What’s Behind Regime Change in Bangladesh

August 11, 2024 (NEO – Brian Berletic) - Violent regime change in the South Asian country of Bangladesh unfolded rapidly and mostly by stealth as the rest of the world focused on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, growing tensions in the Middle East and a simmering confrontation between the US and China in the Asia-Pacific region.

The implications of the successful putsch, carried out by US-backed opposition groups, stands to impact South and Southeast Asia, as well as create instability along the peripheries of the two most populous nations on Earth, China and India.

Because of Russia’s close relations with both China and India, Russia itself stands to be affected as well.

Who Was Protesting and Who Was Behind Them? 

It was US government-funded media, Voice of America, in a 2023 article admitting the role the US ambassador to Bangladesh himself played in backing opposition in the South Asian country.

The article would admit in a photo caption that US Ambassador Peter Haas, “is popular in Bangladesh among pro-democracy and rights activists and critics of the Sheikh Hasina regime.”

The same article would admit to steps the US had already taken to pressure Bangladesh to conduct future elections in such a manner as to produce the desired outcome Washington sought, noting:

…the U.S. government announced that it had started “taking steps to impose visa restrictions” on Bangladeshi individuals who are found complicit in “undermining the democratic electoral process” in Bangladesh.

The article admits that the Awami League (AL) party, which had ruled in Bangladesh up until the recent, violent protests, had accused US Ambassador Haas of interfering in Bangladesh’s internal political affairs and specifically of supporting the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) as well as street violence on its behalf.

The “Muscle” 

While the Western media portrayed the unrest in Bangladesh as “pro-democracy” demonstrations led by “student protesters,” the BBC in its July 2023 article, “Bangladesh PM blames political foes for violence,” would obliquely admit that the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami movement, including its student wings, were behind the violence.

Since Bangladesh gained independence, it has banned Jammat-e-Islami on and off for decades, depending who held power, with the organization accused of having committed extensive acts of violence.

Voice of America, republishing an Associated Press article, would note that, “most of the senior leaders of the party have been hanged or jailed since 2013 after courts convicted them of crimes against humanity including killings, abductions and rapes in 1971.”

It should be noted that outside of Bangladesh, other governments have also designated Jammat-e-Islami as a terrorist organization, including the Russian Federation.

The US State Department, for its part, has published a report as recently as 2023 whitewashing the violent history and enduring threat the organization poses to Bangladesh, portraying Jammat-e-Islami instead as the victims of government “abuses.”

While the Western media has reported on the ban of Jammat-e-Islami, none of the reports have attempted to deny its involvement in the most recent protests.

The “Face” of the Protests 

Just like other protests organized by the US around the globe, it appears a conglomeration of violent organizations like Jammat-e-Islami along with so-called “civil society” groups funded by the US government as well as supporters of US-backed opposition parties took to the streets, each performing a vital role.

Violent street fronts create violence in a bid to escalate protests, civil society poses as the “face” of the movement both on the streets and across information space, while US-backed political parties use the resulting chaos to maneuver themselves into power.

Fulfilling the role of providing a “face” to the global public were a number of students from Dhaka University’s political science department including Nahid Islam and Nusrat Tabassum, both of whom have their own profile on the US and European government as well as Open Society-funded Front Line Defenders database.

Because many around the world are beginning to understand and look for evidence of US government involvement in regime change around the globe, the US has been more careful about how it supports such activities. While Nahid Islam, Nusrat Tabassum, and other core leaders of the “student” protests have no known, direct connections to the US government, Dhaka University does.

Its department of political science in particular, from which these “leaders” emerged, regularly conducts activities with Western-centric organizations and forums. The department is staffed by professors involved in US government-funded programs, including the so-called “Confronting Misinformation in Bangladesh (CMIB) project”. This includes professors Saima Ahmed and Dr. Kajalei Islam, who both serve as part of the project’s head team alongside US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) grantees and US State Department Fulbright scholars.

Considering how thoroughly Dhaka University’s political science department has been infiltrated by the US government through the extensive money and scholarships made available through the NED and Fulbright, the emergence of “students” serving US interests by posing as the face for US-backed regime change in Bangladesh comes as no surprise.

