by Serajul Islam 28 September 2023
THE Awami League regime and the United States were on friendly terms till the exit of President Trump. The US-west-UN and India in the loop backed the AL regime in the country’s 2008, 2014 and 2018 elections to keep the Bangladesh Nationalist Party out of power because of the latter’s alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami which they believed had links to ‘Islamic terrorism’. They, thus, overlooked the rights and democratic violations of the AL regime and its fraudulent 2014 and 2018 elections.
The change in Washington from president Trump to president Biden in January 2021 and, following it, the end of the ‘war on terror’ in August 2021 turned international politics in the region and, with it, the AL-US relations on its head. The United States abandoned its pursuit of Islam and the Biden administration embraced human rights and democracy as the bedrock of its foreign policy.
The AL regime, thus, came under the radar of the US foreign policy the moment Biden entered the White House. The Biden White House excluded the AL regime from the list of 110 countries that Biden invited to his first Democracy Summit in December 2021 and the second Democracy Summit in March this year. The Biden administration, thus, placed the AL regime with pariahs in present-day international politics, like the North Korean and the Myanmar regime. Meanwhile, it also imposed sanctions on senior officials of the AL regime’s elite RAB-police for serious rights violations. The Biden administration also conveyed to the AL regime that it wanted Bangladesh’s next general election to be held in a free, fair and participatory manner to return to the people their inalienable right to vote that was taken away from them through the 2014 and 2018 elections.
The Biden administration sent innumerable high-level delegations to Dhaka like never before in US-Bangladesh relations in pursuit of these goals, particularly that related to Bangladesh’s next general election. It imposed a new visa policy this June targeting those in the AL regime who were responsible for the controversial 2014 and 2018 elections and those preparing another such general election to iterate the Biden administration’s determination to ensure rights and democracy in Bangladesh with an emphasis on its next general election.
The Biden administration, thus, subjected the AL regime to pressure like no US administration has to any regime of Bangladesh, not even the regime of General HM Ershad. The pressure under which the Biden administration placed the AL regime is damaging to its credibility as a democratic political party and dishonourable and humiliating for Bangladesh.
The Biden administration has, nevertheless, imposed pressure on the AL regime for self-evident reasons. The regime has remained in power by means that are anything but democratic. It forcibly trampled the opposition led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party whose leaders and activists have been incarcerated like there was no law in the country. Hundreds of thousands of BNP leaders and activists have been incarcerated just for opposing the AL regime.
Incarceration has been just a part AL regime’s strategy for which it enacted the draconian Digital Security Act, now renamed the Cyber Security Act, that allows law enforcement agencies to arrest opposition activists and independent thinkers without rhyme or reason. The regime weaponised fears and carried out enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killing to institutionalise its one-party rule. It conducted sham elections in 2014 and 2018 with these strategies to remain in power and called these elections democratic.
The western allies of the United States and the United Nations joined the Biden administration against the AL regime, particularly in forcing the latter to hold the next general election in a manner that would allow voters to vote freely and fairly. These developments helped to expose the rights violations of the AL regime in the western media and established the AL regime as an antithesis to a democratic one.
The change in the Indian mainstream media that had hitherto protected the AL regime with the holier-than-the-pope mindset has been game-changing. Recent articles carried out by the Press Trust of India and the Times of India, considered mouthpieces of the BJP regime, have been devastating for the AL regime. These reports flagged that democracy under the AL regime is in the intensive care unit. One report by Chandan Nandi compared the AL regime with the most-hated Duvalier regime of Haiti, a comparison that the AL regime has not heard from even the BNP, its nemesis.
The Biden administration’s policies towards the AL regime have, thus, pushed it into a dark and dangerous corner where it has been exposed to all and sundry, at home and abroad, for what it has been doing in Bangladesh’s politics since January 2009. The change caught the AL regime unprepared. It took away suddenly from it what it thought was coming to it naturally, a fourth term through another general election under the a unilaterally changed constitution of the state with the support of the US-west-UN and India.
The US, the west and the United Nations moved away from the AL regime because they no longer needed it to keep the BNP from taking power on the issue of Islam. India is not extending the AL regime support because it has become a liability. The AL regime’s decision to allow China to make massive inroads in Bangladesh leading to and after the 2018 election raised the red signal in New Delhi. The exposure of the AL regime’s violations of human and democratic rights flagged by Chandan Nandy and recent critical reports in India’s media has been, as the cliché goes, the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The sudden change in the AL regime’s fortunes forced it to blow hot and cold to US pressure. The prime minister, echoed by the foreign minister, stated that they cared little for the Biden administration’s pressure but yet waited unsuccessfully for days with a large delegation in the US capital to see someone from the White House, the Congress and the state department. The selfie and the line-breaking mishap at the Gandhi Memorial during the G20 Summit where the prime minister tried to show her supporters and opponents at home that all was hunky-dory between her regime and Washington and New Delhi was surreal and demeaning and humiliating for Bangladesh.
The United States has now decided to weaponise its visa policy against the AL regime. The state department said on September 21 that it had started imposing visa restrictions on individuals who were instrumental in holding the fraudulent 2014 and 2018 elections and those who are now preparing to hold the next one the same way. AL regime leaders, civil bureaucrats, law enforcement personnel, Election Commission officials and members of the judiciary who were involved with the last two elections and would be involved in the next one to hold it like the previous ones will now be denied US visa or their visa, if previously granted, would be cancelled.
The latest state department statement has come as a warning to the AL regime not to take its determination about rights, democracy and elections in Bangladesh lightly. The AL leaders, true to form, nevertheless, twisted the latest state department’s statement as one aimed at the BNP because it included the opposition although it is palpably evident that it is meant exclusively and entirely for the AL regime to abandon any hopes of holding another fraudulent election.
The AL regime’s humour, ridicule, et cetera of the pressure and warning of the Biden administration are a wonder. It is surreal and a sign of nervousness that the selfie, the attempt to break the line at the G20 Summit and the unsuccessful attempt of the prime minister to meet top Biden administration officials after waiting in a hotel for days in the US capital, underlined unequivocally. The prime minister is again in Washington, breaking her promise that she had no intention of visiting the United States by crossing seven seas and 13 rivers after the Biden administration had imposed the new visa restrictions for Bangladesh in June.
Postscript: The AL regime wants the next election under the unilaterally changed constitution because it cannot lose under it and can take all the 300 seats if it wants. It would, nevertheless, be impossible for it to hold the next election like the 2014 and 2018 elections with the United States, backed by the west, opposing it and the BNP-led opposition in the streets. A dangerous political upheaval, therefore, appears very likely unless the AL regime acts with reason.
M Serajul Islam is a retired career ambassador.
The article appeared in New Age.