Kerry’s Dhaka visit: Are global powers misreading Bangladesh?

Yet, in the manner the visit had been painted by the government’s own mouthpieces, as well as by their loyalist pundits, one wonders whether the global misperception about the undercurrents of Bangladesh’s political dynamism stems largely from how the incumbent AL regime has been portraying everything so long to the regional and global powers.  According to more than one sources, the Obama administration is upset by the fact that the Indian intelligence had utterly failed to gauge the organizational outreach capacity and the menacing might of the jihadists being encountered now in every village and cities by Bangladeshi law enforcers, who too were in the dark until the attack on Gulshan’s Holey Artisan Bakery on July 1.  The US hence decided to deal with Bangladesh one- on- one, instead of relying much on Delhi, prompting John Kerry to personally commit to empathize with Dhaka on matters relating to the challenges to peace and prosperity posed by the rise of militant Islamists.  In the process, Kerry also reminded the AL-led administration that the so called home grown militants are linked with their external mentors, like the IS, about which Kerry claimed to having no dispute with the Dhaka regime, and his country having evidence to that effect.  This was an assertion, as well as a disclosure, that had unnerved the incumbent AL administration which had doggedly insisted for too long that there’re no IS operatives in Bangladesh. Home Minister Assaduzzaman Khan Kamal had once again flatly contradicted John Kerry’s unambiguous disclosure of the existing IS nexus by claiming that the crisis facing Bangladesh is a ‘localized one conducted by local political Islamists.’

Be that whatever, PM Sheikh Hasina seems to have digested Kerry’s one-to-one intimation of the US being in possession of evidence relating to IS-led operations in Bangladesh, and, had shifted her focus and pointing of blame on the BNP alone on this particular count.

Soon after Kerry’s departure, she rather urged her party loyalists to stir up public sentiments to try deceased president Zia and his widow, Khaleda Zia, for making convicted war crime personas ministers in their cabinets while in power. Earlier, a decision was made to stripe Zia off his liberation war gallantry awards as if he’d never fought the war.

Besides, no sooner Kerry left Dhaka, a court verdict upheld the death sentence of Jamat leader and financier, Mir Kassem, about whom Kerry is reported to have pleaded earlier for mercy to Sheikh Hasina.  The US is still the leading global power and John Kerry arrived in Dhaka on the heels of a number of local occurrences, ostensibly designed to prove how successfully the incumbent AL regime had handled the terror menace so far. Before his arrival, police claimed to have killed one of the masterminds of the Gulshan attack, Tamim Chowdhury, in an operation exclusively designed and conducted by the Transnational Crimes Unit of the police which is now slated to receive some financial perks from the US administration, it was learnt.  As well, a former Brigadier General of the army, Abdullah Hil Azmi, was nabbed from his home by the police’s Detective Branch (BD), according to his family, about which police never made a formal statement. Azmi is the son of deceased Jamat leader Golam Azam and, Jamat is blamed largely by the AL-led regime for stoking terror attacks inside the country.

The outlined US-Bangladesh cooperative ventures are all expected and routine, as one assumes under the prevailing global cooperation between sovereign states facing a common enemy, radical Islamists.  Yet, in Bangladesh, acts and ferocities of terror attacks had multiplied phenomenally since the January 2014 election in which all the main opposition parties refused to partake on grounds of deprived ‘fair election principles’ which were removed arbitrarily from the constitution prior to the 2014 election.

What may be followed in the aftermath of John Kerry’s Dhaka visit entails speculations, conjectures, and quite surprisingly, some substantive progress too. Kerry had gone to Delhi from Dhaka, armed with Dhaka’s mindset in turning Bangladesh into the lost fold of an inclusive democratic set up; a necessity that Delhi failed to make progress on despite repeated urging from the EU, the USA, Australia and many other civilized, democratic nations. Even the UN has been hammering on holding an inclusive election in Bangladesh since the non-participatory, utterly disgraceful January 2014 polling.  Now, Delhi faces a bigger challenge in so far as its leverage on Bangladesh is concerned. A recent strike by waterborne vessel workers had left heaps of Indian merchandise stranded in Ashugonj port while, according to observed public perception, majority of Bangladeshis are deadly against the construction of the Rampal power generation plant with Indian loan and collaboration.

Keery’s arrival to Dhaka and Delhi also coincided with raging fury in Bangladesh, caused by the devastation unleashed by the sudden, un-intimated release by India of huge waters through the Farakka barrage to drain out swelling flood waters from the Indian state of Bihar.  Hence, whether Kerry managed to convince Delhi about the urgency of an inclusive election in Bangladesh or not, Delhi has only two choices with respect to Bangladesh.

The first of those choices is to convince the incumbent AL regime to start proceeding toward holding an inclusive election sooner, and, the second option is to allow more anti-Indian feelings to stir the nerves of ordinary Bangladeshis to further stoke an already alarming ambiance of radicalization in which sword of honour winning military officers and brilliant minds with foreign PhD degrees are learnt to be leading a movement to turn Bangladesh into a theocratic nation. This is not the prospect that bodes well with Delhi. Nor will Delhi digest it with calmness and complacency.

Then again, the electoral prospect that would bestow Bangladesh with additional and much needed clout of being a reckonable regional and global player is clouded by factors that are not easy to thresh out.  For instance, will the BNP and its allies join the poll under the existing constitutional and regulatory guidelines that have been doctored by the incumbent parliamentarians to enable them to contest the polling as sitting MPs, and the country to be governed by the incumbent regime? If the BNP and its allies don’t, can the necessity of an interim arrangement avoided, and, if not, what sort of arrangement is likely to be acceptable to the government and the other stake holders alike?

In the midst of such complexity, it’s being transpired, with some tinges of authenticity, that Khaleda Zia, Tarek Rahman, et al are to be rendered unfit to contest the next poll through convictions in cases, the proceedings of which are almost over. This is expected to offer avenues to the other party leaders to join the poll under a truncated BNP while Jamaat had already been barred from contesting in any polling.

Fact is: such a blueprint of the government was already known to the political Islamists who had abandoned legalized politics years ago, dashed to the underground, and, trained themselves for an armed struggle. The BNP is not known to be party to such a scheme, but commonsensical political algorithm guides one to believe that the entire nationalist forces under the BNP banner will directly or indirectly side with any force determined to unseat the incumbent AL regime.

In the final analysis, the status quo under which the totality of Bangladesh’s political evolution had rotten in the by-gone years is overdue for a re-hauling; which neither the USA, nor India, seems to be fully cognizant of.

Whether that deserved and needed change must be shepherd by a regional power like India by convincing the incumbent AL to devise a solution in consultation with the main opposition parties, or the radical zealots are given more rooms to grow and threaten the veneer of a tolerant society that majority of Bangladeshis prefer, is a billion dollar question haunting Bangladeshis at home and abroad.

Source: new age