Dhaka has taken on new importance as relations with China freeze.
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On July 11, Uzra Zeya, the highest-ranking U.S. State Department official to visit Bangladesh in the past three years, said that the United States looks forward to “deepening” its ties with Bangladesh for “the next 50 years.” Bangladesh is often overlooked in the formation of a new cold war in Asia, but Washington needs it on its side. For that to work, however, the United States is going to have to make some hard decisions about how it deals with Bangladesh’s democratic crisis—and the leadership’s ties to both China and India.
At the height of the Cold War, with India and the Soviet Union by its side, Bangladesh—then East Pakistan—fought a civil war in 1971 to become independent. On Dec. 3, 1971, India militarily intervened, and a war that lasted only 13 days saw the surrender of the Pakistan Army and the independence of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is now a boomtown. Over the past decade, the country has built the vast Padma Bridge, along with a string of other critical infrastructure projects. Its per capita income has outpaced India and Pakistan, and living standards have shot up.
But alongside economic growth has come the crumbling of democracy. Since coming to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed and her party, the Awami League, have been ruling the country with an iron fist.
Hasina presents herself as the bearer of the legacy of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a war hero who led Bangladesh’s independence. The Mujib-led government followed a pro-Soviet foreign policy, and, at the end of his rule in 1975, made Bangladesh a self-styled one-party socialist state. That year, Mujib, along with most of his immediate family members, was killed in a military coup. His daughters, who were living abroad, survived.
The two general elections that propelled Hasina to power were heavily rigged, to the extent that the outgoing Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ito Naoki broke all diplomatic niceties and said that he heard about ballot box stuffing by the police overnight, even before the polling started.
Human rights and rule of law have taken a back seat, elections are routinely rigged, and a reign of terror has silenced much of the opposition, disappearing opposition leaders and human rights activists.
A recent documentary by Sweden-based Netra News paints a gory picture of the abduction business. According to the report, Bangladesh’s military intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, runs a location known as Aynaghar (the Mirror House) where activists who fall foul with the government are kept illegally imprisoned for an indefinite period, sometimes years.
The inhabitants of the Mirror House are more fortunate than those picked up by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Even though it was formed as a counterterror paramilitary unit of the police, members of the Bangladesh Armed Forces also serve in the RAB’s different units.
Two former military officers who were in the RAB told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle that “…key figures in the ruling government may be harnessing the elite force for political gain, with tacit approval, at the very least, from the highest offices in Bangladesh.”
The RAB’s notoriety for killing people in framed encounters was so widespread that in December 2021, it earned the inglorious title of being the first Bangladeshi organization to earn sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department.
READ MORE
The U.S. Ups the Ante in Bangladesh
A coercive visa policy aims to bolster democracy ahead of the country’s elections next January.
Bangladeshis Have Had Enough
The country is meant to go to the polls next year. It might erupt first.
America Should Bet on Bangladesh
Bangladesh has major geopolitical value on its own merits, separate from India or any other country.
The U.S. intervention worked like a tonic—a sign that Washington can do a lot more. The RAB abductions stopped overnight. And to the Biden administration’s credit, it’s kept turning up the pressure on the Bangladeshi government. The latest move is a U.S. announcement of visa restrictions on “any Bangladeshi individual, believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.”
Announced by the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in July, the policy puts Bangladesh among a group of unattractive bedfellows— Nigeria, Uganda, and Somalia. Those restrictions didn’t have much effect in Nigeria and Uganda, but they played a part in pressuring Somalia’s government to allow direct universal suffrage ahead of next year’s vote.
There’s reason to hope the measures might work in Bangladesh, too. Local plutocrats have invested their ill-gotten wealth heavily in U.S. and Canadian real estate, so much so that a small neighborhood in Toronto, Canada, is known as Begum Para, the Wives’ Community. This is the area where the wives and family members of Bangladesh’s elite live. If Canada follows Washington’s lead and imposes sanctions, it will rob Bangladesh’s plutocrats of their unfettered access to the lush life in the West.
Hasina has been making trouble for herself in Washington by hobnobbing with China and Russia. Bangladesh has recently decided to make loan repayments in Chinese yuan for a Russian-built nuclear power project in order to bypass the U.S. sanctions on Russian banks.
