The toppling of an elected government through violent street protests in Bangladesh has evoked memories of the 2014 Maidan Square “revolution” that removed President Viktor Yanukovych, who had been chosen as head of State through the ballot by the people of Ukraine. That incident eventually funnelled into a bloody armed conflict between Moscow and Kiev that has triggered deep turmoil across the globe.
The common thread between the two events—in Bangladesh and Ukraine—is the National Endowment of Democracy (NED). But more of that later. First, a recap of what transpired in Dhaka and abroad that caused a perfect storm to unseat Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
After nearly two months of street protests over excessive job reservations for scions of Bangladeshi freedom fighters, the elected Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee her homeland. In the entire project, dark forces at home and abroad used students as feedstock to trigger regime change. Hasina, the proud daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, who stood up against a genocidal Pakistan, but wedded his country to a progressive, secular, and inclusive ideology, flew to New Delhi in a special Bangladeshi military plane on that fateful evening of August 5.
But who really was responsible for mobilising such massive street power in Dhaka that forced an elected leader into unceremonious exile? Here it is important to understand the bigger geopolitical plot seemingly hatched by the deep state in the United States, to force its comeback in Southwest Asia. That’s where the backstory of Bangladesh gets locked with what transpired in troubled Afghanistan a few years ago.
It is now apparent that after facing a humiliating retreat on August 15, 2021 from Afghanistan, a country that stands strategically at the gates of South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia and China, the Americans were desperate to stage a riposte in the region. The seething rivalry of the U.S. for geopolitical bandwidth with two formidable Eurasian powers—China and Russia—only fuelled Washington’s urgency to somehow get back in the driver’s seat in the region.
The US got its first opportunity to contest China in Pakistan, where the military—traditionally the nucleus of national power—was finding it hard to collar Prime Minister Imran Khan. Though hauled in by the Pakistani army in 2018 through what was seen by many observers as a contrived election, Khan had turned rogue. The mercurial former Prime Minister, in fact had made the fatal error of brazenly targeting former army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. He further tried to breach the military through his special ties with former ISI chief, Faiz Hamid and several other retired but influential generals. But more importantly, from a big-picture perspective, Khan had been demonstrating a soft-corner for China, and a propensity to flirt with Russia. Both countries were in Washington’s cross-hairs.
That’s where the Pakistani military and the Americans—the two traditionally close allies—found common cause. Project exit Imran Khan began in earnest after the latter was removed from power in a no-confidence motion in the Pakistani parliament on April 10, 2022. Khan’s incarceration only aggravated after his supporters were accused of mounting an anti-military revolt on May 9 in the subsequent year. On that pivotal day, violent mobs attacked Pakistan’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi as well as the headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Shockingly the Lahore corps commander’s guest house was ransacked. Imran Khan was thereafter jailed and continues his existence behind bars.
Following Khan’s marginalisation, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been brought back from his exile in the United Kingdom, Washington’s top ally. His party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) heads an anti-Imran coalition, which also includes the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and other smaller formations. The military’s bonds with the Americans have only strengthened under General Asim Munir, Gen. Bajwa’s successor. There have been credible reports that Pakistani military ferried weapons bound for Ukraine through Romania, a NATO member. The Pakistani thereby passed a key litmus test marshalled by the U.S. deep state, which helped reboot, what has been a very special relationship.
With the Americans back as formidable players in Pakistan, in sniffing distance of China and Afghanistan, stage-two has arrived for enabling Washington’s deeper entrenchment in South Asia.
That’s where Bangladesh—another major player on the geopolitical chess board- comes in. Sandwiched between India and Southeast Asia, Bangladesh is a great observation post to monitor China, as well as India which has spurned U.S. exhortations to dilute its strategic autonomy, causing the U.S. ambassador to India to publicly air his exasperation with New Delhi.
Besides, India supports a multipolar-world order, an ideological position that does not suit Washington, which refuses to accept that is no longer the sole superpower driving the global agenda. New Delhi’s friendly ties with Russia and its insistence to distance itself from the hostility towards Moscow, exhibited by the collective West have become major friction points between India and the US. Recently, India called for Washington’s exit from its Indian Ocean military base in Diego Garcia, arguing that the broader Chagos archipelago of which Diego Garcia is a part belonged to Mauritius.
