Bangladesh - big picture, small details

Why is it that a people suffer as a nation under an authoritarianism for decades and decades, muster up their courage to stand up against the power structure, and when they have fought the battle and let their blood, they find the next morning that another leader with a shady past has been selected over them!

Is Muhammad Yunus the right man to lead the nation of 174 million souls? Is Yunus the 'banker of the poor' or the 'bloodsucker of the poor'? One should reckon that Yunus has won the Noble Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the US Congressional Gold Medal for his Grameen Bank that has disbursed some $37 billion in loans to over 10 million poor in Bangladesh and in other countries as well. But later the courts alleged that his bank had been engaged in loan-sharking and taking interest of a mounting 23% from the poor. Yet he has been receiving awards in western states in the hundreds. And the now owner of Grameen Software, Grameen Cybernet and Grameen Telecom and Grameenphone, the biggest private phone company in Bangladesh, was advising the Paris Olympics when his fellow nationals were spilling their blood on the streets for a purpose - a purpose he would be crowing on his head a few days later.

Sheikh Hasina had been spiteful of Yunus for long. She thought herself more worth of a Noble Peace Prize for her Chittagong Hill Peace Accord and her giving refuge to over a million Rohingya who were fleeing pogroms being afflicted upon them in Myanmar, in 2017. But why would the West be giving a Prize to someone who was not aligning to their greater 'interests', someone who had begun to hinder their big-power politics - rather they would be conspiring against her!

This, the Wikileaks had revealed. In 2009, Yunus held meetings with US officials to request action against Hasina. But the question is: why would the US entertain Yunus against a long-time Indian ally, Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Sheikh Mujeeb, who himself was totally allied with India? The reasons are clear now, Hasina had been tilting towards China, and at several occasions had stated that Bangladesh will work with China, join the BRI and will allow Beijing to build the Mongla and Chittagong ports.

And there's more. It turns out that since 2003, the US had been coercing Hasina to hand over its St Martin Island, located at the tip of Bangladesh's border with Myanmar. And Hasina had been constantly saying 'no'. This irked the US sorely. Because in its big-power play, St Martin is an ideal asset wherefrom the US would be able to exert its influence in Myanmar's conflict-ridden northern provinces, where the US covertly aided the separatists against Myanmar's junta-government. And wherefrom US navy would be ideally located to curb China's possible naval presence in the ports it aims to develop for Bangladesh and Myanmar. Moreover, being the only western base in the Bay of Bengal, this would give the US an attack-position towards the Strait of Malacca, in case of a wider conflict in the region.

Hasina was wise not to hand over St Martin to the US. For if she would have, she would have invited the next proxy war to be fought on Bangladesh's soil, and Bangladesh would have become fodder for big-power politics. So, Hasina was signing economic deals with both China and India, but allowing their boot on her grounds was a big no-no.

In 2021, Bangladesh also became a member of the BRICS bank and had requested BRICS membership in June this year. And on the other hand Bangladesh never accepted invitations to join QUAD and the IPEF Indo-Pacific forum. And further irking the US and India, Hasina unveiled a China-developed state-of-the-art submarine and naval facility at Cox Bazar, in 2023.

Since the start of the deadly protests in June this year, Russia has also registered its concerns. Russian foreign office has been vocal about the presence of a US mission in Dhaka, headed by Ambassador Peter Hess, as one that is initiating and fueling the protests. Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has insisted that Bangladesh is being destabilised on the lines of the Arab Spring.

So, Hasina was true when she alleged, in May, that the US wanted to make Bangladesh their proxy state, or that the US was trying to create a secessionist state out of Bangladesh and Myanmar.

She said, "If I allow that country to build an airbase… I will have no problem." In that case, of course, there will be no cases against her of violating human rights, persecuting the Islamist parties and oppressing the Hindu minority; and no talk of politically-motivated arrests, disappearances, extra-judicial killings; and no opposition to job quota, bad economic policies or electoral frauds. All kinds of corruptions that may truly have been committed would conveniently be swept under the rug.

So, this is the face of democracies in almost all post-WWII nation-states. They are filled with corruption, their democracy is stolen, their resources are in the hands of elite, they have become victims of geo-economic forces, their governments are swayed by pig-power pressures and their people are fooled by foreign orchestrated colour revolutions.

Bangladesh, therefore, is not a stand-alone case of protest-driven regime-change; this is becoming a new norm. And the US has certainly taken out its grudge in the region, by settling its scores with Pakistan, Sri Lanka and now Bangladesh - for daring to embrace China in place of the US.

Only in time, the people of Bangladesh will recognise what has gone on in their country. Because when the revolution is on, it's all fervour, buzz and commotion, but the morning after, when all the mist has cleared, that is when you find that you are in an equally bad mess - new titles and same old abased story!