The coup in Bangladesh, engineered by Islamist students, revived the ghost of East Pakistan that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had slayed in 1971 with the help of the Indian Army.
Under his daughter, deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s economy soared. Its per capita income is nearly double Pakistan’s. Its textile industry is world-class. It jailed or exiled Islamists.
Now those Islamists are back and calling the shots using Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus as a fig leaf to turn Bangladesh into a bad copy of Pakistan.
Sheikh Hasina is not blameless. She rigged the January 2024 election. She was allegedly corrupt. But for all her faults, she created a secular, relatively prosperous Bangladesh.
The Islamists who deposed Sheikh Hasina had help from elements in Pakistan and the United States. A rigged election is often the pretext for regime change. The US deep state has long experience in forcing regime change – in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia and across South America.
Bangladesh was a more difficult target: a functioning democracy with close economic and security links to India, America’s strategic partner.
The US campaign to discredit Sheikh Hasina and trigger the Islamist coup was camouflaged as a student protest against a rigged election in January 2024 which the Islamist-learning Bangladesh National Party (BNP) boycotted.
Why would the US prefer a jihadi-led interim government in Bangladesh rather than a secular government led by Sheikh Hasina, however corrupt she allegedly was?
Washington prefers plaint dictators to democratically elected leaders. It was happy doing business with Pakistan’s Generals. They were corrupt and did America’s bidding.
Content retrieved from: https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/head-on-bangladesh-and-the-ghost-of-east-pakistan-13842135.html.
