On 5 August 2024, Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, was forced to flee the country by helicopter at 45 minutes’ notice owing to escalating violence that threatened her life. The bourgeois media in imperialist countries enthusiastically welcomed her departure, excoriating her as an autocrat and even a fascist, despite the fact that she was the elected head of state.
The Financial Times joined the media chorus justifying her ouster on the basis that “her rule was marked by increasing authoritarianism, corruption and human rights abuses”. (Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina resigns and flees the country by Benjamin Parkin, John Reed and Jyotsna Singh, 5 August 2024)
David Lammy, our new ‘socialist’ foreign secretary, has put on ice Sheikh Hasina’s request for asylum in Britain as he called on the United Nations to investigate the “deadly protests and ‘tragic’ loss of lives in Bangladesh”, the clear implication being that she was to blame.
Her real ‘crime’ was to defy US imperialism
The truth of the matter, however, is that she and her party, the Awami League, had defied the demands of US imperialism to allow the territory of her country to host a US military presence to advance its preparations for war against China:
“According to press reports in India, PM Hasina is claiming that the USA brought her down. Specifically, she says that the USA removed her from power because she refused to grant the USA military facilities in a region that is considered strategic for the USA in its ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’ to contain China …
“To add credence to Hasina’s charges, Bangladesh had delayed signing two military agreements that the USA had pushed very hard since 2022, indeed by none other than the former under-secretary of state Victoria Nuland, the neocon hardliner with her own storied history of US regime-change operations. One of the draft agreements, the General Security of Military Information Agreement, would bind Bangladesh to closer military-to-military cooperation with Washington.” (Accusations of US regime-change operations in Pakistan and Bangladesh warrant UN attention by Jeffrey Sachs, Common Dreams, 19 August 2024)
Moreover, “PM Hasina had been pursuing a foreign policy of neutrality, including constructive relations not only with the USA but also with China and Russia, much to the deep consternation of the US government.”
What must be understood is the extent of Bangladesh’s geopolitical importance:
“The country’s ports have long attracted naval powers ranging from the British, Japanese and Russians, to more recently the Chinese and Americans at different points in time.
“At the moment, the primary US interest in the country is to establish a service port for midsize US naval vessels that could help America manage naval operation risks caused by China’s access to ports in neighbouring Myanmar, and offer logistic services to friendly powers in the region without needing any approval or participation from India.” (Bangladesh as colour revolution on India’s doorstep by Chan Akya, Asia Times, 8 August 2024)
In other words, Bangladesh is far too important to be left to the Bangladeshis!
Another colour revolution
As in other countries with governments that ignore the US diktat, such as Ukraine pre-2014, imperialism is determined to bring about regime change, and in doing so has taken advantage of local discontent with the ravages of the capitalist system and imperialist looting. It is all too easy to persuade a minority of the downtrodden to blame their country’s government for their problems, and then to finance and arm them to commit ongoing violence, which naturally the government cannot but meet with violence in order to try to maintain order for the benefit of the majority.
With US backing, a relatively small fascist minority was able to seize control of government in the Ukraine, with the tragic consequences for the Ukrainian people that we witness today. In Bangladesh, too, the imperialist ploy has succeeded, with the immediate result that the country is now firmly back under military control, albeit with a fig-leaf of a quasi president in the form of Muhammad Yunus.
Although the Awami League was, according to imperialist propaganda, only able to win the January 2024 election by means of fraud, the new military government is obviously fairly confident it would be unable to defeat the Awami League if an election were held any time soon, and has been talking about maybe having elections in three years’ time. In any event, it goes without saying that this new government has no more power than did Sheikh Hasina’s to remedy the ills of capitalism for the benefit of ordinary workers, and will probably have a great deal less inclination even to try.
Achievements of Sheikh Hasina’s government
The fact of the matter is that Sheikh Hasina’s government, as even its imperialist enemies are forced to admit, was extremely competent by the standards of bourgeois governments, both in regard to its economic policies and it foreign policy:
“Hasina has presided over one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and improved living standards in the south Asian nation in the past 15 years …
“Her supporters credit Hasina with humming development projects and providing stability in the country, which has witnessed military rule for years.
“Hasina won praise for the handling of the world’s biggest refugee crisis as over a million Rohingyas have taken shelter in Bangladesh after fleeing for their lives in neighbouring Myanmar to evade persecution after a 2017 army crackdown at their homeland.
“Hasina is also credited for skilfully negotiating the rival interests of India and China as Bangladesh is virtually sandwiched between the two Asian giants. She got the support of both the big neighbours and Russia ahead of the elections.
“Bangladesh’s per capita income tripled since Hasina took power in January 2009 while its gross domestic product (GDP) clocked at a growth rate of 7.28 percent last year.