This has added another layer of discomfort , which had already been rising, when New Delhi accused Washington of interfering in its general elections that brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a third five-year term in office. Specifically, the visit to Chennai in the midst of elections by Donald Lu, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs has raised hackles in New Delhi’s decision-making circles and its supporting ecosystem. To many, a U.S. State Department readout announcing Lu’s visit in May stated that he was visiting the U.S. consular personnel at the Chennai mission to “bolster bilateral engagement in southern India,” appeared as an obnoxious advocacy for sub-nationalism. Incidentally, Lu’s name and that of outgoing U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh Peter Hass has been swirling in cyberspace as key architects of regime change in Dhaka.
But in order to drive a foothold in Bangladesh, Hasina stood in Washington’s way. The former Prime Minister Hasina had already offended the Americans by remaining neutral in the Russia-Ukraine war. She also managed cordial relations with both China and India, majorly upsetting Washington’s geopolitical calculus.
In fact, Washington’s fury only multiplied following Hasina’s stinging criticism of the United States. In June 2023, she was on record to say that her party, the Awami League, unlike the rival Bangladesh National Party (BNP), does not wish to come to power by selling out St Martin’s Island.
“Now if I say that I will lease out St Martin’s Island or our country, there will also be no problem for me to stay in power. I know that,” she said during a press conference. Hasina has remarked that the U.S. wanted to build an airbase in the Bay of Bengal.
Besides, Hasina has accused the U.S. of carving out a “Christian country” from parts of Bangladesh and Myanmar. She said that a “white man” who met her before the Bangladesh elections in January this year had assured her of facing “no problems” during the elections if she allowed them to build an airbase on Bangladesh’s territory. Sheikh Hasina also compared the move to East Timor and said that “they will carve out a Christian country, taking parts of Bangladesh and Myanmar with a base in the Bay of Bengal.”
It is now becoming apparent that in order to get rid of Hasina, the U.S. deep state hatched abroad, an intricate plot that would bring to power the BNP—Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) combine after regime change in Dhaka had been accomplished. Consequently, an entire overseas soft-power ecosystem was set up, which would bring Tarique Rahman also called Tarique Zia, the son of BNP founder Gen. Ziaur Rehman and Khaleda Zia, as the de facto leader of the radical BNP-JEI alliance.
In this enterprise, the National Endowment for Democracy(NED)—a U.S. congress funded body with a larger ecosystem of foundations, NGOs, and human rights groups—apparently speared the task of threading a network of players and forces that would accomplish regime change inside Bangladesh. In fact, regime change in Bangladesh showcases a mutation of colour revolutions that have already afflicted other geographies including Caucasia, as well as West Asia and North Africa during the so-called Arab Spring.
In the case of Bangladesh, the NED has reportedly funded Right to Freedom, and organisation headed by William B. Milam, who incidentally has been an ambassador both to Bangladesh and Pakistan.
According to an article by Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, Milam is considered an influential figure within the U.S. Democratic Party, with access to a very large number of Democratic Party leaders, including Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.
Milam is reportedly a key player in backing the BNP-Jamaat combine in influential political circles in the US. Choudhury points out that the plot to remove Hasina, in which Milam’s name had cropped up was ready to roll out in 2022 itself. Somewhere in October 2022, Milam passed a secret message to BNP’s acting chairman Tarique Rahman. Incidentally, the message was conveyed through Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey, Executive Director at Right to Freedom. Ansarey was the perfect conduit to reach out to Rahman. The duo had known each other through Harris Chowdhury, who was private secretary to Khaleda Zia when she was Prime Minister between 2001 and 2006.
Ansarey eventually became Khaleda Zia’s deputy press secretary. But his main job, according to Choudhury, the journalist, was to take orders from Rahman.
These included handling bribery cash, maintaining liaison with terrorist entities including Harkartul Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), Jamaatul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB), United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), Hizbul Mujahedin and also Al Qaeda. Incidentally, in December 2001, when BNP reportedly hosted former Al Qaeda supremo Ayman al-Zawahiri and his team for weeks in Bangladesh, Ansarey played a pivotal role of coordinator, which included meeting Ayman al-Zawahiri several times on Tarique Rahman’s behalf.
