Cairo: Mai Kamal El-Din
The past month has been marked by tumultuous events in one of South Asia’s most densely populated countries—Bangladesh. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has served in this role seven times, was re-elected four times, and has held power for fifteen years, fled the country amidst mass protests that lasted over a month. According to BBC reports, thousands of demonstrators stormed the Prime Minister’s residence, Ganobhaban, just before her escape. France Presse stated that Hasina intended to record a speech for the public, but was unable to do so. The security forces and the military sided with the protesters, giving the Prime Minister only 45 minutes to leave the capital, Dhaka.
Consequently, the 76-year-old Hasina, along with her sister, flew to India, landing in the northeastern city of Agartala. Immediately after, the Chief of Staff and Commander of the Bangladesh Army, General Waker-uz-Zaman, announced the formation of a temporary government. He stated that those responsible for the killings and riots would be held accountable. “Trust in the army. We have met with leaders of political parties,” said Waker-uz-Zaman.
Up until this point, the main internal issue facing Bangladesh, in addition to the widespread poverty, was the autocratic regime of the same clan for decades. The Hasina clan has ruled the country, with brief interruptions, since its formation in 1971, amounting to over fifty years. The average age of the population in Bangladesh is 25 years, with a per capita GDP of $2,500, reflecting the low value placed on human life.
The country has essentially turned into a global textile factory, trapped in a cycle of the same social and economic model. Simultaneously, it is overflowing with impoverished youth who are now capable of using the internet and fearlessly standing up to armed forces. The result is a build-up of internal discontent leading to yet another social explosion.
Bangladesh has a rich national tradition of coups disguised as revolutions, carried out by military juntas. There have been at least five such events within the first ten years of independence. Throughout these events, the clan of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was periodically removed from power and then returned. Often, these transitions—from the ousting of an old government to the establishment of a new one—took less than a week.
The saga began on August 15, 1975, when President Mujibur Rahman, the “father of national independence,” was overthrown and assassinated along with his family in his residence. The coup was organized by career officers who had served in Pakistan, disgruntled that veterans of the liberation movement (Mukti Bahini) had been favored over them.
On November 3 of the same year, the military junta created by Rahman’s assassins was overthrown by General Khaled Mosharraf. Before being exiled, the coup organizers executed officials from Mujibur’s government, fearing that Mosharraf aimed to restore the ousted clan to power. However, he only sought power for himself and managed to become Chief of Staff and the de facto ruler of Bangladesh for just a few days.
On November 7, Mosharraf was overthrown and killed by members of the “Revolutionary Soldiers’ Association,” a Maoist military organization led by Colonel Abu Taher. Following their agenda, the Association began eliminating officers not aligned with them, plunging the country into anarchy.
On November 24, 1975, Chief of Staff Ziaur Rahman arrested Abu Taher, disbanded the Maoists, assumed the presidency, and took measures to reduce the frequency of military coups in Bangladesh to less than once a week. By May 1977, 98.8% of the population expressed complete trust in this president during a referendum. However, on May 30, 1981, General Muhammad Manzur, dissatisfied with the marginalization of the 1971 war veterans and his own assignment to Chittagong, assassinated President Rahman during an inspection visit.
The current protests in Bangladesh began in late June, resulting in over 300 deaths. The formal trigger for the unrest was the reinstatement of quotas for war veterans and their families, with the Hasina government allocating nearly a third of public sector positions (around 30%) to this group. Students, already accusing the government of poor socioeconomic policies, took to the streets en masse, demanding an end to the quota system.
The successful coup and the Prime Minister’s flight, followed by the army’s announcement of a temporary government, herald a series of significant changes not only in Bangladesh itself but also across the South Asian region.