Hours before the Ukraine conflict entered its second year, Bangladesh abstained from voting in a U.N. General Assembly resolution that demanded that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine and called for a cessation of hostilities.”
Hasina justified it by telling the parliament, “When the U.S. supported Pakistan [in Bangladesh’s independence war] by sending its Seventh Fleet, it was Russia who stood beside us. Therefore, we must help those who helped us during our dire need.”
This year, Hasina also inaugurated a naval base of the Bangladesh Navy that houses two Chinese-built Ming class attack submarines. The installation, named after her, is at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal, and there is a serious worry that the base might use anti-piracy operations as the pretext to let China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy use the facility.
That’s annoyed Washington, which needs Bangladesh to take a strong stance on Myanmar, where China is increasingly influential as a backer of the brutal junta. But Dhaka, when it comes to its eastern neighbor, has shown weakness rather than strength.
China views Bangladesh as a central location for its strategic advances in the Indian Ocean. In case of a naval blockade in the South China Sea, China will need either Burma or Bangladesh or both for a sea opening. This is why China doesn’t want to see a democratic government in both countries.
The Hasina-led regime isn’t keen on supporting the U.S. policy of giving non-lethal assistance to the National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar’s government in exile. The NUG consists of some members of the parliament that was dissolved in a Chinese-backed military coup in 2021. Recognized by the European Parliament as the legitimate representatives ofMyanmar, the NUG and its armed wing People’s Defence Force already control half the country. A democratic and free Myanmar under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi will not let China treat the country as a vessel state.
For a long time, New Delhi was able to stymie U.S. efforts to revive Bangladesh’s democracy. India considers the political status quo in Bangladesh crucial to keep its insurgency-prone northeastern states calm. The ruling Awami League government has extradited to India the leaders of all the major anti-Indian insurgent groups and has made sure that the country is not used for any anti-India activities. In a controversial deal, the Hasina-led government has also let an Indian company built a power plant near the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest. In exchange, India, world’s largest democracy, has let Hasina’s autocracy run unchecked.
India used its influence to coax the leader of Jatiya Party, Bangladesh’s fourth-largest political party, into joining the 2014 general election. The party’s participation gave some form of inclusiveness to the rigged election that followed. The election was boycotted by all other major political parties.
The United States didn’t have a strong voice in 2014. That seems to have changed; Washington is no longer willing to stand by. But to really make a difference, Washington needs to ignore Indian concerns and facilitate free and fair elections in Bangladesh.
Hasina has an uphill battle to face before the next general election in January 2024. In a string of statements made from their respective capitals, China and Russia have openly shown their support for her regime. Iran’s state television has also joined the bandwagon. Encouraged by this, South Asia’s longest-serving tin-pot dictator may be tempted to crown herself the prime minister for the fourth time in a row through another rigged election.
But if the United States acts firmly, continuing visa sanction threats and signaling its desire for a clean vote, Bangladeshis may have the chance for their first fair election in 15 years. This alone may not be enough. In May this year, in a letter written to President Biden, six members of the U.S. Congress suggested that the country impose stricter individual sanctions and ban Bangladesh’s law enforcing and military personnel from participating in U.N. peacekeeping missions.
It’s high time that the Biden administration walks the talk and helps Bangladesh hold free and fair elections. This will discourage other bad political actors in Asia from forming a common alliance. It will also show commitment in facilitating democratic alternatives across the continent.
Some suggest that the way out of the present political impasse in Bangladesh can be a U.N.-supervised election, as suggested by Rep. Bob Good and 13 other members of the U.S. Congress. They urged the “UN, in combination with impartial governments around the world, [to] participate in supervising and conducting free and fair elections in Bangladesh. This should include the provision of peacekeeping forces to prevent intimidation, harassment, or assault of voters.”
Bangladesh may be small, but it’s now strategically important for the United States. Washington shouldn’t leave the country to its fate again.
Ahmed Hussain is a Bangladeshi writer and journalist. He is the editor of The New Anthem: The Subcontinent in Its Own Words. He has just finished writing his first novel.