Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
Since the violent ousting of former PM Sheikh Hasina on August 5, Bangladeshi Islamists have targeted Hindus and other non-Muslims with violence, imprisonment, and murder. The latest victim of this jihad against minorities is Chinmoy Krishna Das, a Hindu monk and an advocate for the rights of his community and other minorities.
The Indian Express recently reported that Das, a former member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), was arrested at the Dhaka airport on November 25. Das was leading rallies demanding security for Hindus in Bangladesh. As a result, the monk faces charges of sedition which were filed after he led an October rally in Chattogram, where he was accused of disrespecting Bangladesh’s national flag. He was denied bail and sent to jail by a Chittagong court on November 26.
The bail hearing for Das, which was originally scheduled on December 3 at a court in Bangladesh’s Chattogram, is now postponed to January 2 because there was no lawyer to represent him. His previous lawyer, Ramen Roy, was attacked allegedly for defending Das:
According to ISKCON, the advocate was beaten up at his residence in Chattogram, reportedly on December 2. “Roy’s only ‘fault’ is that he is defending Chinmoy Krishna Das. His home was ransacked, and he was severely assaulted… He defended Das when he was first produced in court (on November 26). He is still in the ICU, fighting for his life,” Radharamn Das, vice-president and spokesperson of Iskcon, Kolkata told The Indian Express.
“Not only Ramen Roy, lawyers who represented him earlier too were attacked and had cases slapped against them. In this atmosphere of fear, we do not know which lawyer will risk his life and defend him,” added Radharamn Das.
Less than a week after Hasina was violently ousted from power, Muhammad Yunus (pictured above) found the support of Islamists. He took the oath of office as head of Bangladesh’s interim government. Since Yunus’ ascension, bans against jihadist groups have been lifted and many of their members released from jail. Yunus has even met with many terrorist leaders. Emboldened Islamist groups in Bangladesh now freely held rallies and gatherings. Islamic forces have tightened their grip on the country, plunging Bangladesh into a reign of terror that targets Hindus, Christians, and other non-Muslims.
Hasina, currently residing in India, accused the United States government of playing a role in her removal from power. Hasina claimed that she could have stayed in power if she had compromised on the sovereignty of Saint Martin Island and allowed the US to exert influence over the Bay of Bengal.
In a message quoted by the Economic Times, Hasina urged the people of Bangladesh not to be manipulated by radicals. She expressed deep sorrow over the recent killings, harassment, and vandalism targeting leaders and workers in the country.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh is gradually turning into a sharia state and a global center of Islamic terrorism. The Biden administration’s orchestrated attempt to remove Hasina as Prime Minister of Bangladesh and install Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has exposed deep flaws within the US administration’s South Asia policy.
Documents obtained by The Sunday Guardian reveal a carefully constructed regime change operation that began in 2019. This makes Bangladesh the latest target after similar operations in Mongolia (1996), Haiti (2001), and Uganda (2021). At the heart of this operation was the International Republican Institute (IRI), implementing broader objectives of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The program, euphemistically named “Promoting Accountability, Inclusivity, and Resiliency Support Program” (PAIRS), operated for 22 months until January 2021, representing a comprehensive effort to reshape Bangladesh’s political landscape.
The Biden administration’s strategy deployed multiple tactics: funding artists and musicians to create “225 art products addressing political and social issues,” supporting civil society organizations to develop policy demands, and conducting what they claimed was “the largest published survey of LGBTI people in Bangladesh.” These efforts, reaching nearly 400,000 Bangladesh nationals directly, were complemented by a $900,000 grant from NED for additional programs targeting youth and women political leaders. What makes this intervention particularly concerning is its explicit aim to counter India’s influence. Internal documents brazenly stated that “under the support of India, the Awami Leage Party become increasingly hegemonic,” and emphasized the necessity to “counterbalance interference from regional powers.” This stance demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of regional dynamics while alienating India.
The US usage of visa sanctions as a pressure tactic proved particularly counterproductive. In 2021, Washington designated Bangladesh’s elite Rapid Action Battalion and six of its leaders for alleged human rights abuses, effectively freezing their assets. The exclusion of Bangladesh from the Democracy Summits in 2021 and 2023 exposed the selective nature of American democracy promotion efforts, particularly because it included Pakistan despite its chronic political turmoil.
The installation of Yunus, the 84-year-old founder of Grameen Bank, as the country’s new chief advisor reveals the shortsightedness of the Biden administration’s planning. While Yunus carries international prestige from his Nobel Prize, his Grameen Bank has increasingly shifted from its microfinance roots to commercial ventures like Grameen Telecom. Moreover, the Bangladesh government has already mainstreamed microfinance services, making Yunus’s original platform largely redundant.
