18-08-2024: As far as covert regime change operations go, this one was one of the most violent. Since riots broke out in Bangladesh in July, ostensibly following protests over public service job quotas, at least 300 people have lost their lives. In the north-eastern town of Enayetpur the “protestors” attacked a police station and killed 11 police officers.[1] Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country in a helicopter, and hours later pro-Western (under the guise of being pro-Bangladesh) hoodlums tore down a statue of Sheikh Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibar Rehman, who was widely known as the “Father of the Nation”.[2] The violence ended Sheikh Hasina’s 15 years in power, despite being re-elected as Prime Minister little more than six months ago.[3] So much for the demonstrators respecting the will of the people of Bangladesh, or its liberation struggle which led to its founding in 1971.
Warnings of subversion
It was not as if no one saw it coming. In November last year, The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman for the Russian Federation Maria Zakharova stated that information had come to light about a meeting between the US Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter Haas and a high-ranking leader of the opposition. Haas and the opposition reportedly discussed organising mass anti-government protests, with assurances that the protestors would be given support in the event of the government using force against “peaceful demonstrations”. Such assurances were given on behalf of the embassies of the US, Britian, Australia and several other countries.[4] Hardly bothering to conceal which side they back, US Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen and five other congressional Democrats sent a letter calling on Joe Biden’s administration to sanction the ex-Prime Minister’s Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader and her home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal.[5]
In May this year, Sheikh Hasina was reportedly approached by a representative of the US government who offered to “disappear” political problems if they allowed a US air base to be set up in Bangladesh.[6] This was at a time when rumours were circulating that the West would back a pro-US separatist Christian Kuki proxy state across Bangladesh and into neighbouring Myanmar. Before being forced to flee to India, Hasina implied that the US government orchestrated the mass anti-government protests (which quickly “forgot” about the reason they were allegedly called) to remove obstacles to the building of a military base on St Martin’s Island, which would effectively enable US control over the Bay of Bengal.[7] Some claim that the aim of the US deep state was to ramp up political pressure on India, given its role in solidifying the BRICS bloc, (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa plus Iran, Saudia Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates). This may have been only one aim, however.
Bangladesh-PRC-Russia ties
The iron law in the 21st century is that the more a nation develops trade, investment and political ties with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the more the US deep state will organise to sever these links, by fair means or foul. Due to the PRC’s historical links and alliances with Pakistan, PRC-Bangladesh relations were not always rosy. However, for the last 15 years, Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina took the rational course of affirming friendly ties to the PRC, at least in recognition of its giant manufacturing, industrial, technological and scientific achievements. The PRC became Bangladesh’s largest trading partner in 2006,[8] and volumes of trade have only increased since then. The PRC is Bangladesh’s largest arms supplier, with around 75%, compared to the Russian Federation at around 17%, and the US and the UK (United Kingdom) approximately 5%.[9] In 2016, Hasina authorised the purchasing of two refurbished submarines from the PRC. At the time, Hasina stated “We do not want war with anyone. But we must be prepared to give a befitting response if anyone attacks us.”[10]
Much more significant than defence ties is Bangladesh benefitting handsomely from being an early signatory to Beijing’s flagship multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Chinese firms have received an estimated $22.94 billion worth in construction contracts in Bangladesh and is involved in the building of 21 bridges and 27 power projects. Under the BRI – perhaps now in jeopardy – Bangladesh was to receive $26 billion for BRI projects and $14 billion for joint venture projects, totalling a $40 billion package.[11] The cementing of Bangladesh in the BRI came about in 2016, with PRC President Xi Jinping visiting Dhaka. He was the first Chinese President to visit Bangladesh in 30 years. Bangladesh has the goal of becoming a middle-income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041.[12] This is a grand aim, but one which cannot be done without extensive investment, trade and co-operation with the gargantuan PRC economy. Bangladesh’s population of around 173 million[13] has historically been afflicted by poverty and underdevelopment.
An escape from poverty and underdevelopment is not allowed, according to Washington, if this emerges from friendly relations with the PRC, or the PRC’s major non-imperialist ally, the Russian Federation. Lo and behold, just in April this year, Sheikh Hasina met with Rosatom’s Director General Alexei Likhachev. Rosatom is Russia’s vast state-owned nuclear energy conglomerate. Rosatom and Bangladesh had already signed an agreement in 2011 for the construction of nuclear energy plants at the Rooppur site, 160 kilometres from the capital Dhaka. This year, Hasina and Likhachev discussed plans for the construction of two more reactors at Rooppur, alongside the possibility of a multi-purpose research reactor.[14] The power reactors have a life cycle of 60 years, with the option of a 20-year extension. For a relatively underdeveloped nation such as Bangladesh, such agreements can only assist with its efforts to bring enduring and environmentally benign power to vast numbers of people. As if this did not raise hackles in the US state department enough, it was revealed that Bangladesh had agreed to pay Russia in Chinese Yuan for the construction of the $12.65 billion project.[15] Extensive PRC-Russia co-operation in combination, is beyond the pale for US imperialism.