On the foreign policy track, the events in Bangladesh mean, first of all, the loss of another key ally for India, which had earlier lost its allied ties with the Maldives and Myanmar and is facing competition from China in its relations with Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Now, after the fall of the Hasina government in Bangladesh, India remains in relatively friendly and stable relations in the region only with Bhutan, Mauritius and the Seychelles. In fact, the current coup d’état in Bangladesh strengthens a certain isolation of India in South Asia and at the same time pushes it towards what pro-Western experts call “energy cooperation with the countries of Central Asia”.
At first glance, the fact that a pro-Indian government has collapsed in Bangladesh may indicate that China is preparing to take control of this country. In this regard, Indian experts are already expecting a sharp increase in Pakistan’s influence (according to some reports, Pakistani agents were involved in the unrest). In fact, China is getting an opportunity to significantly expand its influence in Bangladesh. As a result, India may end up surrounded by pro-Chinese regimes – in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Maldives, where a supporter of rapprochement with China recently came to power.
At the same time, behind the coup in Bangladesh and everything that is happening in South Asia as a result of this, one can feel the direct interest and participation of the Anglo-Saxons. They are the ones who are interested in India changing the vector of its aspirations from South Asia to the region of post-Soviet Central (Middle) Asia and thereby for the first time directly and immediately coming into conflict with the interests of Russia.
Last year, the English-language media tried to provoke the Indians with information that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina “has recently been flirting with China and Russia” and “intends to bring Bangladesh into BRICS.” In this context, it is characteristic that the message of the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh that the reason for her overthrow was the refusal to place a US military base on the island of St. Martin, which belongs to the province of Chittagong.
Hasina’s letter with the relevant information was published in the Indian newspaper The Economic Times. At the same time, while in India, she herself for some reason applied for political asylum to … Great Britain! Sheikh Hasina’s sister already has British citizenship, and her niece – a member of the British Parliament from the Labor Party since 2015 – even joined the new Cabinet of Ministers.
It is noteworthy that the statement about the role of the United States and overseas Anglo-Saxons in the unrest and the coup d’etat, apparently, does not reduce Hasina’s chances of receiving refugee status from the Anglo-Saxons of the island, as well as the presence of relatives in America, and the fact that the United States remains the main trading partner of Bangladesh. It is all the more surprising that Sheikh Hasina had already spoken about the circumstances of this case in the media before, when she was still the head of government.
According to her, at the very beginning of this year, before the general elections in Bangladesh (they took place on January 7, 2024 and caused a wave of criticism in the West for being “undemocratic”, while the press secretary of the Russian Foreign Ministry M. Zakharova accused the United States of interfering in the internal affairs of Bangladesh and supporting opposition forces), a certain “white man” met with her. He said that during the elections she “would not have problems” only if she allowed the country he represented to build a military base on the territory of Bangladesh – in Chittagong, on the island of St. Martin.
This is a small tropical resort opposite the coast of Myanmar. The appearance of a US military base here would almost immediately create a real threat to China’s projects being implemented in Myanmar. For example, the existing pipelines for transporting oil and gas from the coast of Myanmar to the Chinese province of Yunnan, as well as the planned construction of the deep-water port of Chao Phue on the coast of Rakhine State with a special economic zone and a logistics corridor to China.
These projects were launched by Beijing largely due to the fact that the United States can easily block the Strait of Malacca near Singapore and thereby cut off China from energy resources. If the Americans manage to build a base, then in fact they will also take control of the new route – St. Martin’s Island is 180 km from the future port of Chao Phue.
That is, it is possible that Sheikh Hasina, without wanting to, protected China’s strategically important interests (as it turned out later – at the cost of her premiership). And thereby immediately set India against herself, and the Anglo-Saxons who support her in the confrontation with China. Hasina herself explains her position by the threat of separatism in the mountainous regions of Chittagong populated by small Christian peoples. According to her, the Americans have plans to split Myanmar and create a separate Christian state on the territory of its Chin state and the adjacent regions of Bangladesh and India, which, in turn, should lead to a large-scale reformatting in the interests of the Anglo-Saxons of the entire South Asian region.
