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Why Modi, Trump and Putin need to bond to reverse regime change in Bangladesh

More  than seven months after regime change that removed elected leader Sheikh Hasina from office, the situation in Bangladesh remains dire. In fact, there are signs that it is at a point of inflexion.

Amid the pervasive anarchy, clear battle lines are now crystallising. The Bangladeshi military which had largely remained in the shadows has begun to forcefully assert itself. General Waker- Uz- Zaman, the army chief has the Islamist radicals in his cross-hairs, who are demonstrating emotive defiance, warning the military against political interference. 

Beneath the brewing showdown between the military and the Islamists is the battle for Bangladesh’s soul. Will Bangladesh become a theocracy in case the military blinks and the Islamists capture power?  Or will the military successfully confront the radicals and restore Bangladesh’s linguistic and secular Bengali nationalism, the foundation of the state that became independent on December 16, 1971, with support from New Delhi and Moscow? 

At least 119 people have been killed in mob violence that has spiralled in the seven months since the caretaker government took office, with 294 cases of murder nationwide in January, well up from 231 in the same month a year earlier, police data reveals.

The battle royale between the military and the Islamists was out in the open on February 26. On that fateful day, Gen. Zaman declared that faced with the unbridled anarchy that the country was experiencing, his patience had run out. "I am telling you today otherwise you will say that I did not warn you. I am warning all of you. I have no other intentions, I have only one intention. I want to take leave after placing the country and people in a good place. I have had enough for the last seven to eight months. We want to place the country and people in a good place and return to the barracks."

The statement was yet another turning point in the saga of regime change which took place in August 2024, when Sheikh Hasina had to flee Dhaka for India, just in time before surging mobs streamed into her official residence, ransacked the property, and even displayed personal items of her clothing as trophies. That was indeed a close call, triggering memories of August 1975, when a military coup almost wiped-out Hasina’s parental  family including her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan.

Hasina had then narrowly escaped that carnage as she and her sister were travelling in Europe. Subsequently, former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave her refuge in a safehouse in New Delhi’s Pandara Road, where she lived for six years under an assumed identity till her return to Bangladesh in 1981 as the head of the Awami League.

In response to Gen. Zaman’s bold statement, the radical core of a complex ecosystem that brought down Hasina, took the lead in confronting the army chief, who is a distant relative of the former Prime Minister.

With their counteroffensive, the Islamists wish to generate so much street power that it would bring the formidable military to its knees. The army’s de facto surrender  before the mobs, if accomplished, would complete the so-called “Monsoon Revolution” as most of the other instruments of state power, including the police and its support system have been already neutered, resulting in the free-for-all anarchy on the streets of Dhaka and elsewhere.

In confronting the military, the Islamists have already declared their intent to  “blow up the cantonments” in response to Gen. Zaman’s ultimatum.

In a television interview, Asaduzzaman Fuad, the General Secretary of the radical student-led Aamar Bangladesh (AB) Party, accused the Army Chief of conspiring with President Mohammed Shahabuddin to install a new interim government.

"You can see the Army Chief holding certain so-called meetings and indulging in a new conspiracy. To see how, under the President, a new interim government can be formed. This president is a slave dog of Sheikh Hasina. If you try and run the country with Shahabuddin, lakhs of Abu Syeds (a student activist killed in July 2024) will lay down our lives and blow up the cantonment,” railed  Fuad, a young leader of the radical AB party, which is widely known as the B-team of the hardline Jamaat-e-Islami outfit.

Fuad’s brazen counterstrike on Gen. Waker signals the significant mutation that the radical Jamaat-e-Islami has undergone to draw a new generation of educated Islamists in the political mainstream through the Aamar Bangladesh (AB) Party.

The rise of the AB party that supports the interim post-Hasina regime of Muhammad Yunus, masks the tainted history of the Jamaat, which may not have entered the consciousness  of the emotionally surcharged Gen Z that had taken to the streets in Dhaka to bring down Hasina.

The JEI that has roots both in Pakistan and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, played a sinister and collaborative role with the Pakistani military in the mass murders ahead of the liberation of Bangladesh. It is on record that the erstwhile West-Pakistani Government created the “East-Pakistan Central Peace Committee” (known as Shanti Committee or Bahini), 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.

In targeting Gen.Zaman, the Islamists are building on the narrative that the army chief poses a major threat to the so-called “monsoon revolution.” To buttress their claims, they have accused Gen. Zaman of conspiring the return of Sheikh Hasina. Slanderous statements are also being made that Gen. Zaman  had opposed Hasina’s replacement by Muhammad Yunus.  Finally, rumours are flying that Gen. Zaman is an Indian agent. 

But more sinisterly, there are reports alleging that there has been an attempted coup within the military, which would have brought into power an Islamist general, replacing Gen. Zaman, thus completing the project to install the “Second Republic” to power. It is alleged that removal of Gen. Zaman would have led to the takeover of the military by Lieutenant General Muhammad Faizur Rahman, known for his ties to Islamist factions and the Pakistani military. The conspiracy was reportedly foiled with “external support”—apparently a reference to India. Incidentally, Gen. Rahman was the Director General of Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI)—a mirror image in Bangladesh of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Given the history and pattern of Pakistani covert operations, allegations that the ISI had marshalled the coup within the military cannot be dismissed at face value. Hasina’s feud with the ISI was apparent as she had blocked the channel between the Bangladeshi military establishment and the Pakistani intelligence since 2009. But Muhammad Yunus’ regime reversed this policy.

