U.S. intervention in Bangladesh affairs aggravates political upheaval there

Students and other activists carry Bangladesh's national flag during a protest organized by Students Against Discrimination to mark one month since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down after a mass uprising, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. | Rajib Dhar/AP

For a country worried about foreign interference in its elections, the U.S. seems to have no problems with meddling in the affairs of Bangladesh and other countries.

Weeks of student-led and often violent protests have forced the resignation and exile on Aug. 5 of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Demonstrators were reacting to inflation, unemployment, governmental and banking corruption and a quota system that preferentially opens up government jobs to descendants of people participating in the national liberation struggle. Brutal police repression and killings recalled Bangladesh’s long history of recurring coups, protests, and lethal violence.

Sheikh Hasina’s Awami alliance won a large parliamentary majority in elections taking place in January 2024, and she remained as prime minister. She had served as such from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2008 on.

Sheikh Hasina faced little opposition in the low-turnout election. The large Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) did not participate.

Her political party harks back to the Awami League, the central protagonist to the liberation struggle that in 1971 turned the former East Pakistan into an independent nation. Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was an Awami leader and Bangladesh’s first president. He and most of his family were killed in a coup in 1975.

Contributing to distress

Here we consider economic factors contributing to people’s distress and dissent and the U.S. role in the country’s difficulties.

Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik suggests that Sheikh Hasina’s government was oblivious to both the country’s changing economic situation and deterioration of living conditions.  He points out that until recently, “growth in Bangladesh’s garment exports [had been] so rapid that it was even suggested that within a very short time Bangladesh would be meeting as much as 10 per cent of the world’s garment demand.” In 2022-2023 that industry provided Bangladesh with 84.58% of its export earnings.

Now production and export are reduced. Patnaik points to “the rise in imported fuel prices after the start of the Russo-Ukraine war [that] has contributed to a serious foreign exchange shortage, given rise to prolonged power cuts, and also caused a rise in the price of power that has had a cost-push effect on the economy as a whole.”

Factors contributing to inflation include “depreciation in the exchange rate vis-à-vis the dollar” and “the growing fiscal squeeze that the government is compelled to enforce within a neoliberal setting.”

The government is unable, according to Patnaik, “to insulate the people from the effects of inflation.” Additionally, “A rise in the minimum wage, as a means of compensating workers in the face of inflation, is … [impossible] within the neoliberal setting;” “export markets” would suffer.

Patniak’s report appears in People’s Democracy, the website of the Communist Party of India (M). He suggests that, “The transcendence of neoliberalism requires the mobilization of people around an alternative economic strategy that gives a greater role to the State, focuses on the home market, and on national control over mineral and other natural resources.”

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus now heads a make-shift government backed by Bangladesh’s military. The army chief and representatives of three political parties are meeting to form an interim government made up of “advisors.” Preparations for elections are underway.

The Awami League is not participating. Patnaik observes that, “if the Awami League is not allowed to contest the elections that are to be held, then the right-wing parties would emerge as the main beneficiaries of the political upheaval; Bangladesh would be pushed to the right to the delight of imperialism and the domestic corporate oligarchy.”

The U.S. government is paying attention. Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu visited Bangladesh on May 17. Interviewed, he indicated that discussions covered Bangladesh’s role in U.S. strategy for the Indo-Pacific region. He denied reports that the United States wants to build an airbase in Bangladesh.

The U.S. Department of State on May 20 announced sanctions against retired Army General Aziz Ahmed on grounds of “significant corruption.” Its statement testified to “U.S. commitment to strengthening democratic institutions and rule of law in Bangladesh.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina spoke at a meeting May 23 of leaders of political parties making up the Awami League. She reported that a foreign country, unnamed, was seeking her approval for an airbase to be built in Bangladesh and would reward her by protecting her tenure in office. The proposal, she said, came from a “white skin country.” She insisted that, “I do not want to gain power by renting or giving certain parts of my country to anyone.”

Hold on power insecure

Hasina’s hold on power was insecure. At a follow-up meeting on June 4 independent Awami League candidates and heads of political parties associated with the League joined in vigorously disputing the results of the January, 2024 elections.

Hasina had earlier predicted that, “if the (opposition) BNP came to power, it would sell the island to the US.” She was referring to St. Martin’s Island, located in the Bay of Bengal at the southernmost tip of Bangladesh. It sits eight kilometer west of the Myanmar coast.

In 2003, U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh, Mary Ann Peters, rejected speculation about a U.S. airbase in the country.  In Parliament on June 14, 2023, Deputy Rashed Khan Menon, president of the Workers Party – Bangladesh’s largest Communist Party – asserted that, “The U.S. wants Saint Martin’s Island and they want Bangladesh in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). They are doing everything to destabilize the current government.”

The Bay of Bengal is crucial to marine commerce in the entire region. An Indian observer notes that, “The island is ideally positioned to facilitate surveillance in the Bay of Bengal which has gained strategic significance due to China’s assertive push in the Indian Ocean region.” A Myanmar analyst refers to China as “the most influential foreign actor in Myanmar [and] the biggest investor” there.

The U.S.-promoted “Quad” alliance, aimed at China, includes India, Japan, Australia and the United States. The U.S. government has long pressured Bangladesh to join, while China has urged Bangladesh to maintain its non-aligned status.

In his remarks, Menon condemned the visa policy announced by the U.S. State Department on May 24, 2023 as “part of their ‘regime change’ strategy.” The U.S. government would withhold visas from Bangladeshis (family members too) viewed as “undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.”

Menon had more to say: “During our Liberation War, [the United States] dispatched the Seventh Fleet, aiming to strip us of our hard-won victory. Amidst a severe famine, they rerouted a grain ship from the Indian Ocean, a calculated move to disrupt Bangabandhu’s administration. Their clandestine influence was also involved in the assassination of Bangabandhu. Now, they are repeating such tactics, doing all within their power to undermine the existing government.” (“Bangabandhu” is the honorific of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Sheikh Hasina’s father.)

Under Sheikh Hasani’s leadership, U.S-Bangladesh relations have cooled, mostly in response to U.S. accusations of human rights abuses and U.S. economic sanctions. Visiting China on July 10 and seeking $20 billion in new loans, Hasani signed 28 bilateral agreements centering on trade and investments. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, China has upgraded the country’s infrastructure.

Bangladesh, it seems, is a small country attached to a worldwide economic system serving big powers but always close to social and economic catastrophe. Its plight is not unique.

Patnaik elaborates upon the theme: “Because of the world capitalist crisis, many third world countries pursuing neoliberal policies are being pushed into economic stagnation, acute unemployment and burgeoning external debt, which are going to make their prevailing centrist regimes that maintain a degree of autonomy vis-à-vis imperialism, unpopular; but this creates the condition for right-wing regimes supported by imperialism to topple these centrist regimes and come to power.”

In an authoritarian turn, security forces of the new government on August 22 arrested and detained Workers Party president Rashed Khan Menon, along with other cabinet ministers of the Sheikh Hasina government. They were blamed for deaths resulting from street protests prior to August 5. His defenders see a “political vendetta” on the way.

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CONTRIBUTOR

W. T. Whitney Jr.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, and lives in rural Maine.