cooperation with India. In fact, after Pakistan hijacked the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Bangladesh became the key anchor for India’s regional cooperation and an active partner in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).

With her resignation, the country is now under the control of fundamentalists. The pace of Islamisation will be rapid and unrestrained attacks on minorities particularly Hindus is going to intensify. The subtle curbs she imposed on the pro-Pakistani elements and counter-terrorism cooperation with India are unlikely to return. Bangladesh is all set to become a jihadi breeding ground akin to Pakistan. This would mark the return of transborder terror attacks from the Bangladeshi frontier.

Security Threat to North East

Along with security threats, with Bangladesh descending into anarchy, India has to brace for illegal infiltration and concomitant demographic change. The sudden and rapid political meltdown in Bangladesh has deprived India of a friendly neighbourhood. With the likely return of the anti-India and anti-Hindu, Pakistan-leaning BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, India’s North East will be under attack. Seized by the twin impact of the Myanmar civil war and a huge influx of refugees, North East would be a potential target for Bangladeshi terror outfits and Chinese infiltration attempts. India’s defence strategies will be tested to their limits.

The Play Book

In May, Hasina revealed the US plans to carve out a Christian State from territories of Myanmar, Bangladesh and India to establish a naval base at St. Martin’s Island. India’s northeast is going to be exposed to intense geopolitical pressures. India is aware of China’s containment strategy in collaboration with Pakistan, but Bangladesh's regime change has ascertained a similar strategy of Washington towards India.

Interestingly, the common agent in both strategies is Pakistan. As per some accounts, the India-containment strategy of the deep state has been in the works since 2016 when the US befriended Tarique Rahman, the chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) elements. Washington’s indifference to the Pakistani Army’s electoral intervention, the release of a $7 billion IMF loan, a recent upgrade of Pakistan’s credit ranking by Fitch, US-Pakistan two-week counter-terror exercises in the Punjab province and $200 million aid for Pakistan hinted at co-option of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for Washington’s Bangladesh project. Given ISI’s close ties with JeI, it is no-brainer.

The events in Bangladesh have been engineered from foreign shores in cahoots with domestic forces. The template used and the sequence of events which largely preceded and played during the course of student protests, is straight out of the West’s playbook. The main objective was to oust intransigent, China-leaning Hasina who refused to tow Washington’s line. The template employed included three important aspects- sowing discord, shadowy forces amplifying anti-government hashtags and spreading the inflammatory narrative leading to the toppling of the political dispensation.

Destabilise India

Washington has played a similar game in India. A stable India is emerging as a reliable regional power through mutually beneficial cooperative initiatives with neighbouring countries. Adeptly defending the country from Chinese incursions, New Delhi is steadily projecting itself as the voice of the Global South as well. A rising India is inimical to Washington’s interests. The US administration has been inherently uncomfortable with India’s independent foreign policy and began to openly despise it after the Ukraine war owing to New Delhi’s refusal to sever ties with Russia completely. This became more pronounced after PM Modi’s Russia visit.

Washington’s attempts to destabilise India and derail its growth engine have been in the pipeline since 2014. This sinister agenda has manifested in the form of interminable protests that extended for over a year in the capital city even at the height of Covid restrictions. The Deep State has deployed every trick in its toolkit including collaborating with disgruntled dynasts, the liberal brigade, academicians, pliable media agencies and civil society organisations to destabilise India and dislodge the nationalist political dispensation.

But India narrowly escaped the regime change ploy. BJP’s inability to notch an absolute majority has saved the country from a portending disaster. Else the Opposition has laid the ground saying that “BJP has spread kerosene all over the country. You need one spark and we’ll be in big trouble”. Bangladesh’s tumultuous turn of events is an ominous indication of what was planned to befall India. After the failed plot in India, intent on keeping India on tenterhooks through an Islamised neighbourhood, the Deep State waited for the opportune time and let the region plunge into an abyss of instability.

The ongoing protests even after the swearing-in of the interim government calling for a total purge, is indicative of a deeper ploy to demolish the institutional systems as well.

Washington has always sided with Pakistan and was firmly behind the dictator Yahya Khan who carried out a Hindu genocide. The US was against the creation of Bangladesh and could never forget how India outsmarted it with Soviet support. Pakistan has been Washington’s mercenary slave. But India maintained strategic autonomy adeptly balancing ties and advancing its national interests. But with the Dragon becoming untamable, Washington is seeking to gain strategic depth in the region to coerce Beijing. Thus, a strong India is certainly a hurdle to Washington’s strategic interests.

American Links of Muhammed Yunus

Indeed, what made the role of Washington so discernible was the return of Nobel Laureate Muhammed Yunus as the head of the interim government. Yunus indicted in a $2 million embezzlement case received support from none other than former US President Barack Obama. He along with over 200 global leaders expressed concerns about his harassment via an open letter.

As per Intel Drop, Yunus is one of the key donors of the Clinton Foundation. Indeed, Hillary Clinton misusing her position has allegedly pledged $ 13 million to Yunus after his ouster from the Grameena Bank. Yunus has strong links with the Clintons and the Deep State1.

In 2007 when the army-backed interim government came to power in Bangladesh, Hillary Clinton allegedly appealed to the government to make Yunus the “leader of Bangladesh” and a “minus two formula” of pressurising Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia into retirement1. In February 2007, Yunus launched a political party “Citizens’ Power”. In April 2007, BBC reported, “the army would sponsor Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus as the leader”2. But by May 2007 he has abandoned his political party.

In 2015, Yunus once again reiterated his interest in leading a “benevolent dictatorship that could replace Hasina’s government”3. His return to Bangladesh from France notwithstanding the money laundering charges substantiates the not-so-invisible hand of the Deep State in Bangladesh’s regime change scheme. Yunus is an out-and-out Deep State agent.

With Yunus at the helm of affairs, the efforts of Hunter Biden who has been a lobbyist of BNP for years will come to fruition4. Hunter Biden has been hired as a lobbyist by BNP via Abdus Sattar, a UK-based BNP leader, through Blue Star Agencies for $3.75 million. To push its propaganda narrative against the Hasina government under the garb of human rights violations, BNP has even hired New-York based PR firm.

Often caught flat-footed, in the past, having failed to safeguard President Mujibur Rahman from an impending assassination and avert 1996 President Nabibullah’s execution, Indian intelligence agencies this time around ensured Hasina’s safe exit from Dhaka. Considering the string of violent regime change episodes in the region, India has to ramp up both its internal and external defence mechanisms.

Besides the political, economic and demographic ramifications, the unrest in Bangladesh can be a serious setback for India’s Act East Policy, Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) doctrine and BIMSTEC cooperation. Affirming friendship, India must quickly recalibrate its policy towards Bangladesh and reach out to all the political stakeholders to sustain and strengthen the strategic partnership. India must also be watchful of Beijing’s tepid moves to increase its presence in Bangladesh.

Given the transparent system of governance, democracies are victims of geopolitical machinations. India must up its guard against potential foreign infiltration and put in place enough safeguards to curtail external interferences.

Fortifying internal strength with pragmatism and unity, amid the challenges galore, India, must now wisely choose its allies and address strategic threats. Much to the regret of American sympathisers in India, more than ever, Henry Kissinger’s, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal” has turned out to be prophetic.

Democracy and secularism are anathema to Muslim countries. The butchering of minorities and violent purges in Bangladesh amid political unrest made it doubly evident.


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