Significantly, on January 21, an ISI delegation led by Major General Shahid Amir Afsar, the agency’s director general of analysis who previously served as Pakistan’s defence attaché in Beijing, landed in Dhaka.  The ISI team’s visit quickly followed a trip to Rawalpindi by a six-member Bangladeshi delegation led by Lt Gen SM Kamrul Hasan, the Principal Staff Officer of the Armed Forces Division. They travelled to Pakistan during January 13-18 and met the top military leadership in Rawalpindi, including army chief General Asim Munir.

However, in the confrontation with the Islamists, Gen. Zaman, Bangladesh’s army chief is not alone. In fact, he stands on solid ground as support from India and the United States is now likely if not already available. India is upset with the regime change in Bangladesh with the toppling of Hasina, its top strategic ally in the region, and sees hope in the Bangladesh military to reverse the tide. The Trump administration also denounces the soft coup in Bangladesh, marshalled by the US deep state, its arch foe. Trump and his allies have slammed former President Joe Biden, Barack Obama, the Clintons  and others of misusing United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Bangladesh and other countries for promoting their globalist ideology, which has included regime change in its playbook.

Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration by January end had suspended all funding by USAID  to Bangladesh.

"The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.  They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries," the White House has said.

According to an article based on leaked documents published by The Grayzone,  an investigative website,  the International Republican Institute (IRI) was at the forefront of the mission to “destabilize Bangladesh’s politics.” The documents are marked as “confidential and/or privileged.”

Incidentally, the IRI is a Republican Party-run subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has spearheaded several regimes change operations across the globe.  The NED has a solid CIA lineage as it was founded more than 40 years ago by the agency’s former director, William Casey.

Citing documents, the Grayzone investigation reveals that spending millions, the IRI focused on generating a critical mass to oust Hasina through mobilisation and training of key sections of the Bangladeshi society. 

The Indians and the Americans also recognise that Bangladesh under the Yunus regime can become a hub of international terrorism.

During her recent visit to India, US National Intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard had stressed that Islamist radicals in Bangladesh cannot be seen in isolation. Instead, they are part of a deeper ideological project of establishing an international Islamic caliphate.

In response to a question of Bangladesh during a television interview, Gabbard said that the “longtime unfortunate persecution, killing, and abuse of religious minorities like Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and others has been a major area of concern for the US government and President Trump and his administration."

Referring to the bigger ideological goals of radical Islamists in the context of Bangladesh, the visiting US official observed that “the threat of Islamist terrorists and the global effort of different terror groups are routed in the same ideology and objective - which is to rule or govern with an Islamist Caliphate".  

In a show of support to Gen. Zaman,  Lt. Gen. Joel P. Vowell, Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army Pacific, visited Bangladesh March 24 – 25.

Buoyed by the backing he has received and the “balance of power” shifting in his favour, Gen. Zaman is concentrating his forces in Dhaka preparing for a showdown with the Islamists. Specifically, he has moved the Savar-based 9th Infantry Division for deployment in Dhaka. This movement has been carried out in a phased manner, and the division is playing a key role in consolidating the army's position in the capital.

Despite his advantage, the army’s battle with the Islamists in Bangladesh is far from won.

There are reports that Bangladesh’s security agencies cannot account for a large cache of weapons that has gone missing from armouries of police stations during last year’s protests.

Besides, it is estimated that 18,000-25,000 firearms have offloaded at Bangladeshi ports, especially Chittagong and pushed into secret locations.

Bangladeshi security agencies also fear that several hundred men belonging to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) are residing as sleeper cells in round Jatrabari—a Dhaka suburb, ready to spring into action when commanded to do so.

Bangladeshi security service officials suspect that many others might be living in other areas on the fringes of the Bangladeshi capital following the arrest of 10 ARSA members, including the outfit’s commander Ataullah Abu Ammar Jununi from an area on the outskirts of Dhaka.

An Islamist chain of command may also have been reinforced following the release of convicted terrorists by the Yunus regime.

On the political side, apart from the AB Party, new political formations are emerging, yearning to subvert the military and accomplish irreversible regime change.  Out of these Muhammad Yunus’  National Citizen Party (NCP), in which student leaders who drove earlier street protests maintain a high profile has acquired high visibility. Other parties like Islami Andolan Bangladesh and Ganosamhati Andolon have also drawn attention. A new political ecosystem is germinating beyond the traditional parties—Hasina’s Awami League and her rival Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).   

With so much at stake for India, South Asia, China, the Indian Ocean Region and beyond depending on how Bangladesh pivots, it is obvious that external intervention in Dhaka is inevitable. In order to make a clear difference to ensure that Bangladesh retains its foundational path, New Delhi and Moscow, which played a critical role that led to its birth, need to come together, oddly with the United States this time, to encourage Bangaldesh’s still secular military to play its due interim role to return Dhaka to its constitutional path. In other words, a Russia-US-India (RUSI) partnership, with New Delhi in the lead is absolutely necessary to prevent an Islamist takeover of Bangladesh.