The Biden administration severely underestimated China’s $38 billion investment in Bangladesh. Unlike the US approach of funding civil society efforts, China’s tangible infrastructure projects have created lasting economic ties. Sheikh Hasina’s revelation about refusing requests from the Biden administration to build a military base on St. Martin’s Island has highlighted the strategic undertones of US intervention. The role of US-based NGOs in this operation cannot be understated. Documents show that American NGOs dominate Bangladesh with 81 organizations, compared to the UK’s 45 and Japan’s 19. The Ford Foundation, which is now blended into the Bangladesh Freedom Forum, wielded such influence that its head in Dhaka enjoyed quasi-diplomatic status, often poaching promising government officers and depleting local talent.
The involvement of senior American officials, including Chris Murphy, Sumona Guha, Donald Lu, Sarah Margon, and Francisco Bencosme, demonstrates the high-level coordination behind this regime change effort. Their oversight extended to monitoring both major political parties, with IRI (Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence) claiming “strong relationships” with both Hasina’s Awami League Party and Bangladesh Nationalist Party. The Biden’s administration’s miscalculation becomes even more apparent when considering Bangladesh’s impressive economic growth under Hasina’s leadership, especially in contrast to Pakistan’s chronic instability. US foreign assistance to Bangladesh nearly doubled to $477 million in the decade leading to 2023, yet this financial leverage failed to achieve its intended political outcomes.
The failure of this regime change operation holds crucial lessons for American foreign policy in South Asia. First, the era of using civil society organizations and visa sanctions to effect political change is increasingly ineffective in a multipolar world. Second, the assumption that installing Western-friendly leaders will automatically counter Chinese influence has proven naive. Finally, the selective application of democratic principles has only served to undermine America’s credibility.
The failed regime change attempt in Bangladesh represents a broader challenge to the power of the US in international politics. This episode starkly illustrates how the traditional tools of the US administration – from NGO infiltration and civil society manipulation to visa sanctions and democracy promotion – are losing their effectiveness in an increasingly multipolar world.
The fact that a relatively smaller nation like Bangladesh could successfully resist pressure from the Biden administration, while maintaining its sovereign decisions and strategic partnerships with China, signals a significant shift in global power dynamics. Washington’s inability to achieve its objectives despite deploying its full spectrum of soft power tools demonstrates the declining potency of American influence. Resistance to US intervention is not occurring in isolation. It is part of a broader pattern where nations, particularly in Asia, are increasingly able to balance between great powers rather than submit to unilateral pressure from the US administration. The failure in Bangladesh particularly undermines the US claim to being the primary architect of international order, as it shows how countries can successfully chart their own course while rejecting external attempts at political engineering, even from the world’s supposed sole superpower.
As Bangladesh moves ahead in its political future, this intervention by the Biden administration stands as a testament to the limits of external interference in sovereign nations. The episode highlights how traditional Western regime change tactics are becoming obsolete in an Asia increasingly shaped by economic partnerships and infrastructure development rather than abstract notions of democracy promotion.
Attempts by US officials to topple the Hasina government in the name of “democracy” through NGOs and tools such as “transgender dance performances” did not yield the expected results. PM Hasina was forced out of power through violent protests which were hijacked by Islamists. The US administration’s dangerous “regime change” operation in Bangladesh has thus benefited Islamists in the short term and will undermine security in both South Asia and the West in the long term.
The unraveling of the Biden’s administration’s Bangladesh gambit should prompt a fundamental reassessment of US foreign policy approaches in South Asia. Until Washington abandons its Cold War-era playbook of regime change operations, it risks further erosion of its influence in a region where economic development and stability, rather than ideological alignment, drive political outcomes.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist formerly based in Ankara.
Dear Ms. Bulut: What did Muhammad Yunis win the Nobel Prize FOR?
LGBTI is not a monolith. There are plenty of gays who don’t want men in women’s sports or women’s locker rooms or women’s prisons or grabbing the slots set aside for women on corporate boards.
If the Hindus could kick the Brits out of India why can’t the Hindus kick the Jihadi Muslims out of Bangladesh.
And why can’t the Hindus kick the Pakistani Muslims out of their own country.
Enough of this kowtowing crap.
The US supports the Kurds against the new ISIS type of sharia in Syria. For the same reason, the US support the Hindus against the Islamists in Bangladesh. Part of the problem has been Pakistan, which supports sharia in Bd, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. But there are ways to deal with that which the US can and should get into.
I meant to write, The US should support the Hindus….