Choudhury alleges that in the U.S., Ansarey is seen almost regularly meeting Pakistan embassy’s staff, particularly Muhammad Asim Raza as well as others such as Muhammad Taqi and Jamal Nasir.
Getting back to the message, Milam assured Rahman that by December 10, the U.S. would impose a series of sanctions on a large number of the leaders of ruling Awami League, including some of the high-profile ministers as well as civil-military officials. Rahman reportedly spoke to Milam a couple of times after he received the message.
What followed was a prelude to August 5 events. Following Milam’s message Rahman reportedly told a select number of BNP leaders, including at least two of the members of party’s Standing Committee to prepare for a “massive” rally in Dhaka city on December 10, 2022.
Following Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey repeated assurances about Washington’s “strong directives” to Awami League government to resign and hand over power to a “neutral caretaker government” latest by December 15, Rahman had slated a detailed plan about turning BNP’s party office area into another “Tahrir Square,” a reference to the venue in Cairo where protests brought down the government of Hosni Mubarak, leading to a Muslim Brotherhood presidency under Mohamed Morsy.
Simultaneously, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was brought into the loop. It was conveyed to him, says Choudhary that Rahman was ready to accept him as the head of a caretaker government once Prime Minister Hasina resigned and handed over power. Rahman also assured Yunus that he would be given the presidency once BNP returned to power following a general election held under caretaker government by March 2023.
But the entire plan fizzled out when large-scale mobilisation outside the Dhaka’s Naya Paltan area did not materialise, despite the BNP’s attempts to draw Islamist forces, including Khelafat Andolan and Hefazat-e-Islam into the project.
Despite the setback, it is obvious that the conspiracy to unseat Hasina did not end there. On the contrary, the BNP-Jamaat combination has worked feverishly to launch an info-war soft power blitz to target Hasina and the Awami League with the help of subversives in the United States.
In building a counternarrative thorough the media, NED’s name crops up again. For instance, the NED funded Netra News, a slick media website, which has worked energetically to promote the BNP-JEI’s cause.
Netra News is headed by Tasneem Khalil, a Sweden based exiled Bangladeshi journalist. Khalil earlier worked for The Daily Star, became a stringer for CNN and, most importantly, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, bringing the Human Rights agenda as the most powerful undercurrent in Netra News.
Incidentally, in 2010, the Open Society Foundations of George Soros, the master of Colour Revolutions across the globe, gave a 10 year “challenge grant” of $100 million to Human Rights Watch.
The turning point in Khalil’s life came when the Bangladesh intelligence services tortured him in custody after detaining him on May 11, 2007, paving the way for his link-up with HRW and eventually with BNP’s Rehman. After he fled the country following his release, Khalil documented his story in a special HRW report, titled The Torture of Tasneem Khalil (2008). HRW has described its publication “the most detailed public account of a case of torture in Bangladesh”.
Khalil’s support for Tarique Rahman is obvious. He is ardent defender of Rahman, and is seen by many as BNP’s shadow minister for human rights once fresh elections take place. He has controversially argued that Rahman should remain outside the jurisdiction of Bangladeshi courts despite credible cases of crime and corruption, including convictions and pending lawsuits, according to posting on Substack colourfully titled Sherlock Holmes in Bangladesh.
The NED funded Netra News has mastered the art of mobilising non-politicised students en masse by pushing a fake moralistic narrative where they perceive themselves as frontline soldiers fighting tyranny, defending human rights, and become authentic change makers of their country.
Just as the image of shocked Omran Daqneesh, the brown haired boy who was rescued from a crumbling building in Aleppo, was used to fuel a regime change movement in Syria; the killing of Al Jazeera cameraman near Benghazi to flare the anti-Gaddafi “revolution” in Libya, and many other graphic photos and videos used during the string of regime changes that took place under the rubric of the so-called Arab Spring, Netra news too has also homed on to the selfless “sacrifice” of Abu Sayed as a major mobilising tool.
