While addressing a special session of parliament on April 10, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina harshly criticized the United States’ meddling in global affairs under the guise of “democratization,” particularly in nations with a Muslim majority. She used the refusal of consecutive US administrations to extradite Rashed Chowdhury and the bigotry suffered by African-Americans as instances of American hypocrisy on human rights and democracy.
Those who are well-versed in the politics of Bangladesh would not be surprised by the comments. The comments may seem harsh or populist to those who do not, but they are intended to be humorous. I will do my best to provide the latter with some important context and history.
Let’s start with an objective evaluation of the Prime Minister’s statements about US “democratization” and racism before we go further into the role of the United States in Bangladeshi politics. Gallup recently released the results of a massive study it conducted in 13 nations with a mostly Muslim population to gauge their opinion of the US’s genuineness in supporting democracy. According to the results (April 7, 2023) the vast majority of people in these countries do not believe the United States is really interested in promoting the growth of democracy in the area or in enabling people to choose their own political destiny.
Six out of ten Black people in the United States agree that racism and police brutality are major issues for their community, according to a research by the Pew Research Centre (August 22, 2022). Most African-Americans have little faith that things will improve in terms of racial equality in the near future. Eighty-four percent of African-American adults in a recent PRC survey said that they are treated less properly by police than Whites (April 9, 2019). Also, fatal police shootings of Black individuals are twice as often as those of White persons (Mapping Police Violence, 2021).
Now that we know the Bangladeshi prime minister wasn’t wrong about the facts, we may discuss why she could have said what she did. The United States has been involved in Bangladesh’s history for quite some time, and especially during its worst periods. However, the United States’ recent blunders in Bangladesh may be traced back to its involvement with the country’s military-backed administration in 2007 and 2008. Some northern diplomats stationed in Dhaka helped legitimize the dictatorship, which was actually conducting a sweeping depoliticization campaign by arresting politicians en masse, and this included diplomats from the United States. The administration effectively prohibited politics after arresting both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia.
Muhammad Yunus, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, was an exception to the rule. At the behest of the military regime, the diplomats supporting the regime, and a certain media group that enthusiastically subscribed to the depoliticization agenda, Yunus shocked everyone by announcing the formation of “Nagorik Shokti,” a political platform separate from Bangladesh’s two major political parties. Politicians were languishing in bars on bogus accusations while the project was mocked as a “King’s Party” for its tight ties to the dictatorship. After realizing that people weren’t on board with his plan, Yunus scrapped it and avoided going down in history as Bangladesh’s “Iyad Alawi.”
Muhammad Yunus was forced out of his job as CEO of Grameen Bank by the Bangladeshi government in 2011 because he had worked in the public sector much beyond the mandatory retirement age. This would be seen as a political vengeance by Yunus and his followers both at home and abroad. On many occasions, the prime minister and other prominent members of her party have stated that influential overseas allies of Yunus, particularly those at the US State Department, campaigned for allowing Yunus to remain in his role.
Naturally, then-US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was blamed because of her close relationship with Yunus and the World Bank’s decision to withdraw funding for the Padma Bridge project in June 2012 due to corruption allegations (later found to be unsubstantiated by a Canadian court).
According to a story in The Observer (May 17, 2017), Yunus gave the Clinton Foundation between $100,000 and $250,000 via his nonprofit Grameen America, while his other organization, Grameen Research, gave between $25,000 and $50,000. In an interview, Sajeeb Wazed, the prime minister’s son and an unpaid ICT advisor located in the United States, alleged that top State Department officials frequently urged him between 2010 and 2012 to convince his mother to end the probe against Yunus. He also said the IRS threatened to audit him (The Daily Caller, April 25, 2017).
Sheikh Hasina’s ideal infrastructure project would be the Padma Bridge. Thus, the decision by the World Bank was more than just a political setback for Sheikh Hasina. It seemed quite close to home. Still, the PM chose to go through with the project using his own money, and in June 2022, with Chinese finance, he launched the country’s greatest development project, much to the delight of the 30 million people who live in the southwest.
One of the most contentious issues in Bangladeshi politics since 2010 has been the prosecution of people responsible for atrocities perpetrated during the 1971 Liberation War. At home, the trials enjoyed tremendous support, but in the United States, the procedure had been met with criticism. Awami League won a resounding victory among young voters in Bangladesh’s general election in December 2008 thanks in large part to the party’s promise to proceed with these trials.