A Familiar Template 

The use of violent extremist-led street fronts and so-called “student protesters” to destabilize targeted nations, oust targeted governments, and help install into power US-backed opposition parties fits into a wider global pattern admitted to by the Western media itself.

In 2004, the London Guardian admitted to US-sponsored regime change across Eastern Europe targeting Belarus, Serbia, and Ukraine, as well as Georgia in the Caucasus region, stating of the unrest in Ukraine at the time, that:

…the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes. Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

The same article would also claim that, “the operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections.” 

The same “template” would be used again across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, according to the New York Times in its article, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings.”

The NYT would admit:

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

The article would mention the NED and its subsidiaries by name, as well as the US State Department and its partners from among US-based tech companies like Google and Facebook (now Meta), all as being involved in applying the same “template” described by the Guardian in 2004.

The 2011 unrest across the Arab World and the finally successful overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014 both featured the use of US-backed extremist organizations. In Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria, organizations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda were utilized, while in Ukraine, neo-Nazi militias fulfilled this role. Both networks of violent extremists have since played extensive roles in the resulting wars following US regime change in these respective regions.

With the US openly pressuring Bangladesh to conduct elections according to Washington’s standards while its ambassador in Dhaka openly supported the opposition groups seeking to oust the Bangladeshi government, it is very clear this “template” has now been successfully applied to Bangladesh.

Who Do the US-Backed Protesters Want in Power? 

Associated Press (via Time magazine) in its article, Bangladesh Protesters Pitch Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus to Lead Interim Government, would report:

A key organizer of Bangladesh’s student protests said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus was their choice as head of an interim government, a day after longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned.

It would be the “student leaders” drawn from Dhaka University’s political science department who proposed Yunus’ name, and thus it should come as no surprise that Yunus himself is both a US State Department Fulbright scholar as well as a recipient of various awards furnished by the collective West to build up his credibility.

This includes the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to other US proxies around the globe, including Aung San Suu Kyi in neighboring Myanmar.

Yunus was also awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and the US Congressional Medal in 2013. On the website of Yunus’ organization, the “Yunus Centre,” in a 2013 post titled, “Dr. Muhammad Yunus, first American Muslim recipient of Congressional Gold Medal,” he is bizarrely referred to as an “American Muslim,” despite no indication he has any actual American citizenship.

The Implications of Regime Change in Bangladesh 

Despite the obvious backing and affiliations all involved in the protests in Bangladesh have with the United States government, it should also be mentioned that both the BNP and Yunus himself have cultivated ties with American adversaries, including China.

Unfortunately, empty rhetoric about “democracy” and “freedom” has filled global information space regarding Bangladesh’s political crisis rather than any discussion of actual policy, foreign or domestic, the opposition may seek to implement if they take power. However, the deep involvement of the US in removing a sitting government from power in Bangladesh and Washington’s deep infiltration of Bangladesh’s education and political system bodes poorly for both Bangladesh and its neighbors.

The US has obvious motivations in creating chaos along China’s periphery. With a violent conflict already raging in Myanmar, Bangladesh’s neighbor to the east, extending that chaos to Bangladesh itself serves to destabilize the wider region even further. It specifically opens the door to derail joint projects between China and Bangladesh and create another potential chokepoint along China’s so-called “String of Pearls” network of ports supporting its extensive maritime shipping to the Middle East and beyond.

It also places pressure on India. With the prospect of a political crisis on its own border growing, New Delhi may be pressured into concessions to the US regarding its relationship with Russia and its role in buying and selling Russian energy to circumvent Western sanctions.

Whatever transpires in the weeks and months ahead in the fallout of US-backed regime change in Bangladesh, it is important to understand just how deeply involved the US still is all around the globe, even in countries that often are omitted from daily headlines and geopolitical analysis. It is also important to understand the necessity for greater awareness of how the US interferes around the globe and how it can be both exposed and stopped.

Successful US interference anywhere around the globe helps further enable US interference everywhere else.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”