“The country of nearly 170 million people has achieved near self-sufficiency in food production and raised average life expectancy to levels higher than neighbouring India.” (Sheikh Hasina: ‘Iron Lady’ for supporters, ‘autocratic’ leader for critics by PTI, Economic Times, 8 January 2024)
The communalist angle and relations with India
In addition, the Awami League is a secularist party, which carefully safeguarded the interests of religious minorities, especially Bangladesh’s hindu community. Because of this her government had the support of India and supported India in return, notwithstanding the Indian government’s anti-muslim efforts within India.
Although in the interests of the greater good, Sheikh Hasina turned something of a blind eye to the BJP’s anti-muslim rhetoric, the islamist opposition in Bangladesh has been able to use it as a stick with which to beat the Awami League. Now that the military are back in power, it seems India will effectively lose its one regional ally:
“The harshness of Narendra Modi’s anti-muslim rhetoric during his election this spring was poorly received in Bangladesh, along with his weaponising of Bengali migration into India, denouncing Bengali muslims, even longtime Indian citizens, as illegal interlopers.
“The close relationship between India and Bangladesh, forged from Delhi’s military support for the nascent state when it split from Pakistan, started to splinter.” (Why Bangladeshi PM escaped to India – and what it means for Modi by Catherine Philp, The Times, 5 August 2024)
And further:
“Modi, who campaigned on a promise to put ‘neighbourhood first’, has succeeded in isolating India in south Asia. Bangladesh joins Afghanistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Mauritius and Sri Lanka in the list of states unfriendly to Delhi.” (Why the Bangladesh revolution is a problem for India by Kapil Komireddi, The Sunday Times, 11 August 2024)
There is almost universal agreement that Hasina brought the trouble on herself by passing a law that proposed to give priority in employment to the descendants of those who had fought for secession at the time of Bangladesh’s separation from Pakistan in 1971-2. Such a law would have adversely affected hardline islamists, already disgusted with the Awami League’s secularist approach, since it is they who were most inclined to side with west Pakistan at the time of the civil war, and they who have been giving Awami League government a hard time ever since.
But if one looks more closely at the history of this legislation, it will readily be seen that Hasina was not supporting it:
“The scheme, which had been discarded by Hasina in 2018, was reinstated by a court in June [2024]. The court’s decision was appealed, and the supreme court scrapped it a month later. But in between the protests intensified.” (Kapil Komireddi, op cit)
The flames were arduously being fanned by islamists fortified by US imperialist backing and anti-hindu rhetoric. They clearly understood that they would be supported to the hilt to keep going until the government fell, so that is what they did.
The ’benevolent dictator’
What of Muhammad Yunus? His appearance is friendly and avuncular, exuding apparent good will. He is credited with setting up a special bank, the Granmeen [village] Bank tasked with making mini loans to peasant women to help them set up small businesses, as a means by which they could escape destitution.
This scheme, within its own limitations, has been successful and has no doubt helped quite a few people avoid starvation. Sheikh Hasina very much encouraged his efforts at the beginning. His microcredit ideas have been adopted in many other countries, and he was awarded a Nobel prize for Economics.
However, he has always been extremely pro-western, having lived seven years in the USA as a student and then a university lecturer, even boasting of close friendship with Hillary Clinton. When in 2007 the Bangladeshi military staged a coup, putting both Sheikh Hasina and her islamist electoral rival in prison, he tried to form a political party of his own that would be acceptable to the military, for which, however, he found little support among the Bangladeshi people.
One can only assume that it is this prostration before US imperialism in particular that has earned him a well-documented hostility from Sheikh Hasina, whose success in improving her country’s finances is undoubtedly due to some considerable extent to her refusing to succumb to US imperialist demands.
Yunus has returned Hasina’s hostility with interest: “Yunus featured as far back as 2015 when he communicated a desire to support (or even lead) a ‘benevolent dictatorship’ that would replace the democratically elected government of Hasina” – a post that he would now appear to have achieved! (Chan Akya, op cit)
The rioting that led to Hasina’s overthrow was led by educated youth furious at having been unable to find employment commensurate with their skills. Under Yunus’s ‘benevolent dictatorship’ they will undoubtedly be taught the lesson that changing a nationalist bourgeois government for one beholden to imperialism is not going to bring about any overall improvement in their situation, which is only too likely to get worse rather than better.
Plus, as and when US imperialism decides to use military force against China, Bangladesh would inevitably become a theatre of war.
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For more information on US backing for Muhammad Yunus, see Brian Berletic’s article and video: US regime change in Bangladesh: the danger of ignoring US interference.