Netra News has lionised Abu Sayed, for standing “fearless with arms outstretched before being shot by the police…”
“Versions of Abu Sayed’s image, standing with arms outstretched when he was shot, are going viral on social media and news outlets. These include a sketch of his heroic stand by Kausik Sarker, an image of him in front of Bangladesh’s flag denoting his sacrifice for the country, and the same image accompanied by lines from Bangladesh’s national poet Kazi Nazrul Islam’s poem “The Rebel,” says a posting on the portal.
It adds: “The images of young women in Bangladesh’s protests have shifted from photographs of a blood-drenched, beaten, and injured young woman to crowds of female students marching and chanting slogans…
These scenes are reminiscent of the protests of Iranian women against the Islamic Revolution and the recent Citizenship Law protests in India, where women were at the frontlines fighting for Muslims in India.”
In the exercise of soft-power against Hasina, other media luminaries include Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media (BJIM). “BJIM is a network of pro-BNP and pro-Jamaat media personnel who are reporting on Bangladesh for major international news outlets,” says a posting on the Substack Sherlock Holmes in Bangladesh.
Apart from professional media personnel, the musicians such as Arafat Kazi whose powerful opinion piece titled Death Everywhere on Netra News has proved widely influential. Even prominent LGBTQ writer and performer Ibtisam Ahmed has pitched in in favour of anti-Hasina protests, in fact slamming Bangladesh’s “foundational myth.”
The narrative war against Hasina has also been fanned by a new X account called Revolt, which has found traction among those seeking regime change. The Revolt account regularly posts videos of BNP activists, including Dhaka-based Zahed Ur Rahman and expat Faham Abdus Salam.
In one his videos, Salam asks members of the Bangladesh Armed Forces to leak information to Tasneem Khalil and other dissidents. He also threatens the family members of military officers, including their wives.
Three more individuals—David Bergman, Zulkarnain Saer Khan Sami and Jacob Milton—are known for consistently working against Awami League from their overseas perches, contacting local politicians, public representatives and working the media to push their counter-narrative.
Incidentally Bergman, a former editor of Netra News has strongly turned to BNP-Jamaat’s defence since the Awami League began war crimes trials in 2012, in which several Jamaat luminaries were docked. Bergman has regularly appeared on the Al Jazeera English TV channel, where he has repeatedly slammed the Awami League.
Zulkarnain Saer Khan Sami’s name has cropped up in connection with criminal activities.
Apparently, he was expelled from Hungary, where he operated several restaurants, including Curry House Indian restaurant, because of his alleged involvement in extortion activities and relationship with Shahid Uddin Khan, a terrorist financier wanted by Interpol. According to some media reports, he has found refuge in London.
In a twitter post on August 9, he has called up the newly formed interim government of Bangladesh to unblock the site of @NetraNews #StateWatch @Bangla_Outlook and all others for the readers of Bangladesh.
Jacob Milton also has a controversial profile. Milton has been very vocal on social media about different issues, introduces himself as the ex-vice president of a bank, a retired captain of the Bangladesh Army, a lawyer, and a journalist, but in reality, he has not even passed SSC, the Daily Sun website said citing its sources.
Obtaining a press card from a nominal Bangla media house in the U.S., he is often found posing different questions about Bangladesh in the press briefings of the U.S. Department of State, says the report.
With ties between the Americans and the Pakistanis on the mend, it is not surprising that Islamabad, known for its blood bond with the Jamaat, has been fully involved in the protests against Sheikh Hasina, who symbolises Pakistan’s humiliation following the breakup of East Pakistan in 1971, and its emergence as independent Bangladesh.
In recent years, Pakistan’s empathy for Jamaat, which was fully involved in atrocities against Bengali patriots during the 1971 liberation war, became evident when Pakistan’s parliament in 2013 passed a unanimous resolution against the war crimes trial in Bangladesh on Sheikh Hasina’s watch.
Hasina had setup the International Crimes Tribunal (Bangladesh) (ICT of Bangladesh) in 2009 to investigate and prosecute suspects for the genocide committed in 1971 by the Pakistan Army and their local collaborators, during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
Besides, former ISI chief Asad Durrani informed Pakistan’s supreme court in 2012 that the ISI funded the Jamaat allied BNP during the 1991 elections in Bangladesh.