Several prominent Jamaat-E-Islami members stood trial for their alleged involvement in the genocide of 1971. The Islamist party was reportedly spending a fortune on lobbying the US government, legislators, and others to put pressure on the Bangladeshi government to abandon the trials, since this was extensively reported in the mainstream media. It’s unclear whether or not all of the expensive lobbying attempts were successful. However, it has been widely speculated and even stated by the prime minister herself that the United States pushed the Bangladeshi government to postpone the executions of senior war criminals of Jamaat after they were legally convicted by the country’s internal courts.
Given the United States’ complicit participation in the 1971 genocide committed by the Pakistan Army and its local accomplices, this attitude from the United States reopened old wounds for Bangladesh. Despite current attempts to justify these events as “cold war realities,” involvement in genocide cannot be equated with adversity. The United States failed the people of Bangladesh in 1971 by supporting the genocidal Pakistani junta, and it failed them again by not supporting the people of Bangladesh in their quest for justice and truth regarding those events.
One of the guilty masterminds of the mass massacre of Bengali intellectuals in 1971, Ashrafuzzaman, continues to hide in plain sight in the United States, exactly like Bangabandhu’s convicted assassin Rashed Chowdhury. The head of the firmly nationalist Awami League saw the United States’ support for Yunus and Jamaat-E-Islami (basically Bangladesh’s Nazi Party) as intolerable intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign country.
In this light, the United States stopped GSP benefits for Bangladesh in July 2013, citing the country’s failure to improve labor standards. It was generally believed that lobbying efforts in Washington and other political considerations on part of the US contributed to or perhaps caused the suspension, despite the fact that working conditions in Bangladeshi factories, particularly in the garments industry, were far from acceptable at the time. The fact that Khaleda Zia, then the primary opposition leader, urged the United States and its allies to apply sanctions on Bangladesh, including the cancellation of GSP, in an Op-Ed for the Washington Times (January 30, 2013), did not assist the perception.
Despite the United States’ periodic efforts to remark on political concerns in Bangladesh during the following several years, ties remained steady. Despite some occasional hyperbole, the Awami League was beginning to show some interest in improving ties with the United States. This is despite the fact that many in positions of power within the Awami League Government were concerned that the United States was failing to recognize and appreciate the government’s accomplishment in rooting out both international and homegrown terrorist organizations. The only female leader of a Muslim-majority state has achieved remarkable success in the worldwide fight on terror, and many people believe the United States should have been more supportive of her efforts.
However, the trust that had been built between 2015 and 2020 was shattered when the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Bangladesh’s special security unit, the Rapid Action Battalion, on December 10, 2021 for suspected human rights violations. The prime minister, her administration, and her political party did not take this well. During the BNP-Jamaat dictatorship (2001-2006), the RAB was established and received training from the United States. It played a pivotal role in combating terrorists and hardened criminals. It was widely believed—correctly or incorrectly—that political and geopolitical considerations rather than human rights concerns drove the decision to impose sanctions on RAB.
Sheikh Hasina, who was re-elected in December 2008, has guided Bangladesh’s foreign policy in the same direction as the country’s founder. Sheikh Hasina has expertly navigated ties with India, China, the United States, and Russia by adhering to the maxim “Friendship to all, malice to none.” She is a firm believer in the need of developing nations having a non-aligned foreign policy.
Although it is currently fashionable to argue that a simple concept like “friendship not enmity” cannot be a “proper” foreign policy, Sheikh Hasina has used it to secure additional maritime territory from India and Myanmar via international institutions, resolve one of the most complex border challenges in the world by signing the Land Boundary Agreement with India, and strengthen infrastructure development cooperation with China to build such megaprojects as the Pak-China railway.
Many in Bangladesh believe that Sheikh Hasina has fallen out of favor with the United States because her administration has not shown disrespect or antagonism toward nations that America views as threats. They believe that this is why the United States is attempting to defame and/or undermine her government by citing human rights concerns. Visiting US officials, the current US ambassador, and the US Embassy have all made a number of remarks and comments on elections, human rights, and freedom of the press in recent months, lending credence to this hypothesis.
Although everyone agrees that Bangladesh’s upcoming elections must be fair and that the country must turn its development successes into governance successes, the public and suo-moto nature of the United States’ statements and comments have given the impression that the United States is not being neutral and has a dog in the fight. Some of their words and comments, in the opinion of former diplomats, foreign policy experts, and international relations scholars, violated diplomatic rules and constituted meddling in the internal political affairs of the host country.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent statements should not be brushed off as anti-American populist rhetoric from a developing country’s head of state without first considering the historical and political conditions in which they were made. Understanding her perspective is crucial for evaluating the course of US-Bangladesh ties during the last decade and planning for the relationship’s future. Her feelings of injustice are, at the very least, not fabricated.