US proxies
It is something of an understatement to say that the proposed new Prime Minister, Muhammad Yunus is a US puppet. In 2009, Wikileaks revealed that Yunus begged the US for help in changing Bangladeshi laws on his behalf. He implored the US government to pressure Sheikh Hasina to reverse a law giving the government control over the choosing of the chair of his Grameen Bank.[16] Yunus has received major awards from the US government, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2013.[17] As to how the US deep state was able to mobilise Bangladeshi students for their regime change operation, The New Atlas reported that 20 out of the 23 professors at the University of Dhaka Department of Political Science studied in the US itself.[18] One of the supposed student leaders Nahid Islam[19] is featured on the “Frontline Defenders” website, which states openly that it has partnership status with the Council of Europe.[20]
The US based “NGO Industrial Complex” is heavily involved in Bangladesh and has been for decades. The notorious Ford Foundation funds the “Bangladesh Freedom Foundation”[21], with this name alone giving the game away. The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) cutout National Endowment for Democracy (NED) admits to spending millions of dollars in programs just in the year 2021, through bogus fronts for “workers’ rights”, “environmental justice” and “fostering private enterprise against corruption” (!)[22] Billionaire anti-socialist regime change specialist George Soros and his Open Society Foundation (OSF) has been operating in Bangladesh since 1972, the year after its founding, funding schools, universities and health programs.[23] It is plain to see, however, that no matter how much benefit a country in the Global South may gain from these imperialist backed fronts operating “charities”, the real aim is internal political subversion, through any means available. Even if some are genuinely assisted, this is a cover for the decades of undermining and corroding the very institutions of these countries, so they can be activated when Washington pulls the trigger on a full throated, but politically reactionary, colour revolution.
Only the most naïve observer could conclude that in July students in Bangladesh protested for “freedom and democracy” against an “authoritarian” state. The government’s decisions on reserving positions in its civil service for veterans of Bangladesh’s liberation struggle was simply a pretext for unleashing regime change “protests”, which almost immediately involved provocative violence. The decades of imperialist subversion within the country in the form of the Western funded “NGO industrial complex” was activated in the service of Washington’s hybrid war against Beijing and Moscow – the mainstays of the non-imperialist BRICS alliance. Among the most credulous within the so-called left in imbibing the innocent “student protests” narrative are the Socialist Equality Party (SEP),[24] and Australia’s Socialist Alliance (Green Left Weekly, 06.08.2024, p.13) and Socialist Alternative (Red Flag, 05.08.2024, p.17). These self-identifying left parties generally become fodder for US backed regime change operations as they hold nonsensical views about the entire planet being dominated simply by Eastern and Western “capitalist” blocs in competition with each other.
Incendiaries for hire
Students, generally speaking, do not attack and kill police and security services personnel. For this, terrorist fanatics willing to subordinate themselves to imperialism are required. In Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) fits the bill to a tee. JEI’s founder was Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, a figure associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.[25] Ostensibly, its aim is to found a global Islamic state, but in practice they can be utilised by the deep states of the West as foot soldiers in its war against anything semi-secular or semi-socialist or even just independent of imperialism. In a similar way in which ISIS and Al Qaeda are used as barbarous mercenaries in Syria, Iraq and African countries or the homicidal Hamas is used in Palestine (which was originally the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood), JEI are more than prepared to burn Bangladesh to the ground, innocent people included, on behalf of their benefactors. For this reason, JEI has been banned on and off for the past 20 years. On July 30 this year, JEI was again banned as Sheikh Hasina – not without foundation – blamed JEI and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, for the violence sweeping the nation.[26]
The US State Department, however, has sought to portray JEI as the victim of government “abuses”, whitewashing its terrorist history. It reported on the July 30 banning of JEI, but attempted to deny it had any involvement in the recent protests.[27] Never believe anything until it is officially denied, as the saying goes. For its part, the Russian Federation has imposed a total ban on JEI as a terrorist organisation,[28] as it has done for ISIS and Al Qaeda. On August 12, soon after the overthrow of the former government, JEI Ameer Shafiqur Rahman met with the US installed puppet Muhammad Yunus. Without a hint of irony, Shafiqur Rahman called for the prosecution of officials of the former government they had just helped remove and claimed that JEI would play the role of “watchmen” to prevent the attacking of houses and places of worship of different religions.[29] This takes some gall, as they had just played a huge role in violent attacks on the state, resulting in clashes with the police and the army resulting the loss of life of hundreds of people. Their role as incendiary terrorists acting on cue in the service of imperialist orchestrated regime change could scarcely be more clear.