The JEI in Pakistan and East Pakistan/ Bangladesh share a sinister and violent history of ruthless collaboration. During Bangladesh’s liberation war, Jamaat-e-Islami provided full support to the Pakistani Army. in their efforts against the freedom fighters of Bangladesh/East-Pakistan. The West-Pakistani Government created the “East-Pakistan Central Peace Committee” (known as Shanti Committee or Bahini in Bengali) which was a vital part of their military operations against the Bengali nationalists.
Following this, Shanti Bahini, along with West-Pakistani forces, committed horrendous war crimes, including killings of hundreds of thousands of non-combatant East-Pakistanis, rape of East-Pakistani women (especially non-Muslim women), kidnapping and killing scholars, doctors, scientists, amongst others. The Jamaat-e-Islami also fostered groups such as the “Al-Badar” and “Al-Shams” (known as the Rajakar Bahini in Bengali) to support the military efforts of the Pakistani Army. Al-Badar was created by Islami Chhatra Sibir, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami in East-Pakistan. One of the main operations of Al-Badar during the liberation war was to specifically kill “the intellectual people” (known as Budhijibi in Bengali).
Among an array of hideous crimes, the imposition of sex slavery of 200,000 to 400,000 Bengali women stood out.
Given their past record, it is evident that the Americans will not have any problem if the radical Jamaat or the BNP-Jamaat combine, which is more likely, assume power following a future election, so long as their broader geopolitical interests remain protected. This is apparent from last year’s U.S. Department of State that said: “Leaders and members of Jamaat-e-Islami (Jamaat), the largest Muslim political party in the country, could not exercise their constitutional freedoms of speech and assembly because of harassment by law enforcement authorities. Jamaat was deregistered as a political party by the government, prohibiting candidates from seeking office under the Jamaat name.”
This is not surprising as the U.S. deep state has an ignominious history of collaborating with radical groups to institute regime change. For instance, in Libya, the CIA shipped Al Qaeda affiliate Abdelhakim Belhadj, who was netted in Afghanistan, from Malaysia in 2004 to unseat the country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi.
In 2011, the CIA used Belhadj to target Gaddafi’s real or perceived supporters —an effort that caused large scale killings of black African migrants who were perceived as loyalists of the Libyan leader.
According to the The Herald, Belhadj served the U.S. cause so well that the late Senator John McCain described him and his followers as heroes. The website points out that Belhadj subsequently became an ISIS leader operating around Derna, an eastern Libyan city.
Even before the dust has settled after Hasina’s ouster there are worrying signs that Islamic extremists maybe be hijacking the governance agenda. The list of the caretaker government is out. It includes the name of Abul Fayez Muhammad Khalid Hossain, popularly known as Dr AFM Khalid Hossain. Hossain has been the vice president of Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh and is currently associated with the Bangladeshi Deobandi Islamic organization. The Hefazat-e-Islami is a hardline Islamist organization, whose members have been accused of persecuting Hindus in the past, and battling the Sheikh Hasina government over its ties with India.
The appointment comes amid widespread reports of targeted attacks on Bangladesh’s Hindu community, including brutal killings, rapes, looting of Hindu businesses and destruction of temples following Hasina’s exit. Unsurprisingly, while conveying his best wishes to Prof. Muhammad Yunus, the head of the interim government, on the assumption of his new responsibilities, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Bangladesh’s new leaders to ensure “the safety and protection of Hindus and all other minorities” in the country.
From a broader geopolitical perspective, it remains to be seen whether the new dispensation will allow the U.S. to establish an airbase as Hasina had warned, and whether Kukiland, an East Timor like state is carved out of parts of India’s northeast, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, is on the radar after the change of guard of Dhaka.
One last word, the pro-BNP Netra News is applauding the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh, Peter Haas who was dragged into controversy after some members of Hasina’s Awami League accused him of having a strong pro-BNP bias.
“Many regarded him as a hero, a champion for democracy in Bangladesh. Others saw him as a foreign actor trying to orchestrate regime change. Whoever replaces him has very big shoes to fill, and it is hard to imagine that people will soon forget the legacy of work the ambassador left behind,” the website opined.
