Talk about history repeating itself. As Bangladesh goes to the polls exactly a month from now on 7 January 2024, the international community has begun to openly take sides for and against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Fifty years ago, as India fought the Pakistan Army in support of the creation of the new nation of Bangladesh, the US Seventh Fleet sent the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier in a show of strength for Pakistan, but before it could enter the Bay of Bengal, the former Soviet Pacific Fleet had dispatched one of its own ships. There was never a face-off, but the message was clear.
The Cold War was at its height and the world was divided into two blocs, so it was relatively easy to take sides. Today, 52 years on, you would think that the big powers would have learnt from their arrogance of the past. That smaller nations can no longer be used as playthings in service of their own ideology. That if you’re not with us, you’re against us.
Today’s story begins in May with the US announcing a visa policy for Bangladesh that openly called for the promotion of democratic elections in the country. Now, nobody can, or should, argue against the need to safeguard citizens from voter intimidation, stuffing ballot boxes and general violence.
But this new visa policy clearly disapproved of the manner in which Sheikh Hasina was running her country and everyone understood whose side the US was on. (Certainly, not on hers.)
According to the US think-tank Atlantic Council, the visa policy is a “clear rejection” of Hasina’s government. The think-tank cites a number of examples that offends the human rights sensibilities of the Joe Biden administration—ranging from the behaviour of the Bangladesh elite police force called the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), seven of whose officers were censured by the US in 2021, to why the US twice refused to invite Bangladesh for its Democracy Summit.
Fast forward to the last week of November, when the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, accused the US ambassador to Bangladesh Peter Haas of interfering in the political affairs of Bangladesh by meeting politicians from opposition parties to discuss anti-Hasina matters and organisation of “anti-government rallies”.
“Such actions amount to nothing less than gross interference in internal affairs,” Zakharova said in a briefing in Moscow on 24 November.
“We have repeatedly highlighted the attempts by the US and its allies to influence the internal political processes in Bangladesh under the guise of ensuring that the upcoming parliamentary elections in the country are ‘transparent and inclusive’,” she added.
Two days later, the US roundly issued a denial, saying it was aware of Zakharova’s “deliberate mischaracterisation” of US foreign policy. On Thursday, the National Security Council spokesperson in the White House followed this up by describing the Russian accusation as “classic Russian propaganda.”
According to the Russians, Peter Haas met an opposition politician in the end of October and talked about mass protests against the Hasina government and promised him support in case the authorities used force against the protesters. The UK, Australia and other Western countries also pledged their support to the Bangladeshi opposition, the Russian embassy posted on its Facebook page.
Also read: India knows Sheikh Hasina isn’t a perfect PM. Here’s why Delhi supports her while holding its nose
India is watching
This is where matters stand one month before Hasina stakes claim to become prime minister for an unprecedented fifth time. The West seems ranged against her and Russia seems to be supporting her.
Certainly, there would have been conversations between India and Bangladesh around these matters as well.
On the face of it, one could argue that New Delhi isn’t too happy with the autocratic manner in which Hasina has dealt with her own people—whether it is the media, opposition politicians or trade unions, for instance in the garment worker industry. But India also knows that any censure or advice to tone down or mitigate any hardline policies will just be downright ignored.
Bangladeshis admit that Hasina and her government are still smarting from Home Minister Amit Shah’s 2018 comment describing Bangladeshi migrants as “termites”. Moreover, a Bangladeshi political analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity say that Hasina has simply taken a page from the policies of the Narendra Modi government, whether it was in terms of combatting the farmers’ protests or cracking down on protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act or tighten the rules under which the media operates.
Delhi is also keenly aware of the manner in which Hasina has stifled free speech and curtailed room for manoeuvre of Bangladeshi civil society. It is also a matter of concern that opposition politicians like the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s Khaleda Zia have been under house arrest for several years, that the BNP rally on 28 October degenerated into a free-for-all and like the Bangladesh High Court is now asking, why BNP secretary-general Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has been denied bail for more than a month.
Also read: Is the US fanning an ‘Arab Spring’ flame in poll-bound Bangladesh?
A leadership crisis
Reports from Bangladesh, and especially from Dhaka, say that the current atmosphere in the country is a strange mix of fear, nervousness and resistance. All the usual tropes of democracy have been more or less inverted—meaning, the bad guys are far more popular than the good guys.
This is all really quite strange in a country that was created on the premise that good will always triumph over evil.
To think that Sheikh Hasina, an avowedly secular, strong and compassionate woman – who must be battling the worst nightmares in which she lives over and over again the murder of her entire family that bloody night of 15 August 1975 – is having to battle a crisis of leadership that has made her so unpopular on the Bangladeshi street that people are willing to overlook all her qualities. That too in favour of a party whose heir-apparent, Khaleda’s son Tarique Rehman, has so many cases against him that he cannot even live inside the country.
What, then, as the US demands, is a “free and fair election?” Should the BNP and its ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami, be allowed the free run of the streets, in the full public knowledge that their hands—directly, or indirectly—are stained, if only by association and probably by ideology, of those who killed Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rehman?
Probably if Hasina had been less of an autocrat and allowed the opposition to flourish and behave like a true opposition; if only she had been more willing to tolerate dissent; if only she was able to get over the trauma of the past.
There is no question. Bangladesh is still Sheikh Hasina and Hasina remains Bangladesh. If only she were to let her guard down and appeal to her people and tell them, honestly, that she has made mistakes and that she hopes they will forgive her?
That may be too much of a Rabindranath Tagore-type short story to ask for and certainly, life doesn’t imitate art. And so we all wait for 7 January, the day Bangladesh goes to the polls, to figure out what the nation really wants.
Jyoti Malhotra is founder-editor of Awaaz South Asia web platform. She tweets @jomalhotra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)