The now constant regime change operations around the world are just one part of the world war imperialism is waging against the BRICS bloc, which is anchored by the immense industrial power of the socialistic PRC, based on its predominantly public ownership of the means of production and a planned economy. It is in the vital interests of workers internationally to defend this non-imperialist bloc, and all those who maintain friendly relations with it, against internal and external Western sponsored regime change. Capitalism has arrived at an end stage, and a new era of socialism beckons. The first steps towards this epoch, however, cannot be taken without genuine Marxist leadership of the working class internationally. The assembly of authentic Leninist vanguard parties bound with the theory of permanent revolution is a critical task for a future without violence and war.
Workers League
E: workersleague@protonmail.com
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20240804-more-than-50-dead-bangladesh-protest-calling-prime-minister-resignation-sheikh-hasina (14-08-2024)
[2] www.firstpost.com/world/bangladesh-founder-sheikh-mujibur-rehman-statue-hammered-dhaka-sheikh-hasina-protests-13801245.html (14-08-2024)
[3] www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-prime-minister-sheikh-hasina-resigns-and-leaves-bangladesh-ending-15/ (14-08-2024)
[4] www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1916716/#9 (14-08-2024)
[5] www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1218883-us-senators-urge-sanctions-on-hasina-administrations-officials (14-08-2024)
[6] www.korybko.substack.com/p/bangladesh-warned-about-a-western (14-08-2024)
[7] www.rumble.com/v5ajn7d-ousted-bangladeshi-pm-alludes-to-us-link-to-her-resignation-and-riots.html (14-08-2024)
[8] www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2023.2300109 (14-08-2024)
[9] www.merics.org/en/china-bangladesh-relations-three-way-balance-between-china-india-and-us (14-08-2024)
[10] www.benarnews.org/english/news/bengali/submarine-base-03202023153729.html (14-08-2024)
[11] www.tbsnews.net/economy/how-chinas-belt-and-road-changing-bangladeshs-infrastructures-709826 (14-08-2024)
[12] www.bdnews24.com/bangladesh/bangladesh-formally-joins-chinas-flagship-one-belt-one-road-initiative (14-08-2024)
[13] www.worldometers.info/demographics/bangladesh-demographics/ (14-08-2024)
[14] www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Bangladesh-considering-two-more-nuclear-units (14-08-2024)
[15] www.reuters.com/business/energy/bangladesh-pay-russia-yuan-nuclear-plant-2023-04-17/ (14-08-2024)
[16] www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09DHAKA469_a.html (14-08-2024)
[17] www.muhammadyunus.org/post/1104/dr-muhammad-yunus-first-american-muslim-recipient-of-congressional-gold-medal (14-08-2024)
[18] www.polisci.du.ac.bd/faculty-members/ (14-08-2024)
[19] www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/nahid-islam (14-08-2024)
[20] www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/who-we-are (14-08-2024)
[21] www.freedomfound.org/aboutus/theorganization/ (14-08-2024)
[22] www.ned.org/region/asia/bangladesh-2021/ (14-08-2024)
[23] www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/what-brac-is-doing-for-the-poor (14-08-2024)
[24] www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/14/jztk-a14.html (14-08-2024)
[25] www.firstpost.com/explainers/what-is-jamaat-e-islami-the-pakistan-backed-group-that-fuelled-the-bangladesh-crisis-13802285.html (15-08-2024)
[26] www.edition.cnn.com/2024/08/01/asia/bangladesh-bans-jamaat-e-islami-protest-intl-hnk/index.html (15-08-2024)
[27] www.journal-neo.su/2024/08/11/whats-behind-regime-change-in-bangladesh/ (15-08-2024)
[28] www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaat-e-Islami (15-08-2024)
[29] www.jamaat-e-islami.org/en/news-details.php?category=2&news=3793 (15-08-2024)
Image: Protestors prepare to tear down a statue of Sheikh Mujibar Rehman, the father of Sheikh Hasina, and known as the father of Bangladesh. http://www.news18.com
Red Fire 