Bangladesh turmoil: How credible is the foreign-hand theory?

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Das

(dasudhirk@gmail.com)

The turmoil in Bangladesh has added one more country to the list of already destabilised nations in the southeast Asian region. Out of the eight neighbouring countries of India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, five have become unstable for various reasons. Myanmar is in the grip of a prolonged civil war between the military junta and various other resistance groups; Sri Lanka, after going through a severe economic crisis, is still in recovery mode; Pakistan, the proverbial jelly state, has perennially been in a state of flux with the deadly cocktail of political instability and sectarian violence accompanied by an economic meltdown; Nepal too has recently undergone a change of government, too frequent to anybody’s comfort; Afghanistan, under the Taliban, has been reverting back to the Mediaeval Age with every new order of its government. To this list of already destabilised neighbourhoods, one more country, Bangladesh, with which India shares a 4156-km-long border, has been added to this list with the chaotic regime change effected by an anti-quota student movement.

The regime change in Bangladesh happened so quickly, and the events thereafter followed so rapidly that it left everybody in breathless awe. The student movement against a quota system in government jobs for the descendants of freedom fighters turned violent, claiming hundreds of lives. The Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina Wajed became so unpopular that when the protestors stormed the Ganabhavan, the official residence of the Prime Minister in the capital Dhaka, she had to flee to India. It is reported that the army chief of Bangladesh gave an ultimatum to the Prime Minister that she had only two options left before her: either stay here and get mobbed and lynched, or resign and flee the country as soon as possible. It is also reported that she prepared a speech to be televised to the nation before her departure, but she was not allowed to do so. The manner in which things unfolded in Bangladesh leaves a lot of unanswered questions. First, the demand for the abolition or reduction of reservation in government jobs has already been met by the Supreme Court of the country by reducing the quota from 30% to 5% in its verdict in July last year. Why wasn’t the movement called off after the main demand was met? Second, why did the agitators shift the goal post by changing their demand to a single point of ousting the Sheikh Hasina Wajed regime? Third, soon after the news of Sheikh Hasina’s departure to India spread across the country, miscreants unleashed violence on the Hindus and other religious minorities in every part of the country by looting their business concerns, burning down their houses, and vandalising their places of worship. Many even started collecting exorbitant protection money from members of the minority community to spare their lives. How did an anti-quota movement led by students turn into a communal one? Who instigated them? Fourth, in the post-Hasina phase, the statutes of the founder father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, were not only demolished and vandalised but also desecrated in full public view. Who is trying to revive the idea of Pakistan in Bangladesh?

However, everyone associated with the anti-quota agitation in Bangladesh claims that it is an organic and home-grown agitation, and to term it a foreign sponsored movement is an insult to its leaders. But there are enough reasons to believe that the whole regime change drama has been orchestrated by an outside force. The violence against minorities and the demolition of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman statutes clearly point to the infiltration of radical Islamist elements like the Jamaat-e-Islami in the movement. These two issues point to an apprehension that the agitation may have been home-grown and organic, created out of genuine grievances of the student community; however, it cannot be denied that external forces and radical Islamist elements in the form of Jamaat-e-Islami have crept into this student movement surreptitiously and hijacked it from its stated objective.

There are many usual suspects behind this regime change in Bangladesh. The needle of suspicion points to the US, the country that has the wherewithal to carry out such massive campaigns to oust the government of a country. The US has been doing it regularly in Latin America, the Middle East, Pakistan, and many other countries if it perceives the regime as hostile to its interests. Recently, in 2023, in Pakistan, Imran Khan had to go after he visited Russia and made some anti-Western statements. He himself claimed the US ousted him for trying to be friendly with Russia. The Russian media has been very vocal about the US hand in toppling the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina herself claimed the same: the US has toppled her government as she did not accede to the demand for a US airbase in St. Martin Island in the Bay of Bengal. A few months before her ousting, she had hinted that a white country had been pressuring her to accept the proposal for an airbase on St. Martin Island. The question to her allegation accusing the US of her ouster is: why would America do it? With Hasina’s departure, India’s influence in this region would further shrunk, and China’s writ would possibly find more geopolitical space. This argument substantially exonerates America from this gross interference in another sovereign country’s affairs. However, there is a flip side to this argument. The US has been very miffed with India’s concept of strategic autonomy, and more so with Modi’s recent visit to Moscow. The US wanted to teach India a lesson by implementing this regime change of a friendly government in its backyard, signalling the depth of its reach. The US indirectly conveyed to India its displeasure by taking Hasina off the scene in Bangladesh. By installing a pro-American government, the US can effectively ward off Chinese influence in Bangladesh. The Chief Advisor to the military supported interim government, Prof. Mohammad Yunus, is out and out a pro-west (read pro-American) individual, and some of the ministers he has chosen have a distinctive anti-India trait. By putting Prof. Yunus at the helm of Bangladesh’s affairs, the US achieved two objectives in the region: first, to keep China effectively away from Bangladesh’s affairs; second, by taking out a friendly government in the region, it warned India about the consequences of pursuing a policy of strategic autonomy. 

The other country that automatically comes under suspicion is China. China has some reasons to be unhappy with Sheikh Hasina, despite her diplomatic tightrope walking between New Delhi and Beijing. She paid a visit to India first in June and soon after left for China, asking for a loan of $5 billion. It is reported that China agreed to give her only 100 million yuan instead, and she was not offered the state protocol she deserved. She cut short her state visit by a day and returned home. It is rare that the head of a state returns home a day before the scheduled duration of her state visit from another country. Why did China cold-shoulder Hasina during her visit there? Did they know beforehand that she would be dethroned shortly? If China is behind Hasina’s ouster, why did China do it? China was unhappy with Sheikh Hasina for her tilt towards India. Secondly, China was dissatisfied with Sheikh Hasina’s ruling dispensation for being denied the construction contract for the Sonadia deep sea port in 2014. After Hasina’s return from China, she announced her willingness to give the construction of the of the Teesta River Project to India, in which China was also interested. This marginalisation of China in infrastructure projects might have prompted it to oust Hasina with the help of the ISI of Pakistan, which is an organisation with strong links with Jamaat-e-Islami and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which are pronouncedly anti-India. The involvement of Pakistan cannot be ruled out, as there is the Jamaat-e-Islami, the party that actively colluded with the Pakistani army in 1971 in the genocide of Bengalis.

The regime change in Bangladesh brings to mind the Arab Spring of 2010–11. The results of the anti-government protests are now before us. Syria and Yemen have gone into anarchy and disintegration; Egypt became more Islamic, giving birth to the Muslim Brotherhood. The condition of Iraq, Morocco, and Lebanon is less said than done. Let us hope that Bangladesh does not turn into a fundamentalist Islamic country after this student uprising. Let us hope that the present leadership brings the country back from anarchy onto the path of progress so that the whole region can breathe easily. But a failed Bangladesh will not only destabilise the north-east of India but the whole region.